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Estuary English: A new standard accent?

Changes in Received Pronunciation: conservative RP to General RPSuggestions that RP is changing again to include some features of the South-East“new” accent referred to as Estuary EnglishRemember that standard accents tend to become regionless: the name “Estuary” suggests a region, but this accent is reported as spreading

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Peter Trudgill: “The label actually refers to the lower middle-class accents of the Home Counties which surround London: Essex and Kent, which do border on the Thames Estuary, but also parts or all of Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, which do not.”

Changing Times, Changing Language

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Features of Estuary

Some Cockney features but not all

Continuum with RP at the one end and Cockney at the other - can you call it an accent?

Estuary English on Urban Voices CD

Popular media often doesn’t make distinction between Estuary and Cockney

Purist reactions: “bastardised Cockney”

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Reasons for the spread of Estuary English

Upper middle classes “talking down”Influential: heard in House of Commons, business, media, advertising (Kerswill)Channel 4 business news: glottal stops in get, market but not in sentiments, /l/ vocalisation in impossible, no TH fronting in monthsTony Blairmarker of identity for the young; children of the upwardly mobile are the most linguistically influential groupPaul Coggle

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Influence of the media

Paul Kerswill: speakers have been shifting between RP and Cockney for some time – EE is not a new phenomenon. What’s new is that it’s more visible in the media.

metropolitan bias in the media

Jane Stuart-Smith (Glasgow)

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but also lower middle classes “talking up” - David Crystal - Londoners moving into the suburbs and coming into contact with RP

dialect levelling in the SE already - less people in rural employment

mobility around the SE + increase in commuting even further dialect contact

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new towns like Milton Keynes affected by dialect levelling in SE and Estuary EnglishMK, Urban voices CDMK: glottal stops, th-fronting RP vowel in “mouth” // not London /:/ or regional // fronting of “coke” (RP “cake”) goat (RP “gate”) (all SE speech)fronting of /u:/ in spoonfurther afield - Reading, Hull? EE features in Liverpool, Glasgow?!

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Is the EE phenomenon reflective of a classless society? - still many complaints (Kerswill)

Thatcher’s meritocracyagainst old establishment but also against representatives of unions

the upwardly mobile change their accent