Cockney influence on Standard English. A Survey of native speakers speech

Abstract

Languages in contact can influence each other and produce linguistic changes by the adoption of new features not only in terms of grammar, but also in accent and speech forms. The present paper thoroughly focuses on this issue. Specifically, it deals with Standard English, Received Pronunciation and Cockney. Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse how the Cockney accent, born in a specific area in the city of London, has been spread over areas of South England and it has influenced Standard English as well as Received Pronunciation on many locations. Taking all these aspects into account, a theoretical review of these dialects and all the aspects related to them is firstly provided in the introduction section. After that, an experiment with eight English native speakers either from London or living in London, in the present day, is carried out and explained in the method section. On this experiment, participants are interviewed and recorded with the purpose to check if they have been influenced by Cockney and they have adopted some Cockney features in their pronunciation. In the results section, the results obtained from this experiment are exposed. Our results show that not always, in all the situations the whole range of informants coincide fulfilling the same features, nevertheless, they produce some of the most important variants analysed along the paper. The last part of the paper is a conclusion to show that speakers have truly been influenced by this Cockney dialect and important changes have taken place and are still taking place in Standard English.