Silja Recknagel

Cockney and Estuary English. A comparison Silja Recknagel

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Duisburg-Essen (Fachbereich 3), 20 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: Since linguists have traced features of the so calles Estuary English in the speech of the Queen, it has gained growing interest. Is it really the "new RP" or just a mixture of London English with some Cockney features? This essay gives an overview on both Cockney as a main source and Estuary English itself. It refers to phonetic as well as sociolinguistic charactestics and tries to explain the growing popularity of this accent. , abstract: This paper aims at giving an overview on the two topics that will be briefly compared at its end: Cockney on the one hand and Estuary English on the other. This comparison and combination results from the question in how far Cockney as one of the two main reference dialects of Estuary English has influenced this rather new accent which recently has gained a lot of public attention. First, a historic account on Cockney is given as well as an overview on its specific phonetic and grammatical features. Finally, its social perception is elaborated. Secondly it is attempted to explain to which phenomena the term Estuary English refers to. In this context, the two influential reference sources are discussed: RP and Cockney at antipodal ends. Furthermore some syntactic and phonetic features of Estuary English are listed. Furthermore, the geographical as well as the social expansion of Estuary English is illustrated. Finally, a brief comparison of Estuary English and Cockney in terms of linguistic status, acceptability, mobility as well as social perception is given. The research on Estuary English is based on two different sorts of texts: On the one hand the advanced layman Rosewarne, who coined the term Estuary English in the first place and who even claims that it could possibly become the new RP,