one english accent has achieved a certain eminence, the accent known as Received Pronunciation, the accent of perhaps as few as 3 percent of those who live in england. (the 'received' in Received Pronunciation is a little bit of old-fashioned snobbery: it means the accent allows one to be received into the 'better' parts of society!) This accent is of fairly recent origin, becoming established as prestigious only in the late nineteenth century and not even given its current label until the 1920s. in the united kingdom at least, it is 'usually associated with a higher social or educational background, with the BBc and the professions, and most commonly taught to students learning english as a foreign language'. for many such students it is the only accent they are prepared to learn, and a teacher who does not use it may have difficulty in finding a position as a teacher of english in certain non-english-speaking countries in which a british accent are often regarded as speaking 'unaccented' english because it lacks a regional association within england. as hughes et al. say: 'because of its use on radio and television, within britain RP has become probably the most widely understood of all accents. this in turn means that the learner who succeeds in speaking it, other things being equal, has the best chance of being understood wherever he or she goes in the british Isles.' Other names for this accent are the Queen's English, Oxford English, and BBC English. However, there is no unanimous agreement that the Queen does in fact use RP. Harrington et al. point out that an acoustic analysis of her christmas broadcasts since 1952 showed a drift in her accent 'toward one that is characteristic of speakers who are younger and/or lower in the social hierarchy.' she 'no longer speaks the Queen's english of the 1950s.' today, too, a wide variety of accents can be found at Oxford University, and regional accents also feature prominently in the various BBC services.