... discovered that more formal pronunciation was used on stations where the audience was known to consist of professional, educated people. Interestingly, some of the newsreaders worked on several stations and their pronunciation would change to suit the style of the station (p.301 course book). Bell examined the pronunciation of the letter /t/ in words such as 'writer' and 'better'. He discovered that the /t/ was pronounced more formally on stations with a professional audience. Peter Trudgill also compared the pronunciation of /t/ in his own speech to that of people he interviewed. He discovered that his pronunciation moved towards a glottal stop more often than his interviewees. His pronunciation of 'better', for example, sounded more like 'be'er' (p.304 course book). This may have been because he was younger than his informants. He also discovered that he used the glottal stop more often when speaking to men as opposed to women, ...

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