Mul$cultural  London  English  in  the  news:  from  exci$ng  new  dialect  to  agent  of  war  

Paul  Kerswill  University  of  York  

LUCIDE Final conference: the future of the multilingual city

LSE 10–11 September 2014

Mul6cultural  London  English:  

•  What  is  it?  

•  What’s  it  like?  

•  Who  speaks  it?  

•  When  did  it  start?  

•  Are  non-­‐standard  accents  OK?  

•  The  role  of  MLE  in  news  stories  

•  What  hope  MLE  speakers?  

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London’s  mul6ethnolect:  Mul6cultural  London  English  

•  The  term  mul$ethnolect  was  first  used  by  Clyne  (2000)  

•  In  northwest  Europe,  ‘mul6ethnolect’  is  widely  applied  to  the  speech  of  young  people  living  in  mul6cultural  and  mul6lingual  districts  of  large  ci6es  

•  It’s  a  variety  of  the  host  language,  formed  in  a  community  with  a  high  propor6on  of  2nd  language  speakers  

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Who  speaks  it  and  when?  

•  Mul6ethnolects  occupy  a  con6nuum:  

 •  Vernacular  speakers  of  Mul6cultural  London  English  (MLE)  are  usually  working  class  

•  Elements  of  MLE,  especially  slang,  available  to  other  speakers,  including  middle  class,  as  style  

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Vernacular variety

Youth style

Labels    •  Pejora6ve  terms  (invented,  or  at  least  propagated  by  the  media):  – Kanak  Sprak    – Kebabnorsk  – Smurfentaal    –  Jafaican  (origin  obscure!)  

•  Academics’  terms:  – Kiezdeutsch  (Wiese  2012)  –  rinkebysvenska  (Kotsinas  1989)  – straa:aal  (Cornips  et  al.)  – Mul*cultural  London  English  (Kerswill/Cheshire)  

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•   Indefinite  pronoun  man:  I  don’t  really  mind  how  my  girl  looks…..it’s  her  personality  man’s  looking  at  

•   This  is  +  Speaker  quota6ve:  This  is  me  I’m  from  east  London  

•   Pronuncia$on:  • Strikingly  different  diphthongs  in  e.g.  coat,  face,  price,  mouth  • Use  of  ‘h’  in  e.g.  go  home,  my  house  …  

What  is  MLE  like?  

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Zack: well they say I physically attacked my headteacher but I didn’t like I had a fight with him it was a fight it weren’t just me beating him up it was a fight cos like cos like but that’s why I didn’t get arrested or nothing

Sue: what happened then? Zack: no it was like it was the end of school yeah so that school’s finished yeah

and everyone was going home and I was getting my bike from the bike rack and I was going out and I was riding my bike and he stopped my bike I was like “yeah” and he goes “get off the bike” I was like “why am I getting off the bike I’m going home now like I’ve gotta go home” yeah

he was like “no get off the bike walk the bike outside of school” I was like “what’s the point?” yeah cos like it’s quite far like to get out the school from the entrance like in the school yeah and he goes “ah no get off the bike” yeah

so like he kind of shoved me off the bike so I dropped it but I didn’t fall over like but I kind of stumbled yeah and he put his he tried to take my bike up to his office like he was gonna keep my bike there

I was like “nah” like and this time everyone was gathering round cos we were shouting at each other yeah he was like “no I’m taking your bike upstairs” I was like “what’s the point in that when I’m just gonna take it back downstairs” so I must have pulled the bike off him yeah and I put it I put it I leant it up against the wall yeah and I walked over to him and this is me “what what’s your what’s your problem?” and he goes “I don't like you” I was like “I don't like you” yeah so I just swung for him and then we like but we had a fight though [Sue: did you] and I got kicked out of school like I weren’t allowed into any school that’s why I came here last year

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Zack, 17 Hackney 2005

When  did  it  start?  •  1950s  on:  Anglos  (white  Bri6sh)  and  African-­‐Caribbeans  (mainly  from  Jamaica)  formed  the  most  numerous  groups  

•  Their  linguis6c  repertoires  differed:  – Both  Anglos  and  African-­‐Caribbeans:  Cockney  

– African-­‐Caribbeans:  ‘London  Jamaican’  or  ‘Patois’  

•  No  MLE  yet  8

The  view  from  academe,  c.  1984  

•  Mark  Sebba  and  Roger  Hewih  recognised  the  existence  of  this  repertoire  –  a  kind  of  code-­‐switching  

•  But  noted  an  intermediate  ‘Black  Cockney’  or  ‘mul6ethnic/mul6racial  vernacular’  

– Apparently  for  use  in  adolescent  peer  groups  only  – So  not  actually  a  na6ve  dialect,  but  more  a  style  

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A  criminologist  speaks  

•  John  Pihs  notes  the  start  of  a  new  youth  language  among  young  black  people  in  the  East  End  in  the  early  1980s,  when  their  deteriora6ng  social  posi6on  was  preven6ng  them  from  living  up  to  their  parents’  expecta6ons  

•  Pihs  argues  that  the  new  dialect  reflects  a  ‘resistance  iden6ty’.    

 •  hhp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd3SJ6qakyY  (29  minutes  in)    

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Tracing  Mul6cultural  London  English  in  Bri6sh  newspapers        Kerswill,  Paul.  2014.  The  objec6fica6on  of  ‘Jafaican’:  the  discoursal  embedding  of  Mul6cultural  London  English  in  the  Bri6sh  media.  In  Androutsopoulos,  Jannis  (ed.)  The  Media  and  Sociolinguis$c  Change.  Berlin:  De  Gruyter,  pp.  428–455.    

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The  mul6ethnolect  in  the  papers  

•  Nexis  UK  database  

•  I  searched  for  Jafaican  (Jafaikan)  and  Mul$cultural  London  English  in  July  2012  

–  62  ar6cles  contained  at  least  one  occurrence  of  Jafaican  

–  29  contained  Mul$cultural  London  English,  of  which  20  also  contained  Jafaican.    

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Jafaican  pushes  out  Cockney  

 THE  Cockney  accent  is  being  pushed  out  of  its  heartland  by  a  new  kind  of  speech.      Playgrounds  and  housing  estates  of  London  are  alive  with  the  sound  of  an  accent  that  sounds  Jamaican  with  flavours  from  West  Africa  and  India.      The  Standard  can  reveal  that  this  new  English  variety  is  replacing  Cockney  in  inner  London,  as  more  white  children  adopt  the  speech  paherns  and  vocabulary  of  their  black  neighbours  and  classmates.      Teachers  have  dubbed  the  phenomenon  Jafaican  and  TV's  Ali  G  would  understand  it  perfectly.    

Evening  Standard  10th  April  2006          

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Jafaican  as  contemporary,  classless,  modern,  stylish  

It's  significant  that  the  message-­‐board  of  the  new  Englishness  is  MySpace,  the  social  networking  website  that  somehow  flahens  out  the  tradi6onal  nuances  of  class    differen6a6on.  It's  there,  too,  in  the  magpie  lexicon  from  which  the  lyrics  are  drawn,  with  many  of  them  delivered  in  the  fer6le  hybrid  of  Cockney,  the  Queen's  English  and  pretend  Jamaican  -­‐  what's  it  called?  Jafaican?  -­‐  that  is  the  lingua  franca  of  young  southern  England.  

Daily  Telegraph  23rd  December  2006  14  

Jafaican  and  people  ‘in  the  know’  End-­‐of-­‐year  quiz  in  the  Evening  Standard,  24th  December  2010:  

 ‘How  did  Nang,  Greezy  and  Buhers  triumph  in  2010?    a)  They  are  the  producers  who  work  on  the  X  Factor  winner's  recordings.    b)  They  are  the  stars  of  a  new  CBeebies  show.    c)  They  are  "street"  or  "Jafaican"  expressions  which  have  overtaken  Cockney  slang  terms.    d)  They  are  ingredients  popularised  by  Delia  Smith  in  her  last  Waitrose  promo6on.’  

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Jafaican  associated  with  ‘bad’  social  prac6ces  

•  The  Independent  on  Sunday  on  5th  June  2011:  

 Although  it  [a  sitcom  for  children]  dealt  with  teenage  sex  -­‐  or  the  lack  of  it  -­‐  drugs,  and  parental  rebellion,  steered  clear  of  any  real  issues,  so  there  was  no  "Jafaican"  spoken,  no  stabbings  or  gun  crime,  no  teenage  abor6on.  

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Jafaican  and  the  far  right  

 Cockneys Have Become First British Group to be Ethnically Cleansed

hhp://www.bnp.org.uk/news/cockneys-­‐have-­‐become-­‐first-­‐bri6sh-­‐group-­‐be-­‐ethnically-­‐cleansed    The  Cockney  culture  and  language  has  been  ethnically  cleansed  from  London’s  East  End  as  mass  Third  World  immigra6on  has  pushed  white  people  into  minority  status  and  destroyed  the  world-­‐famous  accent.  

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Time  Out,  2nd  August  2012  

•  Welcome  to  The  London  Ci6zenship  Test.      ......      You  have  already  demonstrated  adequate  speaking  and  listening  skills  in  London's  three  key  dialects  (Estuarine,  Mockney  and  Jafaican)  and,  having  ahained  level  two  Posh,  are  able  to  buy  shoes  confidently  in  Knightsbridge  ...    ......  

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Starkey,  Jamaican  and  the  riots:  just  how  wrong  could  he  be?        TEDx  talk,  September  2011:  Who’s  an  East  Ender  now?  Migra6on  and  the  transforma6on  of  the  Cockney  dialect  

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David  Starkey  comments  on  the  London  riots,  Newsnight,  13  August  2011    

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David  Starkey:  

•  ‘The  whites  have  become  black.  A  par6cular  sort  of  violent,  destruc6ve,  nihilis6c,  gangster  culture  has  become  the  fashion,  and  black  and  white,  boy  and  girl,  operate  in  this  language  together,  this  language  which  is  wholly  false,  which  is  this  Jamaican  patois  that  has  been  intruded  in  England,  and  that  is  why  so  many  of  us  have  this  sense  of,  literally,  a  foreign  country.’  

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Linguist  Geoff  Pullum  on  Starkey  (THE,  18  August  2011)    

•  ‘Did  Starkey  really  mean  what  he  said?  Well,  he  gave  an  addi6onal  clear  indica6on  of  believing  that  the  dangerous  blacks  are  marked  out  by  their  patois,  while  safe  ones  such  as  the  MP  for  Tohenham  speak  white  English.  “Listen  to  David  Lammy,  an  archetypical  successful  black  man,”  he  said  in  his  defence:  “if  you  turned  the  screen  off,  so  that  you  were  listening  to  him  on  radio,  you'd  think  he  was  white.”  ...’  

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(Pullum)  

•  ‘It  doesn't  seem  to  have  been  a  misunderstanding:  Starkey  honestly  appears  to  believe  that  the  Jamaican  linguis6c  paherns  he  (wrongly)  imagines  he  is  hearing  from  young  white  Londoners  come  with  a  cultural  infec6on  that  will  help  induce  them  to  burn  down  a  carpet  shop.’  

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Starkey’s  double  mistake  

•  He  is  hearing  ‘Jamaican’,  when  actually  he’s  hearing  MLE  

– Wrong  ahribu6on  of  foreignness  

•  He  ascribes  a  violent  disposi6on  directly  to  the  language    

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19  August  2014  •  James  Foley’s  killer  is  heard  speaking  with  a  Bri6sh  accent  

•  Linguists  (myself  included)  widely  interviewed,  and  iden6fied  the  jihadist  in  the  video  as  a  speaker  of  Mul6cultural  London  English  

•  ‘Mul6cultural  London  English’  appears  dozens  of  6mes  on  the  Internet  closely  associated  with  the  jihadist  

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Consequences  •  Media  exposure  makes  accents  more  recognisable  

•  Media  discourses  strongly  guide  the  way  an  accent  is  perceived  socially  

•  MLE  has  become  nega6vely  stereotyped,  ayer  a  brief  ‘honeymoon’  back  in  2006  when  the  term  was  first  used  by  the  press  

•  The  riots  and  (especially)  the  explicit  men6on  of  MLE  in  the  context  of  the  Foley  killing  will  accelerate  the  nega6ve  stereotyping   26  

•  Cheshire,  Jenny,  Kerswill,  Paul,  Fox,  Susan  &  Torgersen,  Eivind.  2011.  Contact,  the  feature  pool  and  the  speech  community:  The  emergence  of  Mul6cultural  London  English.  Journal  of  Sociolinguis$cs  15/2:  151–196.  

•  Kerswill,  Paul.  2013.  Iden6ty,  ethnicity  and  place:  the  construc6on  of  youth  language  in  London.  In  P.  Auer,  M.  Hilpert,  A.  Stukenbrock  &  B.  Szmrecsanyi  (eds).  Space  in  language  and  linguis$cs:  geographical,  interac$onal,  and  cogni$ve  perspec$ves.  Berlin:  de  Gruyter,  pp.  128-­‐164.    

•  Kerswill,  Paul.  2014.  The  objec6fica6on  of  ‘Jafaican’:  the  discoursal  embedding  of  Mul6cultural  London  English  in  the  Bri6sh  media.  In  Androutsopoulos,  Jannis  (ed.)  The  Media  and  Sociolinguis$c  Change.  Berlin:  De  Gruyter,  pp.  428–455.    

•  Green,  Jonathon.  2014.  Mul6cultural  London  English:  the  new  ‘youthspeak’.  In  Coleman,  Julie  (ed.).  Global  English  slang:  methodologies  and  perspec$ves.  London:  Routledge,  pp.  49–61.    

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