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Webinar: Can we save Cockney?

Posted on 5 March 2021

Linguists explore the claim made in 2010 that Cockney would disappear within 30 years

On 3rd February 2021, Prof Paul Kerswill took part in a webinar as part of a 'Can we save Cockney?' campaign run by Andy Green of Grow Social Capital, a social enterprise in London. The event was partly designed to explore his claim back in 2010 that Cockney would disappear within 30 years, to be replaced by Multicultural London English, or 'MLE'. 

In the event Prof. Kerswill explained that the answer to the query was that Cockney remains in the East End of London, albeit transformed by the postwar immigrants and their descendants into what we now call MLE. At the same time, the migration eastwards of the earlier East End population to the county of Essex means that Cockney has also been 'transplanted' to the east. 

In the webinar, Prof. Kerswill was joined by Christopher Strelluf (University of Warwick) and Amanda Cole (University of Essex), who had herself researched the language of the 'Cockney diaspora' in Essex.

Click her to watch the recording of the webinar: Can we save Cockney?

To read more about the event: How I am learning to rewrite the story of me, cockney, and to give it a future tense