Estuary English: Dialect levelling in Southern Great Britain

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Bayreuth, language: English, abstract: Ever since David Rosewarne first coined the term of Estuary English in 1984, the concept of an evolving dialect that extends across regional and social boundaries has given rise to a heated debate between linguists, some of who predict that Estuary English is threatening to replace RP in its role as a national standard. Sharing phonemic characteristics with both RP and the Cockney dialect, Estuary English has, although regionally confined to the South East of England, become a variety of the English language that crosses borders between different age groups, professions and social backgrounds, and is even represented in the media. This paper shall contrast Estuary English with both Cockney and RP in sociolinguistic terms and on a phonemic level. Further goals are to identify historical and social factors that may explain the current linguistic development in Southern Britain, and finally, to summarize the debate between renowned linguists about whether or not a significant role should be assigned to Estuary English, the dialect somewhere "between Cockney and the Queen" (Rosewarne 1994/37: 3).