Linguistic Circle

Speaker: Christian Ilbury (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Mapping the spread of Multicultural London English in Twitter data

Abstract: There is now a considerable amount of research on the new ‘multiethnolect’ spoken in London, what has been termed: ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE; see inter alia Cheshire et al., 2008; 2011; Cheshire, 2013; Gates, 2018; Ilbury, 2019; Oxbury, 2021). More recent research has also drawn similarities between MLE and varieties of English spoken elsewhere, such as in Manchester and Birmingham, leading some to argue for a more general ‘Multicultural (Urban) British English’ or M(U)BE (Drummond, 2018). However, the mechanisms of the spread and possible diffusion of MLE are still poorly understood. In this talk, I focus on two main questions: Has MLE diffused across the UK? And, if so, what are the social, linguistic, and cultural mechanisms of that diffusion?

To answer these questions, I draw on findings from a collaborative research project with Jack Grieve (Birmingham) and David Hall (QMUL). In the present paper, we use a corpus of 180 million geolocated tweets totaling 1.8 billion words (Grieve et al. 2019) to explore the spread and (possible) diffusion of MLE, focusing on lexis typically found in the variety (e.g., ‘paigon’, ‘yute’, ‘fam’, ‘ting’).

Our findings suggest that whilst MLE-type lexis may be found elsewhere in the UK, these words appear to have emerged in London, particularly in areas where there are sizeable Black populations, and spread out from the city to other urban centres where there are established African and African-Caribbean communities. Subsequently, the spread does not appear to be predicted by the density of the area alone nor the area’s relative geographical distance to London but rather the ethnic and social diversity of the urban centre and the likelihood of friendship and familial ties of residents (cf. Trudgill, 1974: Gravity model; Schmidt, 1872: Wave model).

Finally, I briefly consider these findings with reference to my work in progress on the ‘recontextualisation’ (Bauman & Briggs, 1990) of MLE and the relevance of Black (youth) culture in the diffusion and commodification of the variety beyond London.

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