Help with my English CW on Eastenders slang

Question

ok, so i`m writing a report on whether eastenders is a true representation of original english slang/estuary english. i honestly have no idea on what to write...any suggestions?

MrPedantic · Accepted Answer

Hello Guest

You have two different aspects of 'Eastenders English' ('EeE'?) to analyse here.

'Original English slang' would seem to relate to general BrE slang. (I'm not sure where the 'original' comes in, though; do you mean 'as opposed to e.g. imported US slang'?)

'Estuary English', on the other hand, is a particular accent, characterised by the glottal stop, W for L in words such as 'milk', etc. Do you find it easy to identify this accent?

Why not register, by the way. It's free and provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose a humorous, yet scholarly screen name.

MrP

Oxymoron · Answer

Hey, thanks a lot, i registered.

Thanks for the help, by original slang, i do mean Estuary English! I don`t think imported US slang should be an issue in Eastenders, as its Typical of British slang only.

I have to analyse Eastenders transcripts:

http://www.geocities.com/tvtranscripts/eastenders/ee170.htm
http://www.geocities.com/tvtranscripts/eastenders/ee112.htm
http://www.geocities.com/tvtranscripts/eastenders/ee91.htm

And analyse whether the language used is typical of orginail slang (Estuary). I honeslty wouldn`t know where to begin, i have no primary data (such as slang books) to direct my analysis....help!

Nona the brit · Answer

You might need to look at the fact that there are two different variations of language being used in Eastenders.

It is based in the 'East End' of London not in the 'Estuary' areas. The language is more Cockney (working class East London) than Estuary English, which has come about by the blending of local Essex accents with various London accents. Estuary English is not the same as Cockney, but in East Enders I would think you have a mixture of both. Cockneys are very protective of their culture and background and who is or is not a 'real' cockney. In theory, to be a real Cockney, you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells (a certain set of church bells.)

Cockney is famous for its huge amount of rhyming slang (some say decended from the old 'cants' - codes used by criminals in the past) and yes, some of this features in Estuary English. Some are pretty obvious rhymes and others are quite convoluted, for example:

'arris' meaning buttocks. Comes from Aristotle - bottle - bottle and glass - ***. Bottle is also used in the sense of 'courage' effort' - 'give it some bottle' presumably from the same concept!

'Give us a butchers!' Butchers hook - look.

If I were you, I would search for Cockney slang on google and go throught the scripts you need to look at.

Oxymoron · Answer

Thanks guys, that was a lot of help. What other useful information can you include for this?

MrPedantic · Answer

It's a painful assignment, Oxy. I would hate to have to make sense of all that dreary drivel.

I would imagine they have some kind of language consultant on the programme. Have you thought of contacting the BBC to ask whether they can help you or direct you to sources?

They're usually pretty keen to have their garbage dignified by scholarly critique.

One thing to bear in mind is the influence programmes like this have on the spoken language. EastEnders has been running for a long time now. So even if the dialect used in the programme originally bore no resemblance to authentic 'working-class English', 'working-class English' has no doubt adopted many EastEnderisms since then...

Good luck in there.

MrP

MrPedantic · Answer

A further thought:

As you say, it's quite difficult to know whether the language used in EE is 'authentic' or not.

But you could (for instance) build up a table of how many googles you get for particular phrases. (You would need to google with -Eastenders, to exclude any other transcripts.)

For instance, taking distinctive phrases from the first transcript on your list, I find:

1. "This ain't a branch of Bernardo's, you know."

'Bernardo's' here should actually be 'Barnardo's'. It's a reference to the Dr Barnardo homes for orphans etc.

Googling on this phrase brings up precisely 0 hits. 'A branch of Barnardo's' brings up 63, however. So it's possible that an Eastender would say this. But so would people elsewhere, probably.

2. "You're gonna carry on with your paper route."

This is mysterious: 'paper route' is not the British phrase. We say 'paper round'. It's possible the transcriber has misheard.

3. "Look, just get out of my face."

Success! 3 hits. And if we exclude 'look, just', we get an impressive 23600.

The only question is, is it 'London-only', or more widespread? I fear I have heard non-Londoners using it. The only way to find out is to look through a few of the googles and put 2 and 2 together...

MrP

Anonymous · Answer

Hi, I'm an italian student and I'm preparing my degree about "Cockney Rhyming Slang"". Luckily I found this forum and I saw the links to Eastenders transcripts. Where did you find them?? I couldn't find any information on the web and I also wrote an email to the BBC but no answer. I really need the transcript of a dialogue!!!

Thank you,

Nene

Help with my English CW on Eastenders slang

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