Introduction

Abstract

This study provides a sociolinguistic account of speech variation among adolescents in what I will refer to as the ‘traditional’ East End of London. The term East End was, in its first conception, applied to the hamlets immediately to the east of the medieval walled City of London. The boundaries of the East End were the City to the west, the River Thames to the south, a park forming a natural demarcation to the north and the River Lea to the east. Today, this area corresponds to the borough of Tower Hamlets and the southern part of the neighbouring borough of Hackney. It is also the area that is traditionally associated with the Cockney dialect and its working-class inhabitants, also known as ‘Cockneys’. I emphasise this point because the term East End has, in more recent times, commonly been extended to cover a much wider geographical area, probably due to the ‘diaspora’ of East Enders who moved further east to the suburbs or to the new purpose-built overspill estates there. Furthermore, the term Cockney has become synonymous with working-class accents heard in those areas and is no longer confined to the traditional area with which it was once associated.