The Role of London in the Emergence of Standard and Non-standard Varieties

Abstract

The present study discusses the role of the city of London, its history and its society, in the emergence of standard and non-standard varieties of English. The importance of London derives from the fact that this city is and has been, an important centre of migration. Migration brings about interdialectal and interlinguistic contact, as well as phenomena such as dialect levelling, or the introduction of linguistic features from other dialects/languages, which may eventually lead to the emergence of new varieties. The dissertation will present an overview of the emerging varieties in London at different stages in history. Firstly I will examine the formation of the standard variety, which originates in the late Middle English period; and secondly I will analyse the main features of two non standard form of British English (spoken mainly in the city of London): Cockney (emerging in the Modern English period) and the current developing Multicultural London English (MLE). The methodology followed in this paper combines a more theoretical approach based on the literature on the subject; and a more practical approach by which I will illustrate the different features of the three varieties under study in various materials (e.g. historical texts, for the emerging written standard; TV shows, movies or corpora material, in the case of Cockney and MLE)