ABSTRACT

Ellen. Pronunciation Mix Up between Received Pronunciation and General American

among lecturers of English Department in Widya Mandala University Surabaya.
Thesis: Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa dan Seni. FKIP. Universitas Katolik
Widya Mandala Surabaya. First Advisor: Prof. DR. Abdul Wahab, M.A. Second
Asdvisor: Dra. Susana Teopilus, M. Pd.

Key Words: mix up, pronunciation, International Phonetic Alphabet, Received

Pronunciation ( British English ), and General American ( American English ).

Language is defined as an arbitrary system of articulated sounds used by a group

of humans as a means of carrying on the affairs of their society. From the word “system
of articulated sounds”, it is clear that language is primarily spoken. The Linguistic
Competences of a language includes: Phonology, Semantics, Morphology, Syntax and
Lexicon. Because it is clear from the definition above that language is primarily spoken
so the important competence is Phonology.
Phonology is divided into phonetics and phonemics. Phonetics concerns very
much on pronunciation. Pronunciation is the act or manner of pronouncing something
articulate utterances. In pronouncing a language, one person should adopt one model of
pronunciation consistently as his speech production.
English has many choices of pronunciation. However, only two types of English
pronunciation are considered to be potential to be imitated, they are Received
Pronunciation (RP) for British English and General American (GA) for American
English. Indonesian uses those two models of pronunciation. In the practice, most
Indonesian have difficulties in distinguishing those two models of pronunciation.
Therefore, they are mixing up in using those two models of pronunciation and it can
bring inconsistency. In fact, the mixed up shouldn’t be occurred in their speech
production.
Realizing it is important to be ideally consistent and should not mix up in
adopting only one model of pronunciation especially if someone is a lecturer or a teacher,
who is the model of their students’ speech production, the writer conducts a study. The
study wants to know what words are usually mixed up and what factors can cause the
mixed up. At the end of this study, the writer suggests that the lecturers should recognize
the mix up and should be cautious in adopting one model of pronunciation and should be
more consistent in adopting their model of pronunciation.
 In conducting this study, the writer uses 6 (six) lecturers of English Department in
Widya Mandala University as the sample of her study. Based on the findings of this
study, the writer concludes that the lecturers are still mixed up in adopting those two
models of pronunciation, GA and RP.