1. MULTICULTURAL LONDON ENGLISH AND English as a lingua Franca
ODYSSEAS ASITHIANAKIS

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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 (?)

6. 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:

7. Cause
and Effect?
ELF
MLE

8. Multicultural London ENGLISH
DEVELOPMENT AND CONNECTION TO ELF

9. 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 % of the population identify
as non-white [Cheshire, J., Hall, D., & Adger, D. (2017)]

10. 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, ).
As this generation grows, linguistic tendencies are solidified
Multicultural London English (MLE) - Multicultural Urban British English (Drummond, )
Language, primarily, as a tool for communication

11. 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)]

12. PHONOLOGY OF MLE
PHONEMES AND THEIR REALIZATION IN MULTICULTURAL LONDON ENGLISH

13. 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

14. 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?)