Regional accents and Received Pronunciation

When people talk about regional English, they often use the words accent and dialect rather loosely and interchangeably. For example, they could say of someone, ‘She has a broad northern accent’ or, ‘She speaks a strong northern dialect’, and both statements might be understood as meaning more or less the same thing. The linguistic distinction between accent and dialect has already been referred to in previous chapters: the term accent (sometimes dialectal accent) refers only to the system of pronunciation a speaker uses; dialect refers to a speaker’s grammar and vocabulary.