TEDxEastEnd - Paul Kerswill - Who's an Eastender now?

so in this talk I'm going to try to show how a socially informed linguistics can help us to understand what went on a little bit better than we would have done otherwise this of course is not the place I would have started from I wouldn't have started from the riots but actually the riots provide a useful springboard powerful springboard I would say language in London has been a political issue for a long time now so things like funding for support in the schools English okay that is sort of fairly less ofer these days I think in any one borough of London there are at least 100 different languages spoken and across the capital capital schools there are about 300 languages so very highly multilingual place but now suddenly languages has become a part of the public discourse about the riots unloose night on the 13th of August and the historian David Starkey said the following as part of his analysis of the riots in London the whites have become black a particular sort of violent destructive nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black a white boy and girl operate in this language together this language which is wholly false which is a Jamaican Patois that has been intruded in England and that's why so many of us had the sense of literally a foreign country Starkey was was not surprisingly widely criticised by commentators of all sorts and people saw racism in these comments here he also seems to be linking Jamaican Creole directly with bad behavior linking now the linking language and behavior isn't a new thing and actually not too much ethnicity as social class that's important here it's well known that the working-class accents of our country hold a certain stigma not for speakers perhaps but for outsiders and potential employers perhaps as well so many people think it's alright to lampoon heard that we're bein lumping cockneys BrahMos scousers glass regions and to call Bristow Lien's country bumpkins this is sort of okay and in fact that show and that one things they actually did they made fun of country dialects it's sort of okay to do that now it's probably also observational ii true that if we go to a prison that will actually hear a higher proportion of urban accents spoken in prison than among the population at large so this leads to a false logical conclusion that actually speaking an urban dialect is potential potentially part of criminality okay now i don't think that anyone in this room would really subscribe to of you like that but it's something that Starkey is a trap starchy falls directly into by talking about jamaican okay anyway at least our rational selves wouldn't wouldn't actually fall into that trap but attitude to language are tenacious things they run deep and their subconscious very difficult to dislodge so how can a linguist redress the balance and provide evidence that supports a different view and what i'm going to say it isn't simply my instinctive reaction against the controversial position expression on the television program it's the fruit of research on the language of london's inner city adolescents carried out by colleagues at Queen Mary University of London which is just down the road from here these are the two projects supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and over time span of off some six years or so okay why did we do this well one of the things we're interested in was this idea of estuary English which is something some of you've probably heard of so just to give examples of some ester English vowels a phrase like I'm going home alright estuary ins might say I'm going home with us what we call a front vowel okay in dialectology phonetics another pronunciation that we often find in the Southeast of England is the word like food and I say food but many people around here say food okay it sounds a little bit French almost and good food then would be a an estuary English pronunciation we were interested in knowing does this actually come from London okay dialectology tells us that innovations start in cities does it's that it spread from here out to the Home Counties where we heard these pronunciations what was it that we actually found what we've done these recordings then with people from okay young people for Hackney and herring day and also from Havering in the outer city so here are some words and I'm now going to attempt to pronounce these in estuary English stroke cockney and then I'm also going to attempt to show them in a kind of accent that we heard okay so they take the very first one first of all he come through dies like he come free Beasley okay second one she lives in the house on Neil she lives in the house Underhill he thinks he's always white he thinks it's always right a nun that likes to cook good food then one likes to cook good food I don't want to go home I don't want to go home okay the main differences there are in the vowel sounds but you might also notice that I dropped my H's to start with and then when I when I did the sort of modern version of that I didn't drop my anxious young Londoners don't drop their H's anymore that's amazes me but they don't so they speak good English in that respect in spite of what Professor Starkey said and young Londoners and also use things okay some surprising things all right they use man in a way that reminds of German actually I don't really mind how how my bro look so she looks decent yeah I don't really care it it's a personality mans looking at okay we have a few examples like that which I think would really surprise you something else we find I just looked at them I just looked the money I was like you just gave me one thousand pounds met here you are I was like four I said many people in this room say that regularly but what we also found was in London this is then what area from what part this is me I'm from East London okay that is a new what we call it quote ative okay that seems to be it's the letter in the background there but it's something that we hear quite a lot of these days right where do these things come from the Jamaican a Starkey would have us believe no they are not what about what about the slang words okay well we have some good candidates for Jamaican here these are Jamaican all right their blood ught Mandan but young Londoners talk about my ends okay where they live that is not Jamaican as far as I know I've been told that it isn't that it's homegrown English so where are these vowel sounds come from that I mentioned well okay I mentioned the expression go home something and as an old type violin sort of an o-type vowel could be Jamaican and word like ace would pronounce a face that could possibly be Jamaican but Jamaicans accidentals a fierce an own instead of the vowels I've just been using but they are they could well be West African they could be Bangladeshi they could be anybody who's learning English as a second language from anywhere in the world really this a pronunciation of food for food while at homegrown English that's a South of England change that happens been happening in that last 30 years or so and we're not alone in talking about this new London voice as a mixed multi-ethnic dialect Catherine Bebel Singh is a well-known blogger for The Telegraph and says the following and this would this is just contrast this with what Starkey says she writes has David Starkey ever been to Jamaica my mother is Jamaican and I can assure you that she sounds nothing like an out-of-control kids for one the accents dark he's talking about is specific to London to the accent is uniquely English it's a kind of fusion of many cultures including cockney eastern speech okay now one thing that is that purple thing is the write about and that stark is probably right about it is that it does sound black why does it actually sound black it doesn't necessary for people in the East End of London but it sounds black to other people let's look at a bit of history now then London's been the target of of immigration for five centuries more than that okay now it appears that apart from a few - words like nosh kosher glitch there wasn't really very much from other languages in the English of London that has changed what is it that changed now in the last 25 years something like that something to do with the Empire Windrush which was saw a picture of earlier the people from the Caribbean were the first post-war migrants first group of people who came in relatively large numbers post-war we also have the growth of music you something something called separate youth culture is something that's post Second World War it probably started in America so those people sort of with founders if you like and so it's probably no surprise in fact that even though the West lack that the West Indians the Caribbeans are not the largest ethnic minority anymore fair music certainly sets the tone it sets a tone linguistically as well we think now how can this be okay right a couple of factors here immigration okay what this shows us is that in Hackney which is earn it we should I believe I'll be in Hackney here I'm not even sure here I'm okay roughly half less just less than half the population can be classified as white British but in other london Havering it's much greater high concentration and secondly and the blue areas here are so-called European Union objective two areas which means they are in have been in receipt of extra funding so one of the issues then so what happened then why do then why do argue these two factors high concentration and like a lack of income lead to the creation of a new way of speaking well it has to do with the communities which have grown up in this part of London okay they don't have the amount of in don't have the disposable wealth if you like to take part or to really sort of circulate all that much so we have communities here which are not a lingual self-reliant family based using ethnicity ties as well so and okay so that is that's a reason why we have this and the fact that the was a Caribbeans who came here first probably has something to do with with the fact that it's that is perceived as this new way of speaking is perceived as black right now what do young what the young people say about this where does this leave the East End EastEnders cockney the cockney dialect okay where has it gone are these young people who are growing up here are they in fact cockneys this is what they sort of feel them said on the matter and come on move someone's helping me thank you right this is an extract from the book one of the interviews okay so interview says what about the cotton isn't do you think your cotton is no I hate them isn't isn't Essex science or not Hackney's patents not really cockney okay so you hate cotton is what what can we describe a cotton e then why Chavis that's one word I hate them are there any in this area there's there's loads in it loads there's black cockney people as well oh there's black cockney people as well though where the pot where who let the cotton people come from EastEnders I thought it was Essex the best of all Bethel Greenbow in places like that yeah so that they are quite clear one is black one is white out of these two boys and they're clear they're not cotton ease okay so what about this this is another that what about the programme EastEnders and soothe interviewer asks what about the programme these fenders and it's a bunch of a bill to me it's boring do the people around here speak like that do you think some people but that's what I say they try and copy it and try and be like EastEnders who talks like the people in EastEnders around here well the people that want to be cockney well what's that mainly older people or younger people no older like in-between T in between teens in adulthood would do it teens more than nowadays they want to talk slang more than cockney when you're getting older you wonder you look back and you think oh I don't want to talk slang so they try and and be cockney okay so this is Rollo complicated argument here and it's got to do with the idea that properly spoken by slightly older people that he but an inter incidentally Roland is black but he he sees the possibility of becoming cockney as he grows older okay it's interesting they are not companies these people themselves okay so what what are they then let's look at the next quote and this is my my final quote they're asked to read a word list okay so mark reads the word list and then his team is turn alright then all of these words as naturally as you can Tina then addresses mark do you know you actually sound it cockney when you were saying the first words mark and then it went in this deeper voice is it yeah alright ready and then and then she starts reading in a mock cockney voice and mark says no that's not really her own way of speaking and Tina laughs all right and then she continues in a mock received pronunciation voice neither is that you've got to say it normal and then she continues when the mock are peepers there's no point in doing it if you're not doing it right okay and then in the end she's persuaded to read it in her normal voice her normal voice and his normal voice is what we call multicultural London English okay mmm Ellie multicultural London English Jeff akin was another word that should probably heard for this right so to close then David Sparky's objections objections was that he Percy what he perceived his Jamaican Patois is put on and force well he said it's something that had been intruded into England well that he's wrong on every count for a start it's not Jamaican Patois quite clear about that it's not put on its own and grown is not intruded or foreign so what I would say then about the vernacular English London is that it it forms part of young people's identities and it is it reflects the melting part of the East End and you can see that from the different words that are different pronunciations and so on it's this is this is how this is a situation in which young people are actually learning English in this in this part of the city it cuts across ethnicity and race and people the way that totally shows us that in fact they feel that this this way of speaking is theirs they don't really have a name for it slang is that is the word they use but it's not the case that they're all ethnicities speak this in the same way as long as race is important in in in the world there are ways of speaking multicultural London English which varies they vary slightly across across the different ethnicities that said these people believe that this is very much their language thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 25,823

Rating: 4.9207921 out of 5

Keywords: English, UK, London, migrants, TEDxEastEnd, ted talk, Eastender, ted, East, Borders, ted x, Language, tedx talk, dialects, Society, Sociolinguist, Education, Social, migration, End, tedx, Beyond, Sociolinguistics, tedx talks, ted talks, Culture, Change, History, Community, Cockney

Id: hAnFbJ65KYM

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2011