1.3 Significance of the Study

The present study aims to analyze the British accent of Mary Crawley in the former three series. Since the story of Downton Abbey occurs in certain social background, Mary Crawley’s British accent could be infected with some period features; since this drama occurs against the background of British social hierarchy, class characteristics or social status, are evident in Mary’s speech accent. In an aristocratic family, masters are always at the position of power due to their honorable social status while servants are always the week side. We can also find in this drama different people from different social status interact with each other. From their conversation, we can easily find that the differences in status often lead to different English accents. Mary Crawley, is the daughter of earl, who ought to have the standard and respectable accent; since the character Mary Crawley gets her own personal experiences, personal experiences itself is possible to affect Mary’s speech accent. Everyone in the drama, no matter master, servant or nobleman keeps its own speech accents influenced by their experiences. Where to stress? Where to stop? How fast to blur out your words? Above all, the former three factors could be discovered by some way in people’s speech accents, and the three contribute to characterization as well. Therefore, people’s speech accents do get its position on characterization of drama. 

From this perspective, the present study is significantly meaningful both in theory and practice. Theoretically, it provides a profound attempt to make out the possibilities of characterization by using English accents. Practically, the action to uncover the hidden secrets of British accents could remind people to pay attention to their English pronunciation and be sensitive to it. 

2. Literature Review 

Since there exits almost no study specifically on accents of Downton Abbey, this chapter is designed to give a general review of previous studies on relevant fields. Therefore, I generally pided the relevant fields into two parts, namely, the studies on Downton Abbey and the studies on British Accents. The following contents will focus on them one by one.