Recent research has suggested that two linguistic processes are displacing Cockney: the emergence of Multicultural London English (MLE) in inner London and dialect levelling (e.g. Kerswill & Williams 2005). This study investigates firstly whether Cockney phonetic features have ‘moved East’ to Essex (Fox 2015), and secondly the features’ indexicality in relation to place and identity. Fifty-four participants from Debden, an outpost of the Cockney Diaspora, completed a sociolinguistic interview. Vowel measurements were made from a wordlist and passage, and quantitative attitudinal and qualitative data were extracted from a questionnaire and interviews. Overall, changes in identity as a result of social change exceeded linguistic changes, and linguistic labels were not interpreted uniformly across the community. Whilst Cockney variants were largely maintained in young speakers, they were transposed onto an ‘Essex’ accent. Furthermore, some young women but no young men considered themselves Cockney, likely due to the matrifocal nature of Cockney. (Cockney, phonetic variation and change, dialect levelling, identity, indexicality, gender)

中文翻译：

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伦敦侨民的语音变异和变化：地点、性别和身份的作用

最近的研究表明，有两个语言过程正在取代 Cockney：伦敦市中心多元文化伦敦英语 (MLE) 的出现和方言分级（例如 Kerswill & Williams 2005）。本研究首先调查了 Cockney 语音特征是否已经“向东移动”到 Essex (Fox 2015)，其次是特征与地点和身份相关的索引性。来自伦敦侨民前哨 Debden 的 54 名参与者完成了社会语言学访谈。元音测量是根据单词表和段落进行的，定量态度和定性数据是从问卷和访谈中提取的。总体而言，社会变化导致的身份变化超过了语言变化，语言标签并未在整个社区中得到统一解释。虽然 Cockney 变体主要保留在年轻的演讲者中，但它们被转换为“Essex”口音。此外，一些年轻女性但没有年轻男性认为自己是伦敦人，这可能是由于伦敦人的母系性质。（Cockney，语音变化和变化，方言平衡，身份，索引性，性别）