Wouldn't it Be Loverly?!

The traditional London East End has experienced rapid movement of population and social changes in most recent decades. Cockney is mainly associated with the working class of the inner-most suburbs of eastern London, which includes the modern borough of Tower Hamlet’s and the southern part of the borough of Hackney. Cockney accent has spread out from the traditional Cockney area due to massive population shifting of many white working class Anglos. The first reason to that spreading has to do with the “slum-clearance” program, which was a part of the post-war construction after World War 2. Due to lack of housing in the East End after the war, large parts of its original inhabitants were moved out and decentralized to areas further east, or the easternmost suburbs of London, like Barking and Havering, to estates that were built for this purpose,  or to the new-established towns such as Basildon and Harlow  in Essex, and MiltonKeynes in Buckinghamshire. The result of this...

Sociolinguistics, as the name suggests, is the study of language that considers social aspects. It is concerned with how language is used and who uses it, where and when, for this use is altered by those external elements (extra-linguistic factors). In short, it studies language in use. Another important aspect in Sociolinguistics is the concept of variation and change within a language. Scholars usually distinguish internal and external factors that are behind these processes. Sometimes – and the case of Cockney included – external factors override the systemic ones, . Some independent variables regarded as devices for language variation and change. These are, for example, age, gender, ethnicity, stylistic variation, geographic position, etc. Many linguists have observed the change in linguistic variables that are frequently in contact. Whether internally motivated (systemic changes) or externally motivated (speakers voluntarily adopt features found in other varieties), it h...

The actor Jason Stathem made a video for the channel Papa Teach Me, focused on English language and culture teaching, explaining how to speak if you want to sound like a true Londoner, namely, to sound like a Cockney.  Even though it is supposed to be a fun tutorial, this video illustrates very well the table shown in our previous post on general aspects of Cockney pronunciation.  In an interview to the New york Times YouTube channel, the actor Michael Caine - quoted in Stathem's video as a "true Cockney legend" - talks about his origin as a Cockney speaker and working class member and the reception his manner of speaking had when he first entered cultural industry. The rejection to his speech took him to learn a "neutral" accent, soas to adapt to the damands of the market, which doesn't mean he forgot his origins. 

The term “cockney” is used to describe both the people and the dialect spoken in the traditional East End London. According to Harald  Nodtvedt ("Phonological Variation and Change in London Cockney English) , the popular definition of a Cockney is one who has lived in the city all his/her life, and who was born within hearing range of the bells of St. Mary Le-Bow Church in Cheapside (east central London). This definition, however, is a bit difficult to take literally, for linguists Right (1981) and Fox (2007) point out that, considering the fact that the area of the church is not residential, the nearest areas for this definition are Whitechapel and the Golden Laneestate by the Barbican. These regions, nevertheless, are not, in normal circunstances, in hearing of the bells. Linguists claim, than, that Cockney has spread to a wider geographical area. Although the traditional definition is too exclusive and somehow inaccurate, this definition is still used by some people in...

The musical "My Fair Lady", inspired in the play "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw, is probably the best known example of cultural production featuring Cockney speech. Not just it appears portraited in a remarkable way, but its existence is a central point of the narrative. The main character, Eliza Doolittle, a dreamy girl who sells flowers at Covent Garden, is transforme into a lady by an arrogant phoneticist , Henry Higgins, who considered her way of speaking an offense to Shakespeare's language. The working class English, being stigmatized for so long, has recently emerged as the language of a rich culture. To illustrate the theme of this page, this next video shows a scene of this classic musical, in which actress Julie Andrews sings a beautiful and melodious song completely using Cockney phonetics, expressions and syntax. London is one of the richest urban groupings in what respects to linguistic variations. Associated with the also gre...