THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL AND LINGUISTIC FACTORS ON CHANGES IN STANDART PRONUNCIATION NORMS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The paper analyses the process of development of the sociolinguistic research line of language variation. Functioning in a real daily practice of people, belonging to different social, professional and territorial strata of society, sociolect is a form of language variation, i.e. one of fundamental properties, ensuring its ability to serve as means of human communication, thought, expression and objectification of outpouring of life reality. Sociological approach in consideration of language variation has paved the way for creation and development of a new science, i.e. sociolinguistics, learning interaction of language and social stratification, appeared in foreign and domestic linguistics in the mid-60s of the last century. In contemporary linguistics the study and research of a language condition in the Great Britain is under the great attention. Linguists point out to the necessity of profound and comprehensive study of the language system conversion and its realization in a language. The vital problem which is considered now with contemporary sociolinguistics is the problem of social-conditioned variation of a language. The great place is allocated now to sociophonetic researches of pronouncing style varieties. From this point of view the British variant of English language presents the great interest, because of appliance of different methods allows disclosing variation trends of phonostylistic variable in dialects and sociolects of English language that are interrelated with force of stratificational, territorial and contextual character. As it is known, up to the 70s years of the last century English phoneticists attention was focused on the study of local dialects, considered in opposition to the strictly standardized national literary language with pronouncing rules of normative pronunciation or Received Pronunciation - a standard pronunciation of well- educated South England population. In the third quarter of the last century British society reconsiders attitude to the concept of “standardized speech” and the language is accepted as the unity of variable subdialect, territorial and social forms, the attitude related to the RP changes and its prestige falls. Over the last decades we can observe a significant decrease of number of RP speakers. Earlier the RP considered as a multifunctional, prestigious form of pronunciation, but now its role considerably have been changing and it acquires strictly negative connotations and practically disappears from the sphere of everyday communication. Currently in the sociolinguistics are clearly distinguished nationally oriented research directions. This is due to the fact that in each country and, more narrowly, in every ethnic and social community are formed peculiar conditions of the language (or languages) operation, and to the fore such issues that are relevant for the given national community (or multi-national, but characterized by the unity of the socio-economic and political life). Certainly the sociolinguists belonging to that area of study or research it “from the outside” focusing their attention on exploring exactly these actual problems, leaving out others. For the British researches of the English language variation is typical to be focused on covering the social differentiation specifics of English dialects, mainly urban, in which the processes of phonological changes are expressed most clearly. Historically, for English dialects characteristic is relatively independent existence of several norms of pronunciation. There are the northern dialects norms, based on the Northumbria dialect; Central, Midlands dialects, Southern dialects including Kent, Essex and Wessex dialects. Points of phonetic characteristics difference of these regions prevail over similarities, which makes it possible to talk about regional types of English pronunciation as systems with the prevailing differences and partial similarity. Actuality of the research is determined with the insufficient development of implementation matters of phonostylistic variables in new sociolects of the English language and with the necessity of interaction analysis of the phonostylistic factors of literary standards and socio-territorial dialects.