Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Clearly, the term "Estuary English" has over time become "all things to all people."Joanna Przedlacka, 2002 Estuary English has been a widespread topic of debate in the last decades, both in academic and public settings.As a consequence, the label "Estuary English" has never been clearly defined, and this has created a kind of ambiguity about what is Estuary English.In this article we intend to clarify this phenomenon, by looking both at its linguistic category and its geographical location-as well as on the sociolinguistic parameters of this new variety, such as the reasons why it has spread and its speakers.1 From now on, we will use "EE" instead of "Estuary English"LAURA FILARDO LLAMAS-ELENA GONZÁLEZ-CASCOS 72 varieties in the middle ground between RP and Cockney had never been defined.Moreover, British accents were being "levelled".Hence, he defined EE as "a variety of modified regional speech", placed in "a continuum with RP and London speech at either end".After Rosewarne's article, an academic and public debate about EE began.From then on, several authors tried to define what EE was.Among the most prominent linguists who studied EE we can find Paul Coggle, whose definition does not vary significantly from Rosewarne's or Antonio Lillo's 2 one.Taking into account their description of EE, and Gimson's classification of RP, we can clarify EE's location in the accent continuum with the following diagram.According to this graphic, EE would be then a new variety placed between two consolidated ones.Diagram 1. Modified diagram from Lillo 1999: 66.Nevetheless, the EE phenomenon is still under debate, and, thus, there are other scholars who say that EE is not so much a new variety but a difference in speech based upon the style 3 used in conversation.J.A. Maidment defends this opinion and he illustrates this idea with the following diagram, in which differences in style between Cockney and RP can be seen.Moreover, we can notice that these styles overlap with EE. 2 For further information, refer to Coggle 1993: 23; 33 and Lillo 1999: 64.3Variation in a person's speech or writing.Style usually varies from casual to formal according to the type of situation, the person or persons addressed, the location, the topic discussed, etc. (Platt et al. 1992
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W106831773