Phonetic variation and change in the Cockney Diaspora: The role of place, gender, and identity

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that two linguistic processes are displacing Cockney: the emergence of Multicultural London English (MLE) in inner London and dialect levelling (e.g. Kerswill & Williams 2005). This study investigates firstly whether Cockney phonetic features have ‘moved East’ to Essex (Fox 2015), and secondly the features’ indexicality in relation to place and identity. Fifty-four participants from Debden, an outpost of the Cockney Diaspora, completed a sociolinguistic interview. Vowel measurements were made from a wordlist and passage, and quantitative attitudinal and qualitative data were extracted from a questionnaire and interviews. Overall, changes in identity as a result of social change exceeded linguistic changes, and linguistic labels were not interpreted uniformly across the community. Whilst Cockney variants were largely maintained in young speakers, they were transposed onto an ‘Essex’ accent. Furthermore, some young women but no young men considered themselves Cockney, likely due to the matrifocal nature of Cockney. (Cockney, phonetic variation and change, dialect levelling, identity, indexicality, gender)

Co-variation, style and social meaning: The implicational relationship between (h) and (ing) in Debden, Essex

“…As Debden was originally inhabited almost exclusively by East Londoners, it seems probable that Debden speakers will use consonantal features that have previously been reported in Cockney. This is in line with previous research that found that, despite some apparent-time change toward Standard Southern British English variants, a Cockney vowel system was brought to Debden along with the Cockneys who relocated (Cole, 2020; Cole & Evans, 2020; Cole & Strycharczuk, 2019). Nonetheless, this paper does not have the scope to provide detailed descriptions of the variety of English spoken in Debden 1 .…”

“…The speakers took part in a sociolinguistic interview, consisting of reading a wordlist and passage as well as an open interview with myself, a native Debden speaker. The production data for this paper is extracted from the open interviews (see Cole & Evans [2020] or Cole & Strycharzuk [2019] for phonetic analyses of wordlist and passage data). The interviews consisted of semistructured conversations about a range of topics with a focus on the participants’ lives, views on the local area, experiences living in Debden, sense of identity, and the linguistic features found in Debden.…”

“…My paternal grandparents were relocated from East London to the Debden Estate in approximately 1950 and I was raised on the estate. In present times, although Debden is in the county of Essex, it is around five miles from the Northeast London border and around thirty-five minutes from central London on the London Underground train service (for a more detailed description of the history, location and demographics of Debden, see Cole & Evans, 2020).…”

“…While there is much debate about how to define Cockneys, often Cockneys are considered to be white, working-class East Londoners, who were born/live in London's traditional East End (Fox, 2015:8). Often, the accents spoken in South East England have been considered to occur on a continuum between Received Pronunciation (or its successor dialect, Standard Southern British English) and Cockney (see Altendorf & Watt, 2008: Cole, 2020). In South East England, the linguistic continuum between Standard Southern British English and Cockney parallels the class continuum.…”

“…H-dropping may not explicitly index the linguistic label “Cockney,” or even “East London,” due to the community's relocation to Essex. Indeed, it has been found that young speakers in Debden have reinterpreted some “Cockney” linguistic features as an “Essex” accent (Cole & Evans, 2020). Nonetheless, h-dropping does certainly seem to index something local and related to the community's working-class, East London heritage.…”