Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies Mgr. Alena Středová Changing Views on ‘Estuary English’ B.A. Major Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. 2007
Declaration I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography. 20 April 2007 in Brno ......
1 Acknowledgement I wish to express many thanks to my supervisor, Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D., for his kind and valuable advice, help and support.
2 TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...... 4 1. THE ORIGINS OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...... 6 1.1 DEFINITION OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’...... 7 2. NATURE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...... 8 2.1 ROSEWARNE ’S CONCEPTION ...... 8 2.2 OTHER LINGUISTS ’ REACTIONS ...... 10 2.3 BOUNDARIES OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ ...... 11 3. PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...... 14 3.1 SALIENT FEATURES ACCORDING TO ROSEWARNE ...... 15 3.2 OTHER LINGUISTS ’ REACTIONS ...... 16 3.3 DISTINCTIVENESS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ PHONEMES ...... 17 4. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE EMERGENCE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ 18 4.1 THE PUTATIVE NEWNESS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’...... 18 4.2 HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE ORIGINS AND SPREAD OF THE VARIETY ...... 19 4.3 THE ROLE OF CITIES IN THE RISE AND GROWTH OF ‘N EW ’ VARIETIES ...... 21 5. SOCIAL PRESTIGE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...... 22 5.1 POLITENESS , SOLIDARITY AND PRESTIGE ...... 23 5.2 TYPICAL ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ SPEAKERS ...... 24 5.3 FUNCTIONS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ ...... 25 6. CHANGING VIEWS ON ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...... 27 6.1 THE 1980 S AND THE 1990 S – THE IMPRESSIONISTIC STAGE ...... 27 6.2 CURRENT EMPIRICAL SURVEYS ...... 28 6.3 ATTEMPT AT CREATING A NEW DEFINITION ...... 29 6.4 FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’...... 30 CONCLUSION ...... 32 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 34
3 Introduction
It has been said that “the British are well known for being extremely sensitive about how they and others speak the English language. Accent differences seem to receive more attention here than is general anywhere in the world” (Rosewarne, 1984). They are also well known for judging others according to their accents. Neil Ascherson (1994) expressed the same idea recalling Shaw’s Pygmalion: “the moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him”. The learners and teachers of English should therefore be well aware of the best ways how to “open their mouths” in order not to be despised too much. It has been said that Standard English spoken with the RP accent is the best choice, i.e. the most desirable variety that generally arises least prejudice. On that account, this representative variety has been taught to children and to foreigners. Nevertheless, language develops and so do the attitudes of its speakers towards it. Recently, the above mentioned claim has been challenged. Many argue that RP has been losing its privileged position and the pronunciation has been changing. Allegedly, RP is no longer perceived as arising least prejudice as it is often associated with the ‘Establishment’ and with snobbishness. Thus, used in inappropriate situations, it may excite resentment. It has been said that a new variety likely to take over the role of a neutral but prestigious variety that disguises speakers’ sociolinguistic origins has been emerging in the south east of England recently; this variety was named ‘Estuary English’ (EE). Not everybody, however, agrees with this and regards this development with favour. Since the term ‘Estuary English’ was coined in the middle of the 1980s, the variety “has been discussed with increasing frequency and unreduced controversy” Altendorf (2003: 1). Many questions were asked but only a few answers were provided. A lively debate has been heated not only in the British newspapers but also in the professional linguistic circles. A number of striking proclamations about ‘Estuary English’ has appeared. John Wells (1997) commented on it as follows: “There is a new buzzword going the rounds in England Estuary English (EE). It’s supposed to be a new kind of English that’s due to take over as the new standard English. We’re told it’s going to replace fuddy duddy old Received Pronunciation as the standard accent. Not
4 only are all sorts of politicians, sportsmen, and media personalities claimed as typical speakers of it, but even people as eminent as Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son, Prince Edward.” No wonder that such proclamations about the “erosion of standards” (Bex, 1994) and about “an ogre which threatens the imagined static, pure condition of the English language” (Maidment, 1994) made the British startle. Although mere 3 % of all the British people actually speak RP (Trudgill, 2001) and although some of RP’s functions have already been taken over by other varieties, it is still a prestigious variety that should be guarded. Most of the articles and other publications that triggered the whole discussion were based on loose evidence; generalizations were made with respect to a few randomly observed features that were attributed as the salient features of the ‘new’ variety. Later on, several empirical surveys concerning ‘Estuary English’ were conducted. It showed that it is very likely that there is no such variety as ‘Estuary English’, i.e. no unique, easy identifiable and definable variety sweeping Britain. Undoubtedly, some changes have been spreading from London and the south east and undeniably, RP has been changing but this has been happening for centuries. The present thesis focuses on the issue of ‘Estuary English’; it provides an outline of findings concerning ‘Estuary English’ and opinions on it that have been published since the term was introduced. Information about the origins and appropriateness of the term and about the emergence of the variety itself will be provided (chapter 1 and 4), the nature of the variety and its relation to other varieties of English will be discussed (chapter 2 and 6), and purported characteristic features of ‘Estuary English’ will be mentioned (chapter 3). ‘Estuary English’ will also be commented on from the sociolinguistic point of view; its speakers, prestige and future perspectives will be regarded (chapter 5 and 6).
5 1. The Origins of ‘Estuary English’
The term ‘Estuary English’ (EE) was coined by British linguist David Rosewarne in a ground breaking article published in The Times Educational Supplement in October 1984 (Rosewarne, 1984). Most of the information included reappeared together with other important points in his article ‘Estuary English: tomorrow’s RP 1?’ in English Today ten years later (Rosewarne, 1994). Paul Coggle’s publication called Do you speak Estuary? (Coggle, 1993) which Altendorf (2003: 9) labelled as an “amusing folk linguistic account” popularized the phenomenon greatly and it can also be counted among the pieces of writing that actually “started it all”. Rosewarne stated an assumption that ‘Estuary English’ was a newly observed accent variety of English with a very strong influence on RP and that it was likely to become the future pronunciation standard: “The heartland of this variety lies by the banks of the Thames and its estuary, but it seems to be the most influential accent in the south east of England... [It] is in a strong position to exert influence on the pronunciation of the future” (Rosewarne, 1984). As stated above, this aroused a vivid discussion. Since Rosewarne’s findings were promoted, linguists as well as journalists and lay people in general have been publishing articles and experiment based monographs dealing with ‘Estuary English’, discussing its nature, structure, function, alleged newness and spread, prestige, future, appropriateness of the term itself and, above all, challenging its actual existence. The reason why Rosewarne decided to introduce a new term (or a new variety of English) is justified in his 1994 article: “While doing post graduate studies in Applied Linguistics in London in 1983, I felt that existing descriptions of pronunciation varieties made no real mention of accents intermediate between R.P. and localisable British forms.” The gap in the descriptions of accents used in London and the south east of England attracted his attention. Having conducted an initial research, he invented the term ‘Estuary English’ to describe an accent that was “most in evidence in suburban areas of Greater London and the counties of Essex and Kent lying to the north and south of the Thames Estuary” (Rosewarne, 1994). According to his findings, the variety was wide spread. It was to be heard in the Houses of Parliament as well as in the business
1 Received Pronunciation (RP) is a current pronunciation standard of English. Allegedly, it is an accent with the highest prestige in formal situations, prevailingly used by BBC announcers, Eton graduates or the royal family.
6 circles of London, in various media, in utterances of teachers, sportsmen, celebrities, etc. He also mentioned names of some of the famous British people who were in fact ‘Estuary English’ speakers (Rosewarne, 1984).
1.1 Definition of ‘Estuary English’
Rosewarne (1984, 1994) introduced ‘Estuary English’ as “a variety of modified regional speech” that is “a mixture of non regional and local south eastern English pronunciation and intonation”. He went on explaining: “If one imagines a continuum with R.P. and popular London speech at either end, Estuary English speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground.” This definition has been reverberated and all the later studies on ‘Estuary English’ emanate from it. The name “estuary” was chosen after the region from which the variety was supposed to have spread, i.e. the banks of the river Thames and its estuary. It has, however, excited resentment; a few examples of negative reactions will be quoted here. Maidment (1994) expressed his opinion on the inaccuracy of the term as follows: “Estuary English [...] is not only spoken on or near the Thames estuary. There is no real evidence that it even originated there.” Crystal (1995: 327) wrote that it is “something of a misnomer, for the influence of London speech has for sometime been evident well beyond the Thames estuary, notably in the Oxford Cambridge London triangle”. Trudgill (2001) did not agree with the term either because “it suggests that it is a variety of English confined to the banks of the Thames Estuary, which it is not”. Neither Andrew Moore’s reaction was positive; a quotation of his opinion can be found in Joanna Ryfa’s M. A. thesis (2003: 10). Several serious attempts to offer another, more appropriate term for the phenomenon, occurred, there were also some uttered in jest. Ryfa (2003: 5) brought out the recommended equivalents to the label ‘Estuary English’: Tom McArthur suggested the term ‘New London Voice’ 2, John Wells used the names ‘London English’, ‘General London’ or ‘Tebbitt Livingstone speak’. Another term was presented by Maidment (1994) who boasted that “If Rosewarne can invent new names, so can I” and proposed the term ‘Post Modern English’. Nonetheless, neither of these terms has gained much attention. Ryfa (2003: 10) concluded quite appositely that even though ‘Estuary
2 Rosewarne’s criticism of the term will be presented in 4.1.
7 English’ is not “a felicitous or adequate name”, it has already “entrenched in the English language, particularly in the academic circles” (and not only in those of course) and “it would be unwise to struggle against it”.
2. Nature of ‘Estuary English’
Estuary English was pinpointed as “a variety of modified regional speech”, the concept of “variety”, however, is rather broad and consequently highly vague. As it is going to be elucidated later, assorted languages, regional, social as well as functional dialects of a single language, and different accents, styles or registers of a particular language can all be labelled as a ‘variety’. It would hence be suitable to distinguish these notions and to classify ‘Estuary English’ more precisely.
2.1 Rosewarne’s Conception
There is a great deal of inconsistence and confusion in the labels for ‘Estuary English’ Rosewarne used in his articles. He coined it as “a variety 3 of modified regional speech”, “mixture of non regional and local south eastern English pronunciation and intonation ”, and he also suggested it to be the “most influential accent in the south east of England”. As far as terminology is concerned, no objections could have been raised to these statements, had Rosewarne not provided specific ‘Estuary English’ features of lexicon and syntax and thus classified it into the group of English dialects. I will now proceed to clarifying the puzzling situation, i.e. the distinction between the particular terms and the impropriety of their usage in certain situations. A ‘variety’ can be defined as a “set of linguistic items with similar social distribution” (Hudson, 1996: 22), another definition can be found in Wardhaugh (1992: 22): “Any body of human speech patterns which is sufficiently homogeneous [...] and which has sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements or processes with broad enough semantic scope to function in all formal contexts of communication” (Ferguson, 1971: 30, the quotation taken from Wardhaugh, 1992). These definitions “allow us to
3 Emphasis added by A. S.
8 call a whole language a variety and also any special set of linguistic usages that we associate with a particular region or social group” (Wardhaugh, 1992: 22). It follows that both ‘accents’ and ‘dialects’ can be referred to as ‘varieties’ but these terms are by no means synonymous; ‘variety’ being the most general concept of the three, ‘accents’ and ‘dialects’ representing diverse subsets of this broader notion which should never be mixed up or confused. Their usage might be illustrated by an example of a ‘dialect’ called Standard English, which “is spoken in a variety of accents, often with clear regional and social associations” (Wardhaugh, 1992: 43). When only features of pronunciation itself are taken into consideration, the term ‘accent’ must be employed—McArthur’s English Companion to the English Language (1992: entry ‘Accent’) pinpointed ‘accent’ as a “set of habits that make up someone’s pronunciation of a language or language variety”. When, on the other hand, other grammatical characteristics such as vocabulary, lexicon or stylistic aspects are of major importance for a particular variety, the term ‘dialect’ has to be used. Put in other words, dialects can be described at all linguistic levels whereas accents can only be described in terms of phonetics and phonology (see e.g. Wardhaugh, 1992: 22 54; Hudson, 1996: 42; Przedlacka, 2002: 3 4; Altendorf, 2003: 8). Therefore it is not plausible to speak about ‘Estuary English’ as about an ‘accent’ and to list its salient features of lexicon and syntax in the same breath. This is another point Rosewarne has been reproached for. In the present thesis, the terms ‘accent’ or ‘variety’ will be made use of as the bits of information about ‘Estuary English’ grammar and vocabulary, as portrayed by Rosewarne (1984, 1994), are rather unconvincing, if not directly dubious. It is not sufficient to describe characteristic lexicon of a variety by uttering the frequent use of the expression Cheers instead of Thank you or Good bye , more frequent use of the word basically or to describe typical syntax of ‘Estuary English’ in terms of phraseology emphasizing that in the speeches of ‘Estuary English’ speakers, the phrase There you go appears more often than the more standard one Here you are . Moreover, the higher frequency of such utterances could be put down to individual factors governing particular communication situations and to aims of speeches speakers are pursuing. If no more evidence about the distinctiveness of the lexical or syntactic levels of ‘Estuary English’ can be supplied, the usage of the above stated terms has to be insisted on.
9 2.2 Other Linguists’ Reactions
A number of the linguists that have published their monographs, essays or articles dealing with the issue of ‘Estuary English’ paid particular attention to the discrepancy in terminology as well and being of different opinions as far as the nature of ‘Estuary English’ was concerned, they naturally inclined to different labels. Tony Bex (1994) aptly described ‘Estuary English’ as “a variety of English that is chiefly distinguished by its pronunciation” avoiding thus the need of specification. Ruminating about Rosewarne’s and Coggle’s writing, also Maidment asked whether ‘Estuary English’ in actual fact is an accent or a dialect:
“There seems to be a good deal of confusion about this [terminology] in the writing of both writers. To be fair to Rosewarne he does say that EE pronunciation is generally accompanied by certain vocabulary items, suggesting that he does make a distinction between accent and dialect, but then he makes the claim that EE is marked by a greater use of question tags. This is definitely a matter of syntax and not pronunciation and as such should be a feature of dialect and not accent. Coggle’s book is full of examples of supposed EE features which are dialect based and have nothing to do with accent” (Maidment, 1994).
He arrived at a conclusion that perhaps none of the names is suitable, maybe there only has been “redefinition of the appropriateness of differing styles of pronunciation to differing speech situations” and no ‘Estuary English’ has developed in fact. Wells in his abstract from 1998 touched upon the question too. When describing features of ‘Estuary English’, he mentioned its standard grammar suggesting that he considered it to be a dialect. Referring to Rosewarne’s articles, he stressed the irrelevance of including “matters such as details of phraseology” among the significant characteristics. Crystal (1995: 327) argued that “the variety is distinctive as a dialect not just as an accent” and highlighted several further grammatical features of ‘Estuary English’, such as the use of ‘confrontational’ question tag, adverb never referring to single occasions, omission of the –ly adverbial ending, certain typical prepositional uses, generalization of the third person singular form, e.g. I gets out , and generalization of the past form was in the whole paradigm of the verb. The use of the double negative was considered less likely in Crystal’s encyclopaedia. Ryfa’s (2003: 20 21) insight in the concept was even more complicated, she asserted that “while reading literature on Estuary English, it is possible to come across
10 a multitude of expressions referring to it“ and asked whether ‘Estuary English’ is a dialect, accent, regiolect or style. She adduced some more opinions: David Britain insisted on Estuary English being a regional dialect whereas Mark Tatham believed it to be an accent, she leaned to neither of them arguing the concept of ‘Estuary English’ to be too vague to be narrowly categorized. Several linguists have been trying to answer the question whether ‘Estuary English’ is a uniform variety of English at all. Even Rosewarne (1984) himself indicated that the term “comprises some general changes”, perhaps implying it not to be a homogeneous variety. Parsons (1998: 61) suggested that “within what would be called as EE, there are so many varieties that it seems difficult to consider it as a unitary accent”, Przedlacka (2002: 97) concluded her study by saying that “we are dealing with a number of distinct accents, not a single and definable variety”. Also Setter supported this assumption: “I agree… that Estuary English is a kind of umbrella term for a number of accents spoken in the area of England around London and beyond which have some similarities [...] It certainly is not an identifiable single accent” (Setter, 2003, quoted from Ryfa, 2003: 21). It can be seen it is not easy to decide what category ‘Estuary English’ falls in (cf. Ryfa, 2003: 20). Even if it has been stated that the reasons for referring to ‘Estuary English’ as to a dialect are unpersuasive and that is why the terms ‘variety’ and more specifically ‘accent’ will be used in the present thesis, other problems difficult to ignore appear. To put it more clearly, it is necessary to find the place of ‘Estuary English’ among other varieties of English in order to comprehend the concept better. For the time being, the existence of the variety is not going to be questioned.
2.3 Boundaries of ‘Estuary English’
It has to be borne in mind that huge differences in language exist in the speeches of distinct groups as well as in the speeches of individuals, “it becomes therefore clear that the variety is to a certain extent an artificial and idealised construct” (Przedlacka, 2002: 2) and that it is rather difficult to settle the boundaries precisely. They are usually established “for the convenience of reference” (Przedlacka, 2002: 2). Rosewarne placed ‘Estuary English’ on a continuum between “RP and London speech” (1984, 1994), i.e. between the standard British pronunciation and the
11 sub standard form of English utilized by London speakers 4. Two years later, he slightly specified the definition laying the accent on a continuum between RP on one hand, and “Cockney or another localisable south eastern accent on the other” (1996, quoted from Przedlacka, 2002: 2). In his 1994 article, the following diagram can be found:
Diagram 1: Position of ‘Estuary English’ among other varieties of English (Rosewarne, 1994) He did not aspire to settle the boundaries more clearly which allowed him to group a range of speakers with considerably different pronunciations under a single label. Paul Coggle contemplated the demarcation questions in more detail and defined ‘Estuary English’ as a ‘continuum’ variety: the more similar the pronunciation of a particular speaker to that of an RP speaker, the closer his position on a continuum to the boundary between ‘Estuary English’ and RP. Similarly, there is not an apparent difference between a representative ‘London’ speaker and the ‘Estuary English’ speaker from the lower end of the scale (Coggle, 1993: 70, paraphrased from Altendorf, 1999). With respect to what has been said so far, it is necessary to demur at some of the modifications of Rosewarne’s definition a little. A number of linguists as well as lay people have been substituting the notion of ‘London speech’ for an ambiguous term ‘Cockney’; Coggle (1993b) for instance located ‘Estuary English’ “Between Cockney and the Queen”, Wells (1994) put it on a “continuum between RP and broad Cockney (= the broadest London working class variety)”, Altendorf’s summary (2003b) placed it “on the south eastern accent continuum between Cockney and RP”, etc. Approaching such definitions, however, special attention has to be paid to what is meant by the words ‘RP’ and ‘Cockney’ in particular. ‘Received Pronunciation’, RP for short, represents the “regionally neutral” (Crystal, 1992: 327) pronunciation standard of British English. It is “the British English
4 More detailed explanations of the concepts follow.
12 style of pronunciation that carries the highest overt prestige” (Parsons, 1998: 1) and it is also the accent “traditionally taught to foreigners” (Gimson, 1995: 79). The origin of the term usually dates back to A. J. Ellis who first used the “epithet ‘received’” (Parsons, 1998: 5) in her 1869 1889 publication On Early English Pronunciation and it suggests “that it is a result of a social judgement rather than of an official decision as to what is ‘correct’ or ‘wrong’” (Gimson, 1995: 78). ‘Cockney’ on the other hand, embodies the non standard variety of English originally used by the working class people of London. “This dialect is associated particularly with the innermost suburbs of east London, the East End —Bethnal Green, Stepney, Mile End, Hackney, Whitechapel, Shore ditch, Poplar, Bow —and a true Cockney is supposed to be someone born within the sound of Bow Bells” (Wells, 1982: 301 302). Gimson (1995: 85) claimed that the Cockney dialect in its broadest form includes the highly specific vocabulary as well as the rhyming slang. He noted, however, that within the London working class, characteristic pronunciation features of Cockney are generally more common than is its vocabulary 5. As illustrated above, the term has been used to denote three slightly different things, which may seem rather puzzling: apart from being applied when referring to a Cockney speaker, it can denote the whole dialect of the London working class as well as the mere London pronunciation variety (i.e. the Cockney accent). To avoid confusion, the scope of the term ‘Cockney’ will be limited in the present thesis; its lexical and grammatical (morphological and syntactic) features will be ignored, similarly as those allegedly typical of ‘Estuary English’. It follows that in this conception ‘Estuary English’ is an accent located somewhere halfway between two other accents: ‘RP’ and ‘Cockney’ pronunciation. Wells (1994) attempted to establish the boundaries between RP, ‘Estuary English’ and Cockney more precisely focusing on their regional localizability and grammatical correctness; his claims were recalled in Altendorf (1999): “According to Wells, the major difference between EE and RP is localizability with EE being localizable as belonging to the southeast of England and RP being regionally neutral. The major difference between EE and Cockney is grammatical correctness with Cockney speakers using non standard grammar whereas EE speakers don’t (Wells, 1994: 262).”
5 For further details about RP see Parsons (1998: 5 17), for details about Cockney see Wells (1982: 301 334) or Gimson (1995: 78 86).
13 Maidment (1994) demurred at the fact that Rosewarne ignored stylistic variation in his conception arguing that “a speaker of a given accent has within his or her competence a range of styles from informal (I) to formal (F)” and that is why stylistic as well as register variation must be taken into account. He offered another diagram:
[I <---Cockney---> F] [I <---RP---> F]
[I <---EE---> F] Diagram 2: Position of ‘Estuary English’ according to Maidment (1994) The position of ‘Estuary English’ within the varieties of English from the sociolinguistic point of view will be dealt with in chapter 5.
3. Phonetic and Phonological Features of ‘Estuary English’
As a distinctive accent, ‘Estuary English’ should be recognizable with respect to its characteristic phonemes, i.e. in the utterances of its speakers, certain pronunciation variants and/or their combinations should be occurring. Rosewarne (1984) argued: “On the level of individual sounds, or phonemes, ‘Estuary English’ is a mixture of ‘London’ and General RP 6 forms.” Within the variety, he admitted “individual differences resulting from the speech background and choices of pronunciation made by the speaker” but he insisted on the existence of a “general pattern” for ‘Estuary English’. These statements could be related to the claim uttered above: the more phonemes that equal those typical of RP, the closer the speaker to the boundary between ‘Estuary English’ and RP and vice versa. In the present thesis, only the approximate and simplified transcription of ‘Estuary English’ phonemes will be applied, the common IPA graphemes will be employed. For an attempt at offering the more elaborate, standardized transcription of ‘Estuary English’ see Wells (1994).
6 According to Wells (1982: 283 285), General RP is the mainstream of RP; besides, he distinguished Advanced RP as the pronunciation of the upper classes, Conservative RP as RP’s most conventional variant and Adoptive RP that is RP adopted by speakers who originally spoke with different accents.
14 3.1 Salient Features according to Rosewarne
There were several groups of markers of the accent in question Rosewarne employed: consonantal markers, vocalic markers, markers concerning intonation, and characteristic features of vocabulary, syntax and phraseology. The following paragraphs describe the consonantal, vocalic and intonational markers 7. The first marker observed by Rosewarne (1984, largely also 1994) was /l/ vocalization or “the use of w where RP uses l in the final position or in a final consonant cluster”. An example was provided in the articles; the articulation w might be used as many as four times in the following sentence: ‘Bill will build the wall’ (1984). Another feature Rosewarne commented on was /t/ glottalling or the use of glottal stops [ ] in the place of the t or d found in RP. “Not all RP speakers would sound” ts in words such as Scotland , Gatwick or network . ‘Estuary English’ speakers sound these ts neither, in addition to that, however, they use glottal stops in a much larger number of occurrences, even though not as often as Cockney speakers (illustrated below). Purportedly, also shedding /j/s (i.e. not pronouncing the phonetic /j/ (sic), cf. here Footnote 7) is typical of ‘Estuary English’, this change has already entrenched in General RP as well (cf. Gimson, 1994: 192); mostly after the l (e.g. absolute ) and the s (e.g. assume ). “A feature of ‘Estuary English’ which seems to have received no attention to date is the r” (Rosewarne, 1984). He argued that this feature is to be found neither in the ‘London’ speech nor in RP and provided description of this solely ‘Estuary English’ sound (phoneme) realization: “the tip of the tongue is lowered and the central part raised to a position close to, but not touching, the soft palate”. As far as ‘Estuary English’ vowels are concerned, Rosewarne (1984) only touched upon the assumed length of originally short vowels in final position; they may even “tend towards the quality of a diphthong”; the second /I/ (sic) in the word city , for instance, is pronounced as /i:/ (sic), like in the pronoun me . This change has been referred to as “happY tensing” occasionally (cf. Wells, 1997). Rosewarne’s last remark comprised ‘Estuary English’ intonation, particularly the fact that very often the prominence is “given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs which are not normally stressed in General RP. This prominence is often marked to the extent
7 Rosewarne’s terminology (e.g. shedding /j/s) and the way of notation (/I/, /i:/) will be respected in this sub chapter. It should be emphasized, however, that this notation is rather imprecise; square brackets should be used for phonetic transcription.
15 that the nuclear tone [...] can fall on prepositions”. At the same time, the “pitch of intonation patterns in ‘Estuary English’ appears to be in a narrower frequency band than RP”, “rises often do not reach as high a pitch as they would in RP” (Rosewarne, 1984).
3.2 Other Linguists’ Reactions
Rosewarne’s findings have provoked a number of reactions; it is only possible though to discuss a few here. Differences from Rosewarne’s observations will be focused on. In his guide on how to speak ‘Estuary English’, Paul Coggle (1993) extended the phoneme inventory of ‘Estuary English’ by adding another phoneme. “On the basis of such a wide definition 8 he allows for more Estuary markers than Rosewarne including for example TH fronting, as in [‘fiŋk] for think , for those at the Cockney end of the spectrum” (Altendorf, 1999). Not all linguists agree with this. Wells (1998) commented on /t/ glottaling. He proposed /t/ glottaling in intervocalic position to be “a ‘boundary marker’ between EE and Cockney” (quoted from Altendorf, 1999) 9. With respect to his research, Altendorf extended the statement as follows, disproving Coggle’s opinion: “the glottal stop in intervocalic (and to a certain extent prelateral) position as well as TH fronting can (still) serve as ‘boundary markers’ between EE and Cockney”. Maidment (1994) argued that “glottal replacement is certainly not a defining characteristic of EE” for it could be traced in the utterances of speakers “who otherwise would be judged to speak undoubted RP” and for “glottal replacement of [t] is common in the popular speech of many cities far removed from the supposed domain of EE: Birmingham, Glasgow 10 , Manchester and New York to name a few”. Besides, he fiercely opposed the claim that (with the exception of the collocation had to ) “[d] is also subject to this process”. He justified his point as follows: “This, I think, is simply an error. [...] The only speakers of British English that I have ever heard who replace [d] with [ ] come from Yorkshire.” He also added, rather bitterly, that “no one has claimed (as far as I know) there is any connection between EE and the Yorkshire accent” (1994). Contrary to Rosewarne, instead of shedding /j/, Maidment (1994) spoke about yod coalescence, i.e. “the coalescence of alveolar plosive and following palatal approximant (yod) to produce a postalveolar affricate”, emphasizing however the
8 Cf. sub chapter 2.3 9 Also /h/ dropping was supposed to be a uniquely Cockney feature (Wells, 1998). 10 As Kerswill (2000) put it, “this feature has been in London and Glasgow for at least 150 years”.
16 dubiousness of the characteristic. Further remarks on yod coalescence can be found in Wells (1997). Maidment (1994) was satisfied neither with the /r/ phoneme description, nor did he agree with the claim that ‘Estuary English’ speakers place the “intonational nucleus on a preposition” explaining that “speakers of many accents of English are likely to use nuclear accented prepositions in what are known as counter presupposional utterances.” He argued that Rosewarne ignored the fact that the “supposed EE occurrences of the phenomenon” could be explained in terms of stylistics.
3.3 Distinctiveness of ‘Estuary English’ Phonemes
According to Ryfa (2003: 5), “the phonetic characteristics of Estuary English have been most explicitly expressed by Wells”, see Wells (1992) for details about EE vocalism. His characteristics mostly concurred with those of Rosewarne; on the other hand, he disagreed with th fronting added by Coggle (1993), which he considered to be exclusively Cockney (Wells, 1997), whereas Maidment (1994) conceded that it might be occurring in “a very relaxed, informal style” of an ‘Estuary English’ speaker and be avoided in “a formal style” of a Cockney. Also Przedlacka (2002: 97) noticed TH fronting in the utterances of her informants. Maidment (1994) concluded that Rosewarne and Coggle “make a number of specific claims about the phonetic and phonological features which characterise a speaker as belonging to the EE community”. Nonetheless, he found the features “supposedly unique to EE” very dubious. According to him, “all the rest are found in Cockney, or RP, or in some cases both.” With respect to his empirical research, Altendorf (1999) did not believe the characteristics of ‘Estuary English’ to be specific only for this particular accent either: “All of these variants [/t/ glottaling, /l/ vocalization, /j/ dropping, /i:/] also occur in other social accents in London and the southeast and beyond this area. The whole set of markers is furthermore involved in contemporary sound changes affecting the neighbouring varieties of EE including RP.” As far as lexical and grammatical features of ‘Estuary English’ were concerned, Maidment (1994) considered “this lack of ‘exclusiveness’” even more striking.
17 4. Assumptions about the Emergence of ‘Estuary English’
Linguists have been trying to provide answers to questions whether ‘Estuary English’ is a new variety, what were the reasons that led to its actual emergence, and how it rose. In the following sub chapters the changing as well as the relatively stable views on these issues will be discussed.
4.1 The Putative Newness of ‘Estuary English’
Rosewarne (1984, 1994) did not claim ‘Estuary English’ to be new, although he spoke about the “newly observed” and “newly identified accent variety” respectively. Rather, he assumed it appeared to be a result of “a continuation of the long process by which London pronunciation has made itself felt”. This process started in the late Middle Ages, at that time, the speech of London began to influence the speech of the Court and “from there changed the Received Pronunciation of the day” (Rosewarne, 1984). When clarifying the unsuitability of the term New London Voice that McArthur had chosen for the variety, he proposed explicitly: “The term has not gained currency, perhaps in part because Estuary English is now the term in common usage. A further reason could be that the accent variety in question is not New 11 , nor is it confined to London and Voice is an inappropriate word to describe an accent” (1994). His statements and the whole concept of what he called ‘Estuary English’, however, have been misinterpreted and misunderstood especially by journalists. Ryfa (2003: 10) pointed out that people reading “newspaper articles concerning Estuary English might have had the impression that it is a relatively new Cockney influenced language variety making its way into various regions of the country at a rapid pace.” Sunday Times, for instance, published an article called “Yer wot? ‘Estuary English’ sweeps Britain” on 14 March 1993 12 . Almost all of the linguists who have contributed to the discussion about ‘Estuary English’ tried to disprove such conjectures; it is not possible though to adduce all of them here, some examples will be used for all.
11 Emphasis added by A. S. 12 Other examples of media exaggerations will be provided in the following chapters.
18 “Estuary English is a new name. But it is not a new phenomenon. It is the continuation of a trend that has been going on for five hundred years or more—the tendency for features of popular London speech to spread out geographically (to other parts of the country) and socially (to higher social classes)” (Wells, 1997). Trudgill (2001) confirmed the idea that ‘EE’ was not a uniquely new variety when speaking about the inaccuracy of the term: “it suggests that we are talking about a new variety, which we are not”, Przedlacka (2003: 97) summed up that “we are not witnessing an emergence of a new accent variety”, the more plausible explanation being that “what is known as ‘Estuary English’ appears to be a part of more general changes”. Kerswill (2000) saw the problematic from a slightly different point of view. He did not agree with the idea that ‘Estuary English’ is a new variety as ‘intermediate’ varieties, which category ‘Estuary English’ undeniably belongs to, have been existing for a very long time. What he considered new, however, was “the sheer spread of these kinds of accents”. Comparing phonetic and phonological characteristics of RP and ‘Estuary English’, Parsons (1998: 50) offered still another answer to the above mentioned question arguing that from the phonological point of view, ‘Estuary English’ is not really different from RP but as far as phonetics is concerned, it has moved further away “from the standard descriptions of RP than any variants previously described for RP. In this sense it is not a new accent but a recent development of the nationalised south east English speech to which forms of RP also belong.”
4.2 Hypotheses about the Origins and Spread of the Variety
As stated earlier, Rosewarne (1984) proposed ‘Estuary English’ to be a result of a continuation of the long process that started in the late Middle Ages. Several opinions on the possible motives that led to the appearance of this accent will be discussed in the following sections, touching upon the possible causes resulting in the emergence of ‘intermediate’ language varieties in general. Nevertheless, as Rosewarne (1984) put it, “speculation as to the reason for the development and present growth of “Estuary English” is necessarily somewhat impressionist at this stage.” Kerswill (2000) pointed out that the probable cause of the rise of intermediate varieties can be seen in the movement of people on the social scale. “People down the years have been ‘correcting’ their speech as they have been increasing their social
19 status. What they get rid of is grammatically non standard features [...] but, inevitably, they do something with their accent, too.” Regional movement and the resulting dialect accommodation, however, are equally important for the rise of intermediate varieties. In case of ‘Estuary English’ Kerswill argued that in the south east of England a kind of dialect levelling, i.e. the complex of changes that consists in the disappearance of more marked differences in the neighbouring varieties and in the coming into existence of another, widely localizable variety (cf. Przedlacka, 2002: 7), can be observed. Kerswill specified his argument as follows; speakers in the south east of England “avoid the most stigmatised phonetic features. The first to go is so called h dropping. It is not ‘done’ to say ‘the ‘amster is in the ‘ouse’. Some of the glottal stops might be replaced with /t/, as in water . Some vowels may change.” His observations confirm what has been examined above (3.2), i.e. the fact that /h/ dropping and /t/ glottaling in intervocalic position are considered to be unique features of Cockney. Obviously, similar development and result can be found in other regions as well: “people ending up with a regional accent rather than a very local dialect 13 ” (Kerswill, 2000). Rosewarne (1984) expressed the same opinion in slightly different words: “Estuary English speakers can cause their original accents to converge until they meet in the middle ground.” Crystal (1995: 327) argued that ‘Estuary English’ may be the result of a “confluence of two social trends: an up market movement of originally Cockney speakers and a down market trend towards ‘ordinary’ (as opposed to ‘posh’) speech by the middle class”. Considering the purportedly typical phonemes of ‘Estuary English’ and their usage by speakers of Cockney, EE and RP respectively, Maidment (1994) drew a comparable conclusion that there was a possibility that “EE is no more than slightly poshed up Cockney or RP which has gone ‘down market’ in appropriate situations”, his argument being that ‘Estuary English’ was not a newly developed accent. More probably, “all that has happened over recent years is that there has been a redefinition of the appropriateness of differing styles of pronunciation to differing speech situations” (Maidment, 1994).
13 Emphasis added by A. S.
20 4.3 The Role of Cities in the Rise and Growth of ‘New’ Varieties
Undoubtedly, large cities usually stand for economic as well as cultural and/or political centres of individual countries; as such they also play a significant role in the development of languages. Most of the changes ordinarily appear in the cities at first and spread out of them. This opinion can be supported by the following quotation from Wells (1982: 301): “In view of its position in England as the political capital and the largest city, it is not surprising that London is also its linguistic centre of gravity. Not only did its courtly and upper class speech lay the historical basis for Standard English and —in many respects —for RP, but its working class accent is today the most influential source of phonological innovation in England and perhaps in the whole English speaking world.” Also Ryfa (2003: 11) emphasised that influences from London were of great importance in the “processes leading to language changes in the region where it [‘Estuary English’] appears”. It is necessary, however, to take into account that London does not represent the only “linguistic centre of gravity” in the United Kingdom. Trudgill (2001) rose the objection that the development parallel to that of the “large dialect region centred on London, whose lower middle class accents have been referred to as ‘Estuary English’” can be observed in a number of similar areas elsewhere, e.g. in Belfast, Dublin, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol or in Birmingham. Consequently, he condemned the fact that the role of ‘Estuary English’ has often been overestimated, especially by media: “London based journalists have not noticed this kind of development, but this is no reason for linguists to ignore it”. Varieties emerging on the boundaries between RP and geographically localizable accents such as Scouse or Geordie for instance would surely deserve the same attention 14 . Trudgill stressed that “to focus pedagogically on one of the newer, larger regional accents of British English to the detriment of all the others, just because it happens to be spoken in London, would be the worst kind of metropolitan bias, of which there is far too much in Britain already” (2001).
14 For details about Scouse, Geordie and other accents of English see Wells, 1982.
21 5. Social Prestige of ‘Estuary English’
“For at least a century, accent in England has been two things: a vertical indicator about geographical origins, and a horizontal caste mark separating ‘top people’ from the rest” (Ascherson, 1994). Also Przedlacka (2002: 3) stated that an accent reliably “betrays a person’s geographical origins and/or social class” for features that make up one’s pronunciation are acquired in the early age and they are rather difficult to do away with. Some accents such as RP are said to sound “nice” (those who spoke RP were originally on the top of the social scale and therefore their speech was looked up to as a model); some are insisted on to be “displeasing”, mostly by people who do not speak them, e.g. non Londoners “often comment on what they see as the jerkiness of the speech of the capital” [i.e. of Cockney] (Rosewarne, 1984). People speaking with an accent generally considered as “unpleasant” might have problems when applying for certain jobs for instance. That is why RP as an accent of higher classes with no regional associations from the synchronic point of view 15 had gained prestige and was valued so highly. Another trend, however, seems to have been appearing recently. Many proclaim RP has been losing its sovereign position in favour of other accents (cf. Bex, 1994 or Kerswill, 2000 for instance); Rosewarne (1984) argued that “General RP is no longer perceived as a neutral accent in many circles”. In certain situations “‘Conservative’ and more so ‘Advanced’ RP can [even] arouse hostility”. For a large number of people, RP has negative connotations, Gimson observed that “some members of the present younger generation reject RP because of its association with the ‘Establishment’ in the same way that they question the validity of other forms of traditional authority” (1995: 79). Moreover, if used in inappropriate social situations, RP can be a handicap. It might be “taken as a mark of affectation or a desire to emphasize social superiority” (Gimson, 1995: 79, cf. also Trudgill, 2001). RP has slowly been disappearing even from public schools where it used to have the privileged position (Ascherson, 1994). This language situation is more than favourable for the emergence of another accent that would be desirable, neutral and that would take over some of the roles RP has been playing so far. In Rosewarne’s view, ‘Estuary English’ could become such an accent. Not only is it a socially intermediate variety, but it has been becoming regionally neutral quite
15 Diachronically, however, RP can be localized to the south east of England.
22 rapidly as well. That is precisely why, i.e. “because it obscures sociolinguistic origins” and because, unlike RP, it is not connected with snobbishness, “‘Estuary English’ is attractive to many” (Rosewarne, 1984). In his conception, these developments “may be seen as a linguistic reflection of the changes in class barriers in Britain” (1984). The next sections will deal with the alleged attractiveness of ‘Estuary English’, with functions it might fulfil in society as well as with the issues of politeness, power, solidarity and prestige.
5.1 Politeness, Solidarity and Prestige
“When we speak, we must constantly make choices of many different kinds: what we want to say, how we want to say it, and the specific sentence types, words, and sounds that best unite the what with the how ” (Wardhaugh, 1992: 258). Usually, these aspects are being pondered with respect to our communication partners; some aspects governing the choice of different language means being politeness, solidarity, respect, distance, power relationships, etc. In situations that require formality or when speaking with someone with higher social status, we may feel respect and in order to be polite we may tend to use standard language varieties or to accommodate our speech to the language patterns of our communication partners even if these are not compatible with the way we usually speak. We may switch codes but sometimes it can be sufficient enough to adjust pronunciation, as is the case of Adoptive RP accent. Nevertheless, there are also situations in which accommodation to the lower variety is needed. Language accommodation is one of the features accompanying the movement of people on the notional social scale. As Rosewarne (1984) put it, “the motivation, often unconscious, of those who are rising and falling socio economically is to fit into their new environments by compromising but not losing their original linguistic identity.” Solidarity relationships are of no lesser importance. Dissimilar accents may well be ignored in a particular social group, Bex (1994) highlighted that “issues of accent, for example, are of no concern between friends, although they may be [so] for someone who intends to become a broadcaster”; but members of different social groups also frequently create their own modifications of language (social dialects or sociolects) that are highly specific and prestigious for them. They use their sociolects to differentiate
23 themselves from other social groups they might be encountering (cf. Wardhaugh, 1992: 117 131, for further information about solidarity and politeness see pages 258 281). As far as ‘Estuary English’ or other intermediate varieties are concerned, people arrive at them when trying to adapt themselves in different milieus. “What for many starts as an adaptation first to school and then working life, can lead to progressive adoption of ‘Estuary English’ into private life as well” (Rosewarne, 1984). Different varieties of language are considered prestigious by different groups of people as well as by individuals. Prestige was pinpointed as a “subjectively positive view of a language variety” by Przedlacka (2002: 5), she also emphasised that two kinds of prestige, overt and covert, have to be distinguished; standard variety enjoys overt prestige (cf. Gimson, 1995: 78 or Parsons, 1998: 1 4), whereas covert prestige refers “to positive attitudes towards non standard varieties”. In terms of prestige, Altendorf offered an explanation of the attractiveness of ‘Estuary English’ in his 1999 article: “It comprises features of RP as well as non standard London English thus borrowing the positive prestige from both accents without committing itself to either.” Nonetheless, the variety has aroused a fierce resentment too. “There is huge resistance to Estuary English among quite large sections of society” (Kerswill, 2000), a vivid debate has been continuing on pages of major newspapers as well as in the linguistic circles, many articles and a number of new studies discussing the topic have been published. These will be focused on further.
5.2 Typical ‘Estuary English’ Speakers
According to Rosewarne (1984), ‘Estuary English’ “is attractive to many”, businessmen as well as Members of Parliament making use of it (cf. chapter 1 above). Wells (1997) summed up the previous investigations by saying that ‘Estuary English’ had been said to be a variety popular with politicians, sportsmen, media personalities but even with some members of the royal family (cf. Introduction). Similar arguments were based on loose evidence, however, basically on spotting a few features ordinarily attributed as salient of the accent: /t/ glottaling or /l/ vocalisation. Generally, ‘Estuary English’ is mostly associated with the young; Kerswill paraphrased Rosewarne’s remarks by stating that “it is the favoured accent of young upwardly mobile people in all walks of life, including the professionals” (2000).
24 According to Ascherson, even the “upper class young already talk ‘estuary English’, the faintly Cockneyfied accent of the South east” (1994). They chose this variety for they see it “as modern, up front, high on ‘street cred’ and ideal for image conscious trendsetters” (Coggle, 1993, quoted from the EE homepage). Young people with local accents, on the other hand, “adopt it because it sounds more ‘sophisticated’ (Köhlmyr, 1996). A comparable explanation of the alleged attractiveness of ‘Estuary English’ can be found in Bex (1994) who argued that the young frequently use it as “a marker of social identity that sets them apart from those other groups from which they wish to distance themselves”. Przedlacka (2002), and similarly also Altendorf (2003) proceeded from this assumption when choosing the informants for their empirically based studies, both focused on teenage informants. The more frequent use of ‘Estuary English’ or other geographically localizable varieties in the increasing number of communication situations can be related to the “movement away from RP” (Kerswill, 2000) as outlined above. Trudgill (2001) concluded that people “who are upwardly socially mobile or who come into the public eye may still in fact reduce the number of regional features in their accents [...] but they will no longer remove all such features.” Instead of ending up with Adoptive RP, they end up with an intermediate variety such as ‘Estuary English’.
5.3 Functions of ‘Estuary English’
There are a number of functions a variety of language and language itself can fulfil (cf. Jakobson, 1995: 78 82, Švejcer and Nikolskij, 1983: 40 43, Čechová, et al., 2003: 60) and in the society, every variety has its specific functions (Bex, 1994). A standard variety of a language is a universally prestigious variety, it is desirable in formal situations, it serves as a model for speakers of the particular language but it is also the variety that is taught to children at schools and to foreigners. It is a common means of communication for the widest spectrum of speakers, etc. Standard English with an RP accent has been serving these functions so far. Rosewarne and some other linguists as well presume ‘Estuary English’ to become the “RP of the future” (Rosewarne, 1984) implying that roles of RP should be taken over by it. Rosewarne suggested that for many, “RP has long served to disguise origins. ‘Estuary English’ may now be taking
25 over this function”. To a certain extent, this may be true. In contrast, however, several problems arise as well. A standard accent should be universally accepted. Obviously, in case of ‘Estuary English’ this is not true; examples of animosity towards this accent and mainly towards its supposed spread and influence on other varieties of English can be found for instance in the headlines of newspaper articles and reactions of readers quoted by Maidment (1994) or Ryfa (2003: 31): “The press shocked the readers with such headlines as ‘Scouse is threatened by the rising tide of Estuary English’, ‘Estuary English Sweeps the North’, ‘Glasgow puts an accent on Estuary’, ‘Cockneys are killing off the Scots accent’ [...] or ‘Bad language crosses the Border’, all referring to Estuary English as a potential threat to the identity of the place expressed among others through a local accent.” Even though “all of these accounts [...] appear to be gross journalistic exaggerations, finding no confirmation in any empirical research” (Ryfa, 2003: 31), they illustrate but also encourage the negative attitudes of the public to ‘Estuary English’. A standard accent should be desirable in formal situations. Neither this seems to be true about ‘Estuary English’. Rather, it is a variety the young are said to have been using in order to challenge the language of authorities and to increase their “street credibility” (Coggle, 1993; Rosewarne, 1994). Not being generally representative, it is not a variety that should be taught to foreigners either. Trudgill (2001) argued that “it is convenient that students learning English English [i.e. British English] still have a non regional model available to them.” RP is “the most widely understood pronunciation of those in the world who use British English as their reference accent” (Rosewarne, 1984), it is also an accent that is rather intelligible to all speakers and learners of English all over the world. This should be taken into consideration. RP has “deep historic roots in TEFL 16 ” (Parsons, 1998: 63) and substantial changes of the standard pronunciation would affect millions of people. On the other hand, a language must be taught comprehensively, teachers must “educate children so that they are made aware of how and why English varies functionally, regionally and socially. Different ways of saying are also different ways of meaning and the myth that there is a single model, often referred to as Standard English, which is appropriate in all situations and for all purposes, must be laid to rest” (Bex,
16 TEFL means Teaching English as a Foreign Language
26 1994). Language is not an unchanged entity, it has been developing and the changes that have entrenched in it should be reflected by codification. To put it simply, standards are to be upheld as well (Maidment, 1994). Trudgill (2001) stressed that advanced learners at least should be acquainted with the major changes that have been in progress in English “some of which are certainly internally generated”, i.e. with intrusive /r/ and some forms of /t/ glottaling. Also Wells agreed that /t/ glottaling is one of the changes that have slowly been making their ways into RP. “Rather than try to adopt EE, perhaps a more realistic aim for EFL teachers and learners would be to make sure that our description of Received Pronunciation keeps up to date. It must not remain fossilized in the form codified by Daniel Jones almost a century ago. We must modernize it by gradually incorporating one or two of the changes typical of EE. To star' with, we migh' le' people use a few glottal stops. Or would tha' not mee' with everyone's approval?” (Wells, 1997) Bex (1994) emphasised that no variety “should be stigmatised since every variety has a function within society.” Undoubtedly, ‘Estuary English’ is a greatly useful variety. Had there been no need for it, it would never have emerged. In Kerswill’s (2000) words, “Estuary English—and the regionally accented speech of the other regions—does serve a useful function. It has drawn attention to the ridiculousness of having a single, monolithic accent, which, moreover, is very much a class accent”.
6. Changing Views on ‘Estuary English’
It has been shown many times in the present thesis that different people approach ‘Estuary English’ differently and that the attitudes towards ‘Estuary English’ have been changing. In this chapter, the development of views on it will be recalled briefly.
6.1 The 1980s and the 1990s – The Impressionistic Stage
‘Estuary English’ received little attention in the 1980s (after Rosewarne’s findings were published for the first time in 1984). That might have been one of the reasons why Rosewarne decided to republish the article—only slightly expanded—in 1994. This
27 time, it aroused great discussion that has been continuing hitherto, in fact. As Altendorf (2003: 1) put it, “it has been discussed with increasing frequency and unreduced controversy, first by the linguistic layman [...] and then also by professional linguists”. The role of media in the debate cannot be overlooked. “In the late 1990s and at the beginning of this century the media have been feeding the English audience with frequent reports of a gigantic flow of Estuary English in many corners of Great Britain” (Ryfa, 2003: 31). Neither Rosewarne, nor Coggle spoke about ‘Estuary English’ as about something the English should be afraid of. It is natural that English develops and that new, intermediate varieties emerge as it is natural for any language throughout the world. Some journalists, however, transformed the accent into a monster that was sweeping the country; it was transformed into “an ogre which threatens the imagined static, pure condition of the English language” (Maidment, 1994). It was to be blamed for the “erosion of standards” (Bex, 1994) and for the general decline of English. Ryfa (2003: 31) called such accounts the “gross journalistic exaggerations”. Nonetheless, “it sells newspapers” (Maidment, 1994) and that is why the debate has been artificially encouraged. On the 1995 Conservative party conference, even the then Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Shephard, expressed a strong prejudice towards ‘Estuary English’ when prohibiting this “bastardized Cockney” (Wells, 1997) which “she has even heard in Norfolk” (Bex, 1994) from schools. “She claimed that teachers have a duty to do their utmost to eradicate it” (Wells, 1997). Also the general public was often commenting on the ugliness of ‘Estuary English’ and on similar aspects of the variety in question in the letters to editors and the like (cf. contributions to the EE homepage).
6.2 Current Empirical Surveys
Such reactions awoke an increased interest of professional linguists who started carrying out various empirical surveys and researches in order to elucidate what ‘Estuary English’ really was, to find its place within other varieties of ‘English’ and to clarify its relation to RP and to regional varieties of the south east of England (see Parsons, 1998; Haenni, 1999; Przedlacka, 2002; Altendorf, 2003, etc.). In the present thesis, Przedlacka’s survey will be focused on in order to illustrate the nature of these recent surveys.
28 Przedlacka conducted the survey in order to answer the following questions: a) Is there a coherent and uniform variety, frequently referred to as Estuary English? b) Can we legitimately call it a newly emerging accent? (2002: 97). She chose fourteen 14 16 year old informants from Buckinghamshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey who were, according to their teachers, typical speakers of what has been known as ‘Estuary English’. They were to respond to the questions in a questionnaire and the results were compared with those of the Survey of English Dialects (SED) from 1950s.
Przedlacka investigated the following vocalic variables: FLEECE , TRAP , STRUT ,
THOUGHT , GOOSE , FACE , PRICE , GOAT , MOUTH ; and the following consonantal variables:
GLOTTALING , STR CLUSTER , TH FRONTING , L VOCALISATION and YOD DROPPING . The outcomes were surprising. Przedlacka (2002: 97) stated that the “extent of geographical variation alone allows us to conclude that we are dealing with a number of distinct accents, not a single and definable variety.” In her view, ‘Estuary English’ seems to be a part of more general changes, “the tendencies observed in the present study [...] are not confined to the Home Counties, their appearance having been reported in other areas of Britain”. Przedlacka’s findings were comparable to those of the SED, which provided evidence for the assumption that “we are not witnessing an emergence of a new accent variety.” Przedlacka (2002: 97) also concluded that ‘Estuary English’ is unlikely to influence other varieties of British English, rather, “the speech of Home Counties itself is subject to London influence”.
6.3 Attempt at Creating a New Definition Most of the linguists that have been publishing their contributions to the discussion about ‘Estuary English’ have been trying to answer the question what ‘Estuary English’ actually is, if it exists of course. Some of the attempts to provide a suitable definition will be quoted here; these should be seen as in many aspects complementary to those uttered above (especially in chapter 1). Wells (1998b, revised 2004) stated that “everyone agrees that there is a spectrum of intermediate possibilities between RP and Cockney: ‘popular London English’. If EE is a mere name for this, fine. But Przedlacka has shown that EE is not a single coherent
29 accent ‘sweeping the southeast’.” According to him, ‘Estuary English’ is a dialect. This allowed him to pinpoint it as a “standard English spoken with an accent that includes features localizable in the southeast of England” (Wells, 1998). Przedlacka considered it a “label that covers any of the southeastern accents, perhaps without their broadest characteristics” (2002: 2), similarly also Trudgill (2001) claimed that “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”. Providing an acceptable definition of ‘Estuary English’ was also the main aim of Altendorf’s 2003 highly elaborate study, he offered several opinions: “EE as a group of variants and a pool of features 17 ”, “EE as an accent continuum” and “EE as a south eastern middle class variety” (2003: 130 138). Setter called it a “kind of umbrella term for a number of accents spoken in the area of England around London and beyond which have some similarities” (2003, quoted from Ryfa, 2003: 21). Obviously, it would be possible to extend this list noticeably. The proposed definitions, however, would be similar in a way. What all the recent consciously formed as well as unconsciously uttered descriptions and definitions have in common is the conviction, that ‘Estuary English’ is not an easy identifiable and definable variety of British English. The term is vague and “there are so many varieties that it seems difficult to consider it as a unitary accent” (Parsons, 1998: 61), cf. section 2.2.
6.4 Future Perspectives of ‘Estuary English’
An overview of facts and opinions concerning the past and the present of ‘Estuary English’ has already been provided in the present thesis. It remains to mention those relating to its future. Rosewarne (1984) found speculations about the future of ‘Estuary English’ interesting arguing that “in the long run it may influence the speech of all but the linguistically most isolated, among the highest and lowest socio economic groups” who
17 The pool of features was defined as a group of variants which are used a) occasionally and b) selectively by different groups of speakers for a particular or for different socio communicative purposes (Altendorf, 2003: 8).
30 might thus become “linguistically conservative minorities”. He speculated that in the future ‘Estuary English’ could take over the role of the English pronunciation standard. This excited most of the negative reactions of the lay people as well as of linguists themselves. Trudgill (2001) argued that the sociolinguistic conditions in the United Kingdom are unfavourable to such a change as London is not the only city that influences the pronunciation in its vicinity and the south east is no longer the only region determining the development of the language. He claimed that ‘Estuary English’ could hardly ever become “anything more than a regional accent, albeit the accent of a rather large region covering, together with its lower class counterparts, the Home Counties plus, probably, Sussex, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and parts of Northamptonshire”. On the other hand, Wells (1997) argued that “localizable features are spreading geographically and socially, thus losing their localizability and thus to some extent justifying the claim that EE is tomorrow’s RP”. Crystal (1995, 327) agreed that even though ‘sweeping’ probably is a rather strong word, the variety has been spreading in recent years. Also Parsons (1998: 61) pondered that if “levelling of accents is taking place in the whole of south east England, the home territory of RP, or if such a levelling is perceived, [...] then EE will indeed be in a very strong position to oust RP”. Przedlacka (2001) opposed these opinions suggesting that if ‘Estuary English’ is a levelled out variety, it is unlikely to become a standard accent. Standards are institutionally imposed whereas “the essence of the levelled out variety is that it develops by quite regular sociolinguistic process” (Przedlacka, 2001, quoting Watt and Milroy). Every language needs a representative, highly valued variety that is prestigious in the most formal communication situations. It seems that in the present language situation of the United Kingdom, RP still maintains this position. Nonetheless, the speakers of English have been reappraising the appropriateness of RP in certain communication situations. Very often, they prefer other, less formal but also not too much stigmatized varieties. In such situations, ‘Estuary English’ might be spreading. Tony Bex (1994) commented on the future of ‘Estuary English’ in connection with the former Secretary of State for Education, Mrs Shephard, whose animosity towards the variety was well known: “If it is a fad, it will wither in the same way as the mock Liverpudlian accent withered after the Beatles et al. If it represents a more permanent historical shift [...], there is nothing Mrs Shephard can do about it.” In fact, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
31 Conclusion ‘Estuary English’ is a highly controversial issue. Since the term was coined in the mid 1980s, linguists as well as lay people have been discussing various aspects of the concept. They have been trying to find answers to questions such as what ‘Estuary English’ actually is, what its functions are or whether it really exists. They have been commenting on the salient features of the variety, its position within the varieties of English (mainly its relation to RP and Cockney), the nature of the variety, its origins and its speakers. Great attention has been paid to reasons for the supposed attractiveness and prestige of ‘Estuary English’. Many speculations about its future appeared as well. Opponents of the conception and media have heated the discussion repeating that ‘Estuary English’ is an ogre threatening the pure English language, bad language sweeping the British Isles and one of the culprits that had caused the overall erosion of standards. The character of the early contributions, however, was rather impressionistic and generalizations were made with respect to only a few random observations. As a reaction, several empirically based researches were conducted. They showed that it is not possible to speak about ‘Estuary English’ as about a newly emerging variety of English that spreads from the south east of England and aspires to become the future pronunciation standard. The changes allegedly characteristic of the variety seem to be a part of a centuries long process of language development that is natural for all languages throughout the world. It also showed that it is questionable to refer to it as to a single and uniform variety. Rather, a number of distinct accents can be grouped together under the label. The most severe reactions challenged the idea that ‘Estuary English’ is to replace RP as a pronunciation standard. Trudgill (2001) emphasized that unless the British society undergoes “even more radical changes in its social structure”, this seems highly improbable. Standard English spoken with the RP accent still maintains the position of the representative variety of British English. Nevertheless, it cannot be static. It should develop and the features that have become widely acceptable and that have lost their regional localizability should be included. However, it should be taken into consideration that it is not appropriate to use RP in all communication situations since the communication partners could regard the use of RP as a mark of social superiority, which is not always desirable. Other varieties of English such as regional or social dialects as well as intermediate varieties
32 (consequently also ‘Estuary English, if it were accepted as a kind of an intermediate variety) are prestigious in an increasing number of less formal communication situations. ‘Estuary English’ remains a controversial issue with many supporters but also an equal number of opponents. In order to weaken all the myths arising around the supposed variety and in order to obtain material for serious linguistic debate, further empirical studies have to be carried out.
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