MULTICULTURAL LONDON ENGLISH AND English as a lingua Franca ODYSSEAS ASITHIANAKIS 1563201600013

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA BACKROUND INFORMATION, ASPECTS AND CONNECTION TO MLE

Background and reasons Britain as a trading and colonial power from the 16th to the 20th century USA as a modern global superpower from WW2 onwards English as the language of the internet in the 20th and the 21st centuries English as the language of social media in the 21st century Identity amidst globalization The British Empire in 1919 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/08/map-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-british-empire

Enl AND ESL, EAL, EFL “Englishes” The Concentric Circles of English: Inner, Outer, Expanding (Kachru, 1985) Inner: Mother-tongue status Outer: Institutionalized/Co-official variety Expanding: Increasingly high status Euro-English (coined by Carstensen in 1986) Blank map from http://educypedia.karadimov.info

Characteristics of elf New ‘mathetic’ function beyond the original, as a means of communication (Kachru, 1985, Smith, 2008) Extensive variation and non-standard features (Ian Mackenzie, English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and Teaching English, Routledge, 2014) ELF as a new dialectal/accentual variety of English (?)

PHONOLOGY OF ELF ELF INTEL LIGI BILITY LINGUA FRANCA CORE (Jenkins, 2000) /θ,ð/ in initial position tend to be replaced by /t,d,f,v/ Rules of aspiration apply to fortis plosives /p,t,k/ in utterance initial position /r/ always pronounced (LIKE GENERAL AMERICAN ENGLISH) /t/ to be uttered precisely between vowel sounds ( /bætɹ̩ / or consonant clusters (/sprɪntɹ̩ /) Dark l substituted by clear l or even /ʊ/ Schwas can be added in-between consonants, such as pәrɒ’dɪkәtә JAPANESE INFLUENCE? Schwa can be added at the end of a word, such as best /bestә/ ITALIAN INFLUENCE? Vowel length is very important 3:

Cause and Effect? ELF MLE

Multicultural London ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT AND CONNECTION TO ELF

ORIGINS Hackney, London the original location Influx of immigrants from the Caribbean, Asia etc in the 1970s Segregation of white “Anglo” speakers and non-“Anglo” and English L2 speakers in the 1980s The linguistic make-up of Hackney had started to shift in the 1990s 26 different recorded mother tongues in the 2000s 88 different recorded mother tongues including many creoles in 2011. 63.8% of the population identify as non-white [Cheshire, J., Hall, D., & Adger, D. (2017)]

Background INFORMATION In the 70s and 80s children of immigrants were bidialectal, adhering to their native English variety, but adopting local London accent elements. In the decades that followed, the social environment affected the linguistic change of the Hackney dialect (that resembled Cockney) towards a mix of local and non-local elements School children of the early 2000s didn’t have a target variety (such as Cockney), but formulated their idiolect collecting parts of every variety they were exposed to The “feature pool” theory (Mufwene, 2011) Teenagers in multi-ethnic urban peer groups choose to mix linguistic forms spoken by their group’s members, as a way to create and balance their identity, or do “crossing” (Rampton, 2005). As this generation grows, linguistic tendencies are solidified Multicultural London English (MLE) - Multicultural Urban British English (Drummond, 2016) Language, primarily, as a tool for communication

MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES IN MLE ‘MAN’: new pronoun with multiple functions, used to emphasize the meaning ‘THIS IS+QUOTE’: new way to quote expressively ‘WHO’: regained presence, determiner of the topic of the following clauses ‘INNIT’: extensive use to place emphasis on preceding noun ‘blood’ and ‘bredren’ (‘friend’) ‘cuss’ (‘defame’) ‘ends’ (‘estate’ or ‘neighbourhood’) ‘tief’ (‘steal’) ‘whagwan’ (‘what’s up’). [Cheshire, J., Hall, D., & Adger, D. (2017)]

PHONOLOGY OF MLE PHONEMES AND THEIR REALIZATION IN MULTICULTURAL LONDON ENGLISH

ELEMENTS COMMON WITH ELF /θ, ð/ realized as /t,d/ ( TH-FRONTING) Rules of aspiration apply to fortis plosives /p,t,k/ in utterance initial position /t/ to be uttered precisely between vowel sounds ( /bætɹ̩ /) or consonant clusters BUT MAINLY WHEN MPHASIS IS INTENDED THREAD BOTTLE COTTON

ELEMENTS FROM LOCAL DIALECTS Combination of Cockney and RP elements, with influence of non- British varieties, especially Asian and African communities Use of the glottal stop /ʔ/ in fast speech COCKNEY No h dropping, but h over-pronunciation WORLD ENGLISHES l vocalization: all /o/ BOTH Monophthongization of diphthongs: face /fε:s/ COCKNEY Realization of {a,an} as /ə/ RP ELEMENTS USED IN EMPHATIC SPEECH (CLARITY?)