Editing Estuary English (section)

==Status as accent of English==
The boundaries between RP (Received Pronunciation), Estuary English and Cockney are far from clear-cut.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/maidment.htm |title=Estuary English: Hybrid or Hype? |last=Maidment |first=J.A. |year=1994 |work=Paper presented at the 4th New Zealand Conference on Language & Society, Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, August 1994. |publisher=[[University College London]] |access-date=2009-04-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204040639/https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/maidment.htm |archive-date=2008-12-04 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |last=Haenni |first=Ruedi |date=13 July 1999 |title=The case of Estuary English: supposed evidence and a perceptual approach |type=dissertation |publisher=[[University of Basel]] |url=https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/haenni1999.pdf |access-date=2009-04-21}}</ref> Wells cites David Rosewarne (who originated the term in 1984) as locating EE in the middle of "a continuum that has RP and London speech at either end".<ref name="wells94">{{harvcoltxt|Wells|1994}}</ref> Several writers have argued that Estuary English is not a discrete accent distinct from the accents of the London area. The sociolinguist [[Peter Trudgill]] has written that the term "Estuary English" is inappropriate because "it suggests that we are talking about a new variety, which we are not; and because it suggests that it is a variety of English confined to the banks of the Thames estuary, which it is not. The label actually refers to the lower middle-class accents, as opposed to working-class accents, of the [[Home Counties]] Modern Dialect area".<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Trudgill|1999|p=80}}</ref> [[Peter Roach (phonetician)|Roach]] comments, "In reality there is no such accent and the term should be used with care. The idea originates from the sociolinguistic observation that some people in public life who would previously have been expected to speak with an RP accent now find it acceptable to speak with some characteristics of the London area{{nbsp}}... such as glottal stops, which would in earlier times have caused comment or disapproval".<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Roach|2009|p=4}}</ref>

{{Harvcoltxt|Foulkes|Docherty|1999}} state "All of its [EE's] features can be located on a sociolinguistic and geographical continuum between [[Received Pronunciation|RP]] and [[Cockney]], and are spreading not because Estuary English is a coherent and identifiable influence, but because the features represent neither the standard nor the extreme non-standard poles of the continuum".<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Foulkes|Docherty|1999|p=11}}</ref> In order to tackle these problems put forward by expert linguists, {{Harvcoltxt|Altendorf|2016}} argues that Estuary English should be viewed as a folk category rather than an expert linguistic category. As such it takes the form of a perceptual prototype category that does not require discrete boundaries in order to function in the eyes (and ears) of lay observers of language variation and change.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Altendorf|2016}}</ref>

Collins et al. state that "In the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s, this putative new variety was fiercely debated both in the media and academia, but since then interest in Estuary English has waned and been replaced by discussion of the capital's latest linguistic innovation – [[Multicultural London English]]".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Collins |first1=Beverley |last2=Mees |first2=Inger |last3=Carley |first3=Paul |title=Practical English Phonetics and Phonology |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |page=6 |edition=4th |isbn=9781138591509 }}</ref>