Research Interests
My primary research interest is in historical
sociolinguistics as it relates to contemporary language variation and change in
English. My research has focused on the social and historical contexts that
have led to the variety of English that is spoken today in London. Both language
and dialect contact frameworks have been of prime importance for this research
- what are the long-term linguistic consequences when
speakers of different accents, dialects and even different languages come
together? Within the Variationist paradigm, I focus on documenting, analysing
and accounting for variation in pronunciation as well as discourse and
grammatical features among speakers of various social and ethnic backgrounds. I
am interested in tracking changes in progress and the social and historical
processes that bring about language change, particularly in a multicultural
urban environment such as London.
![](../userfiles/H_Dropping_image.jpg)
This image comes from Punch magazine 1855. It provides an
insight into people's attitudes towards 'h' dropping as a marker of social class
and is a feature often considered to be typical of the Cockney
dialect.
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