Estuary English – A fresh look at the boundary markers between Estuary English, Received Pronunciation and Cockney

Abstract

Estuary English has been a topic for discussion ever since the term was coined by David Rosewarne in 1984. The putative English variety has been criticized for its messiness and lack of phonological cohesion, and the debate has circled around whether it is a variety in its own right and whether it will replace Received Pronunciation as the new standard variety of English. This thesis investigates the speech of eight Estuary English speakers and aims to discuss how the variety has changed since its time of origin. The focus of analysis is on four phonetic features that are considered to be boundary markers between Estuary English, Received Pronunciation and Cockney: syllable-final t-glottalization, intervocalic t- glottalization, l-vocalization and th-fronting. The material consists of recent YouTube videos of the speech of eight chosen celebrities who speak with an Estuary English accent. This thesis discusses the results of the analysis of the abovementioned videos in an attempt to add knowledge to the still ambiguous Estuary English phenomenon. The collected data indicates an increase in use of several features in comparison to previous research on the topic. Syllable-final t-glottalization has for long been observed in both Estuary English and Received Pronunciation, and the results of this thesis indicate that it still has a strong presence in Estuary English. Intervocalic t-glottalization and l-vocalization are slightly more ambiguous, and this thesis indicates an increase in the use of these features. With th-fronting, however, the results are much blurrier. Only two of the speakers investigated in this thesis uses th-fronting in the data material, and only one of them used it extensively. These findings have several implications for the questions commonly raised by previous research. If th- fronting follows the same development as l-vocalization and intervocalic t-glottalization, it seems likely that its usage will increase in Estuary English in the time to come. Since Estuary English blends Received Pronunciation and Cockney, and a greater number of features from Cockney is observed in it, it is no far-fetched claim that Estuary English as a variety will increase its footprint in England and have the chance to become a standard. This ability to become a standard, however, presupposes that Estuary English is a variety in its own right. The still present internal variation might function as an obstacle in this regard.