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Between Nottin’ Ill Gite and Bleckfriars – the enregisterment of Cockney in the 19th century

  • Johanna Gerwin ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 5, 2023

Abstract

In the 19th century, Cockney, the traditional working-class accent of London, underwent a significant change in how it was perceived and described. At the beginning of the 19th century the public discourse on the Cockney accent was restricted to a few linguistic shibboleths such as the interchange of /w/ and /v/ (represented in spellings such as weal, winegar, or vell) and h-dropping, and mentioned by orthoepists and orthographically reproduced by some novelists. By the end of the 19th century, detailed Cockney descriptions and depictions had emerged, leading to the social and cultural construction – the enregisterment – of the Cockney dialect. This paper documents this process by systematically analysing various types of published meta-discourse for both the linguistic forms (shibboleths) mentioned and the social meanings associated with them, especially in the form of so-called ‘characterological figures of personhood’. It further analyses conflicting language ideologies that Cockney was subject to in the 19th century, and which influenced its enregisterment process.


Corresponding author: Johanna Gerwin, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK, E-mail:

Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Award Identifier / Grant number: Forschungsstipendium 2021

Funding source: German Historical Institute London

Award Identifier / Grant number: post-doctoral scholarship 2020

  1. Research funding: This study was funded by the German Historical Institute London (post-doctoral scholarship 2020) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Forschungsstipendium 2021).

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Received: 2022-01-10
Accepted: 2022-05-24
Published Online: 2023-05-05

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