In commenting on the characteristics of what he called 'Received Standard', Wyld (1934: 614) noted that it was heard most consistently at its best among officers of the British Regular Army. 'The utterance of these men is at once clear-cut and precise, yet free from affectation; at once downright and manly, yet in the highest degree refined and urbane'. Such men had confidence in their speech without reflection on it. Fundamentally hereditary (at least in the male line!), it sufficed simply that 'their fathers have told them'. Similarly, Daniel Jones (1917:170) in circumscribing the norms of Standard English pronunciation so narrowly that they were synonymous with the speech of the southern English families, reminds us that these were families 'whose men-folk have been educated at the great public boarding schools'.

Despite negative reactions to feminist language reform during the 1960s and 1970s many government agencies, institutions, professional organizations and publishing houses have implemented changes, in some case under legal mandate. The New York Times, for example, stopped using titles like Mrs and Miss with the names of women. The London Times, however, still uses androcentric forms such as spokesmnn and the titles, Mrs and Miss, unless a woman has asked to be referred to as Ms. The Linguistic Association of Great Britain rejected a proposal to amend its constitution, to remove generic masculine pronouns. The Linguistic Society of America, on the other hand, has embraced reform and issued a set of guidelines as well as established a Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics.

Such differences in policy are signals of the social and political outlook of editors and other influential professionals, who play important roles as gatekeepers in determining which forms they will adopt and thereby help sanction and spread. Editorial policies, however, affect for the most part only written language. In everyday conversation things may be otherwise. For example, although most US airlines have publicly replaced the term stewardess with flight attendant, as I was writing this chapter, I spoke with a young woman travel agent in the US who was still using the older term stewardess. British usage, both public and private, lags behind American usage in most respects. For example, in the British National Corpus of 100 million words of spoken and written British English launched in 1995 the female marked form stewardess occurred 92 times along with air hostess 51 times, while the neutuA. flight attendant occurred only 8 times and cabin crew 13 times. I have observed many flight attendants on British Airways nights wearing name tags identifying them as stewardesses or stewards.

Usage is still in flux and where choices exist, they are symbolic of different beliefs and political positions. Compare When Ms Johnson was the chairperson)/(woman), she insiseed that everyone pay their/his or her dues'with When Miss Johnson was the chairman, she insiseed that everyone pay his dues. While a narrow linguistic analysis would say they mean the same thing and refer to the same state of affairs and person who happens to hold a particular position, choosing one over the others reveals approval or disapproval of, for example, feminism, language reform, political conservatism or liberalism, etc. The changes brought about in the pronoun system in response to feminist activism are actually remarkable considering that there have been virtually no major changes in the English pronouns since the Middle English period.

• The phonological common core

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