The ‘new’ Cockney

Abstract

As discussed in Chapter 1, the term ‘Cockney’ is difficult to define and it has become increasingly more difficult in an area which is now described as ‘the world in a city’ (Greater London Authority 2005) and within the super-diversity (Vertovec 2007) that is London’s population in the 21st century. The term Cockney has traditionally been applied to the broadest form of the working-class dialect of the innermost suburbs of East London (the ‘East End’), the area contained within the modern day borough of Tower Hamlets. Speakers of this dialect have also traditionally been referred to as ‘Cockneys’. Today, however, references to the East End tend to cover the whole area east and northeast of the city of London, spreading into much of urbanised south Essex (see Map 1.1, Chapter 1). The reason for this change in perception of what constitutes the East End is connected to large-scale population movements since the 1950s. As a consequence, this has also had implications for the change in perception of what it means to be a Cockney.