Black English Researchers

London Jamaican - 1990s

• A particular variety that has evolved due to language needs of immigrant communities who have settled in England and produced 2nd/3rd/4th etc generation speakers
  
  
• Sebba identified main choices of young, new-generation speakers born into London's Caribbean communities as being between Caribbean creole forms, Cockney forms summed up as 'London English', and SE/RP forms
• Sebba defined London Jamaican as being a combination of phonological, lexical and grammatical elements of all three
• Much of his research involved interviewing and recording the speech of young, British-born teenagers with Jamaican parents
• Sebba comments on the continuum of SE --- Jamaican Creole and how speakers of both can code-switch between the two depending on the context
• He also comments on socio-linguistic maturation in that older speakers of London Jamaican have begun to use a more standard form of English

'Multi-Ethnic Youth Dialect' - 2000s

• focused on dialect of youths from a variety of diff ethnic backgrounds across London
  
  
• Her findings suggest a variety of MEYD, which Fox has termed 'Multicultural London English', MLE, which has strong characteristics drawn from influences of  several other languages, creole + cultural sources
• MLE is identified w/ by adolescent users in wider city environments of greater London, although also beginning to be used in Bristol + Birmingham
• Fox found that speakers of the dialect are drawn from white, black + Asian communities
• The emergence of MLE is viewed as a fully functioning dialect, which is rapidly changing
  --> pronunciation features adopted by its speakers may only remain current short term before being replaced 

Maria Manning

• Manning found many children of diff ethnic backgrounds using BE as slang
• She suggested two reasons for this:
  - the emphatic style of BE gives it a dynamic, forceful and immediate effect which is suited to the hard, fast life of city kids
  - BE gives them the chance to rebel against SE and all of the things which are associated with it, such as respectability, conformity, passing exams etc
• Some white children will use BE because is 'speaks to them' as they may also feel excluded from the mythical 'British culture' enshrined in SE

The West Indian Language in British Schools, 1970s

• Edwards looked into attitudes of Afro-Caribbean parents towards their children speaking BE
• She found that most young Afro-Caribbean speakers use a modified term of Creole, however they can diverge upwards towards ordinary English when necessary (Code-switching)
• Many Afro-Caribbean parents speak creole to their children but refuse to allow their children to use it to them in return because
  a- they think it unseemly for children to speak in such a familiar way to their parents
  b- older West Indians are conscious of the undesirable associations that cling to creole: slavery, poverty, lack of education etc

Roger Hewitt

• Hewitt found that dense creole is used strictly for men-talk
• Girls tend to use SE with either a regional or modified RP accent
• Men tend to speak more slang and taboo language

• pronouns mi  and dem - different pronoun usage
• adjectives used as verbs
• fi before an infinitive
• no in the form of naa instead of is not
• the focusing particle a
• patois possessive fi-dem (their)
• the continuative particle a to form the present continuous tense: im a go 
• seh  after stative verbs
• different plural structures
• code-switching
• th  pronounced as d
• double negatives
• consonant strings/clusters simplified 
• ending sounds missed
• replaced sounds
• sounds merge + converge
• lack of plural + past tense markers