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This paper investigates patterns of optional voiceless stop aspiration in British English(RP). Based on the British National corpus, this paper focuses on the patterns of voiceless stop aspiration in RP when it follows another consonant, depending on phonetic, phonological and morphological variables. Results show that the voiceless bilabial stop in RP has very low VOT unlike the one in AE. Also, voiceless stops in RP were least aspirated when they appear after a fricative. When compared to the corresponding AE voiceless stops, the RP stops recorded much longer VOT and more than half of them in those environments underwent aspiration. This is probably because RP places more value on the principle of ease of perception by means of marking appearance of the voiceless stops with longer VOT while AE focuses more on the principle of ease of articulation by minimizing the effort to burst the voiceless stops after a consonant.
