I прикладные аспекты иностранных языков

Estuary English: to the roots of the phenomenon

There are different points of view on the problem; I dare say it is a topic of confrontation. Reading the articles about Estuary, English I was scared: the number of opinions made me sick. All authors consider their investigation the only correct one, so making us, readers, being greatly puzzled. For instance, here is an extract from the work “Estuary English: Hybrid or Hype?” made by J.A. Maidment: “What exactly is EE? Is it an accent of English or is it a dialect? To be fair to Rosewarne he does say that EE pronunciation is generally accompanied by certain vocabulary items, suggesting that he does make a distinction between accent and dialect, but then he makes the claim that EE is marked by a greater use of question tags. This is definitely a matter of syntax and not pronunciation and as such should be a feature of dialect and not accent. Coggle's book is full of examples of supposed EE features which are dialect-based and nothing to do with accent and the confusion can be summed up by quoting one sentence from page 70:

A much more worrying feature of the description of EE by Rosewarne is its naivety…”

The problem was investigated by David Rosewarne, a graduate of Oxford University, and developed by other scholars (Coggle, Wells…). Articles were published in The Sunday Times and then in the major British daily papers, voiced by B.B.C. and the World Service, L.B.C. (London Broadcasting Corporation). Estuary English was illustrated by the “British National Corpus of Spoken English” and introduced by Della Summers from the dictionaries division of Longman Publishers… I do not try to reveal truth; I just want to summaries the facts and attract students’ attention to the very theme.

On the level of individual sounds, or phonemes, “Estuary English” is a mixture of “London” and General RP forms. Although there are individual differences resulting from the speech background and choices of pronunciation made by the speaker, there is a general pattern. Estuary English (EE) is like RP, but unlike Cockney, in being associated with standard grammar and usage; it is like Cockney, but unlike RP (as traditionally described), in being characterized by tendencies towards, for example:

vocalization of preconsonantal/final /l/, perhaps with various vowel mergers before

striking allophony in GOAT (> [QU] before dark /l/ or its reflex), leading perhaps to a phonemic split (wholly holy)

use of [?] for traditional [t] in many non-initial positions (take i' off)

diphthong shift, particularly of the FACE, PRICE and GOAT vowels (wotshor nime?)

yod coalescence even before a stressed /u:/ (Chooseday)

Phonetically EE differs from Cockney in usually not being characterized by, for example,

h-dropping ('and on 'eart)

TH fronting (I fink)

monophthongal realization of the MOUTH vowel (Sahfend).

Vowel qualities in “Estuary English” are a compromise between unmodified regional forms and those of General RP. For example, vowels in final position in “Estuary English” such as the /i:/ in “me” and the second / i:/ in city, are longer than normally found in RP and may tend towards the quality of a diphthong. A caricature of this was used in a recent British television advertisement for “Philadelphia chees-spread’ in which the length of the final vowel in lovely is exaggerated for effect. An Estuary-speaking character uttered the following: “You think you’re veree funnee, but I think you’re prettee sillee”.

The intonation of “Estuary English” is characterized by frequent prominence being given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs which are not normally stressed in General RP. This prominence is often marked to the extent that the nuclear tone (the syllable highlighted by pitch movement) can fall on prepositions. An example of this would be: “Let us get TO the point”. This can cause the problem of communication. An Estuary English interviewee on LBC recently said “Totters have been in operation FOR years”. It was clear from the response of the interviewer that four, rather than the intended for had been perceived. There is a rise fall intonation which is characteristic of “Estuary English” as is a greater use of question tags such is “isn't it?” and “don't I?” than in RP. The pitch of intonation patterns in “Estuary English” appears to be in a narrower frequency band than RP. In particular, rises often do not reach as high a pitch as they would in RP. The overall effect might be interpreted as one of deliberateness and even an apparent lack of enthusiasm.

As the gap between the standard speech and the non-standard speech is narrowing, the division between classes in England may also narrow. As it with other variants, Estuary English can be most clearly heard in comfortable situation like around one family members and closest friends, and less when talking to strangers. One can also find speakers of Estuary English in the House of Commons and it is also used by some members of Lords. As Haenni noted, Estuary English “is not only widespread among students, but it can be heard right across the academic career structure, spoken by professors, deans, even vice chancellors’. Estuary English can more successfully to a certain target audience than an RP accent. I can say, is it a good tendency or not, but the phenomena exists and we should be more informed in the question.

1. 
   Altendorf, Ulrik. “Estuary English: is English Going Cockney?” Moderna Sprak (1999) 12 June-July 2006.
   
2. 
   Asccherson, Neil. “Britain’s Crumbling Ruling Class is Losing the Accent of Authority.” Independent on Sunday (1994). 10 June-July 2006.
   
3. 
   Coggle, Paul. “Do You Speak Estuary?” London: Bloomsbury, 1993.