Accent & Dialect Case Study - London

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Accent and Dialect - London Case Study

London is brilliant to talk about for accent and dialect. London is an area that has changed its accent and dialect a number of times over the past 200 years. We’re going to look at three main varieties.

Cockney rhyming slang (CRS)

Cockney rhyming slang (CRS) is a dialectal variation found in London (not really anymore, though) that originated from the criminal underworld in the 1800s as a way of communicating without the police knowing of their doings.
- Examples include ‘brown bread’ for dead and ‘trouble and strife’ for wife.
CRS stopped being used by criminals when it was adopted into common usage by non-criminals. In other words, it stopped being deictic.

Spreading of CRS

You can see how CRS has spread through the fact that if I were to ask you what ‘telling porky pies’ means, you’d be able to tell me that it means ‘to tell lies’.
Another example of this is the Cockney saying ‘donkey’s ears’, which means years.
You probably know it as ‘donkey’s years’ or simply ‘donks’ – here, you can see how the dialectal term has broadened and become part of common usage.

CRS on Eastenders

While the dialectal terms of CRS are very rarely used now, a weakened version of the Cockney accent is still in use, propelled by the popular TV soap ‘Eastenders’.

Accent and Dialect - London Case Study

Estuary English

Linguist David Rosewarne coined the term ‘Estuary English’ (occasionally called ‘London Regional General British’) to describe the variation that arose from around the Thames Estuary.
This is defined as the mix of RP and Cockney.

Estuary English features

The accent has the following features:
- Glottal stop (missing out the ‘t’ in the middle of words like ‘butter’).
- The dark l (/ɫ/) – pronouncing ‘l’ sounds with an ‘ulll’ sound.
- The /aʊ/ (ow) pronunciation in words like mouth closer to /eə/ (air) in words like hair.
- TH-fronting – pronouncing the ‘th’ words with an ‘f’ sound. For example, ‘thing’ becomes ‘fing’.

Bridge between Cockney and RP

Estuary English acts, as Paul Coggle suggests, as a bridge between Cockney and RP speakers and so serves as a bridge between the classes in South East England.
In addition, Estuary English has spread all over the UK with there being speakers with EE elements spotted as far away as Glasgow.

Accent and Dialect - London Case Study

Multicultural London English

Multicultural London English (MLE) is a variation that has arisen from migration bringing in speakers of English where English isn’t their first language.
These groups of speakers have led to this new variation being spoken very broadly in diverse inner-London cities (like Hackney).
Paul Kerswill believes that within 30 years, MLE will replace Cockney completely.

Spreading of MLE

MLE has spread, and is now becoming a part of the speech of teenagers up and down the country, spread mostly by grime music as exemplified by Stormzy.
This issue for linguists comes when we have to draw the line between what an idiolect (your personal language), sociolect (the language of a social group) and dialect.
Many news publications will use the term ‘Jafaican’ to describe MLE (fake Jamaican).

Features of MLE

Features of MLE include:
- Indefinite pronoun ‘man’: man’s not hot.
- ‘Why…for?’ question frame: why you revising English for?
- /h/ retention (keeping the ‘h’ sound in): house.
- Jamaican slang like ‘blood’ for friend.
- TH-stopping (creating a harsh stopped ‘t’ sound instead of a ‘th’ sound): MLE is a mad ting.