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 ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ......................................................... 7

2. NATURE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ....................................................................8

2.1 ROSEWARNE’S CONCEPTION ................................................................................... 8

2.2 OTHER LINGUISTS’ REACTIONS ............................................................................ 10
2.3 BOUNDARIES OF ‘ESTUARY 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 ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ PHONEMES ..................................17

4. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE EMERGENCE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ..18

4.1 THE PUTATIVE NEWNESS OF ‘ESTUARY 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 ‘NEW’ VARIETIES …..21

5. SOCIAL PRESTIGE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ..............................................22

5.1 POLITENESS, SOLIDARITY AND PRESTIGE.......................................................... 23

5.2 TYPICAL ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ SPEAKERS .......................................................... 24
5.3 FUNCTIONS OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ................................................................... 25

6. CHANGING VIEWS ON ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’..............................................27

6.1 THE 1980S AND THE 1990S – THE IMPRESSIONISTIC STAGE …....................... 27
6.2 CURRENT EMPIRICAL SURVEYS ........................................................................... 28
6.3 ATTEMPT AT CREATING A NEW DEFINITION .................................................... 29
6.4 FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF ‘ESTUARY 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 RP1?’ 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 variety3 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 speakers4. 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 vocabulary5. 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 RP6 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 markers7.
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 definition8 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, Glasgow10, 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 New11, 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 199312. 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 dialect13” (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 attention14. 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 view15 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 TEFL16” (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 features17”, “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.

33
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