Social prestige and the role of language

The most prestigious people are those with the greatest influence on the community. This influence may derive from economic, political, or social power. There may be a tendency to align one's own use of language (idiolect) to that of a favoured dialect (positive prestige), or to move away from a dialect of low esteem (negative prestige). Studies, particularly by Labov, have shown that positive prestige is more often overt, while negative prestige is more often covert (avoidance of the unmentionable). Sociologically, women of the lower middle-class are more likely to notice and adopt overt positive prestige. Among working-class men, there may sometimes be a covert preference for negative prestige.

In nations with a colonial history the prestige dialect is often close to the prestige dialect of the colonising community although it may fossilise at the point of succession.

Where creolisation has taken place, the superstrate language operates as an extreme prestige dialect, which may effect great influence, including, in extreme case, the decreolisation of the creole language into the prestige language. An acrolect may be more prestigious than a basilect.

When a prestige dialect is prescribed as the norm by dominant institutions it is also a standard dialect. Broadcast media have been particularly effective at defining standard dialects.

Estuary English

Estuary English is a name given to the formulation(s) of English widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and its estuary, which is where the two regions meet. Estuary English is commonly described as a hybrid of Received Pronunciation (RP) and South Eastern Accents, particularly from the London, Kent and Essex area — i.e., the area around the Thames Estuary. The variety first came to public prominence in an article by David Rosewarne in the Times Educational Supplement in October 1984.^[1] Rosewarne argued that it may eventually replace RP as the Standard English pronunciation. Studies have indicated that Estuary English is not a single coherent form of English; rather, the reality behind the construct consists of some (but not all) phonetic features of working-class London speech spreading at various rates socially into middle-class speech and geographically into other accents of south-eastern England.^[2][3]

Features

Estuary English shares the following features with Cockney pronunciation:

· Use of intrusive R. In a dialect with intrusive R, an epenthetic [ɹ] is added after a word that ends in a non-high vowel or glide if the next word begins with a vowel, regardless of whether the first word historically ended with /ɹ/ or not. For example, intrusive R would appear in Asia[ɹ] and Africa or the idea[ɹ] of it: Asia and idea did not historically end in /ɹ/, but the [ɹ] is inserted epenthetically to prevent a hiatus. Intrusive R also occurs within words before certain suffixes, such as draw[ɹ]ing or withdraw[ɹ]al. This is now so common in England that by 1997 the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, but he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation,^[1] as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents.

· A broad A (ɑː) in words such as bath, grass, laugh, etc. This is often seen as the litmus test of a South-East accent, but it has only spread to rural areas of the south-east in the last forty years.

· T-glottalisation, i.e., using some glottal stops: that is, "t" is sounded as a glottal occlusion instead of being fully pronounced when it occurs before a consonant or at the end of words, as in "eight" or "McCartney" and it can also occur between vowels, as in Cockney or southern dialects e.g. "water" (pronounced as [wɔːʔə]).^[4]

· Yod-coalescence, i.e., the use of the affricates /ʤ/ and /ʧ/ instead of the clusters /dj/ and /tj/ in words like "dune" and "tune".

· Diphthong shifts, e.g., the diphthong in words like "I" becomes [ɑɪ], the diphthong in words like "brown" becomes [æʊ], and the diphthong in words like "face" becomes [ɛɪ], [ɐɪ], [ʌɪ], or [æɪ].

· L-vocalisation, i.e., the use of [o] where RP uses [ɫ] in the final positions or in a final consonant cluster.

· Use of confrontational question tags. For example, "We're going later, aren't we?", "I said that, didn't I?"

But the following characteristics of Cockney pronunciation are generally not considered to be present in Estuary English

· Th-fronting, i.e., replacement of [θ, ð] with [f, v] (e.g. [fɪŋk] for think)

· H-dropping, i.e., Dropping [h] in stressed words (e.g. [æʔ] for hat)

· Double negation. However, Estuary English may use "never" in case where "not" would be the Standard. For example, "he did not" [in reference to a single occasion] might become "he never did".

· Replacement of an /r/ with a /w/ is not found in Estuary, and is also very much in decline amongst Cockney speakers.

In particular, it has been suggested that th-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English, e.g. those from Isle of Thanet often refer to Thanet as "Plannit Fannit" (Planet Thanet).