Estuary English

A VARIETY of British English supposedly originating in the counties adjacent to the estuary of the River Thames, and thus displaying the influence of London regional speech, especially in pronunciation; also called simply Estuary. The name is somewhat misleading (though that has not stopped it being widely used in the media), in that the defining linguistic features (such as the increased use of GLOTTAL stops and the VOCALIZATION of final /-l/) extend well beyond the river throughout much of south-east England, among lower-middle-class speakers, and have been around much longer than the arrival of a new name suggests. It is to be distinguished from working-class Cockney, lacking some of the salient characteristics of that ACCENT, such as the FRONTING of th to /f/. During the late decades of the twentieth century, observers began to notice the presence of Estuary-like features of accent beyond the south-east, interacting with other regional varieties. The parallel spread of non-Estuary features (such as fronted th) indicates that broader issues of language change are involved. The DIFFUSION has been attributed to a variety of factors, such as the greater use of the variety in the media and the increased social contact with it brought about through commuter mobility. The accent achieved considerable public attention during the 1990s, when it was reported that several commercial organizations were finding it a more attractive (‘customer-friendly’) accent than RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (RP). However, although gaining in prestige, it currently remains a regionally marked accent, and is unlikely to replace RP as the high-prestige variety in regions and cities which already have a strong local linguistic identity. RP, meanwhile, is undergoing its own process of change.