/æ/ with spread lips or neutral

Hi,

My textbook states that this vowel is pronounced with lips neutral, but I think it is pronounced with spread lips.

Is it pronounced with lips neutral in RP?

Thanks.

It depends what you mean by RP. If, as is so often understood, you mean an extreme caricature of Thirties pronunciation, yes. Modern speakers of RP tend towards lip-spreading, I would say. But I don't have my IPA book to hand.

b

Cruttenden, in his 2001 edition of Gimson's Pronunciation of English, describes the lips as 'neutrally open' in general RP. I think that in my variety of RP, my lips are slightly more spread for /æ/ than they are for /ə/.