JONES, Daniel

JONES, Daniel [1881–1967]. English phonetician, born in London and educated at Radley and University College Schools. He graduated in mathematics from King's College, Cambridge, in 1903, and received his MA in 1907, the year he was called to the Bar (Lincoln's Inn). However, he never practised law and, even during his legal training, spent time in Paris (part of 1905–6) studying PHONETICS under Paul Passy, whose niece he married in 1911. He gained an appointment in 1907 at U. College London, the year in which its Department of Phonetics was set up, and worked there for most of his life: as lecturer (1907–14), Reader (1914–21), Professor (1921–49), and Emeritus Professor (1949–67). He was the leading British phonetician during the first half of the 20c and had a profound effect on the study of pronunciation (for example, as a member of the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English from its formation in 1926) and was in part responsible for the selection of RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION or RP (which he named in the 1920s) as the norm for radio announcers. The works for which he is best known are An ENGLISH PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY (1917) and An Outline of English Phonetics (1918), both of which continue in revised editions. Jones spent most of his life working on PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION. His views are summed up in The PHONEME (1950) and in his papers for the INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ASSOCIATION (of which he was secretary, 1928–49, and President from 1950), especially The Principles of the International Phonetic Association (1949). See BBC ENGLISH, ENGLISH IN ENGLAND, LANGUAGE TEACHING, ORTHOEPY, PUBLIC SCHOOL PRONUNCIATION, SIMPLIFIED SPELLING SOCIETY, SPEECH, SPELLING REFORM.