Oh, right. Can I get this one? Arthur and Douglas both have one kind of RP, i.e. actually born and raised around posh people, fairly relaxed about it. RP actually stands for Received Pronounciation, which as far as I can tell was invented when people started being likely to hear people from other areas regularly. It's not actually an accent, but a form of enunciation andf style of speaking, which does verge on the posh, but was, for example, a requirement of various jobs/training. (i.e. newsreading, drama school, some customer service, actually probably being on an old school airline (like the one on which I imagine Carolyn trained)). It's what people used to have elocution lessons for, which are basically like singing lessons for talking. now, this is because British dialects and accents vary hugely. I'm Irish, but was raised in London, my cousins were raised in yorkshire, when we were little and staying at my granny's in Dublin we basically needed to stare at each other after every sentence til they started making sense. An old perjorative for speaking in your native accent/dialect was "talking broad", which gets me on to the second point.
It's clearly established in Helsinki that Ruth is Northern, and therefore Carolyn is also, and that Carolyn has "put on airs and graces" in the eyes of her sister. Also, the way Stephanie Cole plays it throughout that episode is brilliant. One of the reasons for flowery language Carolyn uses when, say, rebuking the drivers, or her Par-ticular way of drawing out a sentence, and also controlling a conversation, is that she's LEARNED RP. Not necessarily through lessons, but in the way that if you're working class/otherwise marginalised, and especially when she was starting out as a stewardess, you imitate the mannnerisms and speech patterns and voices of those around you. You can tell this slightly because she goes posher/more majestic at certain times, as it's a kind of really useful switch to have in you're head, which is what she does at the beginning of Helsinki. She is genuinely REALLY WORRIED about the airline, so she's being the performative version of Carolyn Knapp-Shappey that is in control about it. What she does in the last bit is actually completely loose that control/self awareness, partially because of being around her really horrible sister (and ooh, will I have thoughts about Kieran''s voice/accent later), and regresses to the accent, dialect and pattern of speech of when she left home, which is partially why the final scene is so moving. Because she's been trying for Ruth not to reduce her to "Ruth's daft sister Carol", for the entire episode, and then realises he couldn't.
Martin also has a kind of learned RP, which actually explains the bordering posh- his family are pretty clearly comfortable upper-lower-middle class. i.e. his sister and Simon both have good jobs, the way his mum is (particularly her way of having tea), go hand in hand with a certain type of middle class where one or both of his parents might have come from trade (i.e. I'm pretty sure Martin's dad was a qualified electrician, and probably did say, grammar school and an apprenticeship and then ran his own business). The comment Wendy says about being really proud of Martin running his own business is part of this- it's not being an employee, and give's you a certain amount of economic freedom/ability to pick your battles. Because Caitlyn and Simon both hold relatively well paid, but also low status professional jobs (they're both council employees)... and hang on, this was meant to be about accent. Martin's dad probably did sound quite working class, possibly even cockney (we're quite small islands). Martin's mum doesn't, there wasn't a huge amount of money, and Martin probably got the either overt or implicit lessons that if you talked in a quite RP/formal manner, you'd be taken more seriously. Like, my dad has an Irish accent, but speaks quite like Martin in speech patterns, because his mum told him to speak properly when he was four. Of course the especial form of bordering on posh Martin's reached is because he's Martin- he does everything to the letter. Therefore even when he has his Captain's voice on, he sounds formal rather than authoritative
Re: Accents?
It's clearly established in Helsinki that Ruth is Northern, and therefore Carolyn is also, and that Carolyn has "put on airs and graces" in the eyes of her sister. Also, the way Stephanie Cole plays it throughout that episode is brilliant. One of the reasons for flowery language Carolyn uses when, say, rebuking the drivers, or her Par-ticular way of drawing out a sentence, and also controlling a conversation, is that she's LEARNED RP. Not necessarily through lessons, but in the way that if you're working class/otherwise marginalised, and especially when she was starting out as a stewardess, you imitate the mannnerisms and speech patterns and voices of those around you. You can tell this slightly because she goes posher/more majestic at certain times, as it's a kind of really useful switch to have in you're head, which is what she does at the beginning of Helsinki. She is genuinely REALLY WORRIED about the airline, so she's being the performative version of Carolyn Knapp-Shappey that is in control about it. What she does in the last bit is actually completely loose that control/self awareness, partially because of being around her really horrible sister (and ooh, will I have thoughts about Kieran''s voice/accent later), and regresses to the accent, dialect and pattern of speech of when she left home, which is partially why the final scene is so moving. Because she's been trying for Ruth not to reduce her to "Ruth's daft sister Carol", for the entire episode, and then realises he couldn't.
Martin also has a kind of learned RP, which actually explains the bordering posh- his family are pretty clearly comfortable upper-lower-middle class. i.e. his sister and Simon both have good jobs, the way his mum is (particularly her way of having tea), go hand in hand with a certain type of middle class where one or both of his parents might have come from trade (i.e. I'm pretty sure Martin's dad was a qualified electrician, and probably did say, grammar school and an apprenticeship and then ran his own business). The comment Wendy says about being really proud of Martin running his own business is part of this- it's not being an employee, and give's you a certain amount of economic freedom/ability to pick your battles. Because Caitlyn and Simon both hold relatively well paid, but also low status professional jobs (they're both council employees)... and hang on, this was meant to be about accent. Martin's dad probably did sound quite working class, possibly even cockney (we're quite small islands). Martin's mum doesn't, there wasn't a huge amount of money, and Martin probably got the either overt or implicit lessons that if you talked in a quite RP/formal manner, you'd be taken more seriously. Like, my dad has an Irish accent, but speaks quite like Martin in speech patterns, because his mum told him to speak properly when he was four. Of course the especial form of bordering on posh Martin's reached is because he's Martin- he does everything to the letter. Therefore even when he has his Captain's voice on, he sounds formal rather than authoritative