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Reviews London

Books

Cheshire, J., Fox, S., Kerswill, P. and Torgersen, E.: Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: linguistic innovation in London. To appear in Sociolinguistics 22. Special issue on Dialect Sociology, edited by Alexandra Lenz and Klaus J. Mattheier.

This paper illustrates an analysis about the way the speech behavior of young people from different ethnic backgrounds in inner and outer London differs from spoken English. The study concentrates on speakers aged from 16 to 19 and is based on a corpus of 1.4 million words of informal speech from 100 adolescents. The aim of the study is to explore in how far the socioeconomic and ethnic background has an influence on the spoken English of these adolescents. They are divided into two groups, one from inner London and the other one from outer London is the home of many migrants from overseas, the inner London group consists of speakers from different ethnicities. The outer London speakers are predominantly of British origin. It is concluded that the aspect of friendship group and social networks have a great impact on the distribution of new linguistic features and language change.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)

[English Seminar library: ]

Grabe, E.: Intonational variation in urban dialects of English spoken in the British Isles. In: Gilles, P. and Peters, J. (eds.): Regional Variation in Intonation. Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 2004, pp. 9-31.

In her paper Esther Grabe deals with international variation in dialects of English spoken in the British Isles. The paper focuses especially on urban dialects like those in London. In a first step, the author expounds on the dialect variation in the intonation of English. She then illustrates the IViE project which deals with a corpus of recordings of nine urban dialects of English spoken in the British Isles. The recordings were taken from male and female speakers in London, Cambridge, Cardiff, Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, Belfast in Northern Ireland and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. It is mainly in this section of the book where some interesting aspects of the London dialect in comparison to the other dialects can be found. The author not only deals with variation conditioned by dialect. She also analyses variation across speakers of a single dialect.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)

Keene, D.: Metropolitan values:  migration, mobility and cultural norms, London 1100-1700. In: Wright, L. (ed.): The Development of Standard English, 1300-1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 93-117.

Metropolitan values: migration, mobility and cultural norms, London 1100-1700 is a paper which focuses on the social and economic background to the rise of Standard English. Linguistic explanations of change are linked to important economic, social and political aspects. The dominance of London in terms of language change within the national and also the European context is stressed. The paper illustrates the impact which migration into the capital during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had on the development of the English language. This is illustrated by for example poll tax records and maps which depict migration patterns into the capital during the two centuries. Keene analyses the mobility of the London population in order to line out which impact it had on the evolution of the Standard English and also on the way in which it was distributed throughout the country.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)

Torgersen, E., Kerswill, P. and Fox, S. Ethnicity as a source of changes in the London vowel system. In: Hinskens, F. (ed.): Language Variation – European Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE3), Amsterdam, June 2005. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 249-263.

This paper is based on studies, which relate developments in the short vowel system in London to the general development in south-east England. In a first step, the short vowel system in London and the southeast is illustrated. The three data sets and the method of analysis the study is based on are also described. Different analyses of existing and newly collected data-sets illustrate sociolinguistic and phonetic investigations of London vowels. This is for example an analysis of vowels of young and elderly informants which was carried out in inner and outer London. The results are presented with the help of different figures. In a final discussion the impact that London had on the convergence in the vowel system of speakers in south-east England is stressed. London is seen as the centre of accent innovation in the south-east. It Is concluded that there is great variation between different ethnic groups. Therefore inter-ethnic relations are seen as a source of innovation in London English.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)

Wright, L.: Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary. Oxford [et al.]: Claredndon Press, 2996.

Websites

Study:  The English of Adolscents in London by Cheshire, J. and Kerswill
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/innovators/overview.htm (status: unknown; tetrieval: 8th July 2008)
This website presents a study of the spoken English of London which was conducted by Jenny Cheshire and Paul Kerswill from October 2004 to September 2007. The study focuses on the diversity of London’s population and its social and geographical mobility. Important aspects the study focuses on are London’s multilingualism, linguistic innovation in adolescence, the impact of a “multiracial vernacular” and differences between inner and outer London concerning the ethnic makeup, mobility and networks and the results it has on differences in changes and distribution of linguistic features. 16-19 year olds in two boroughs were interviewed in order to analyze their speech patterns.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)
                                            
UCL Department of Phonetics & Linguistics: Estuary English
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary (status: 2007; tetrieval: 6th July 2008)
This website gives a list of different documents and resources that deal with Estuary English. This is a form of English which is spoken in some areas in and around London and in some parts of the southeast of England. It is especially spoken along the River Thames and the estuary. It is not a single coherent form of English. There are many different variations in the different surroundings of the River Thames.
(Review by Barbara Stroop)