How multiethnic is a multiethnolect? Recontextualising Multicultural London English

Clyne (2000) coined the term multiethnolect to refer to a newly-formed contact variety of a mainstream, majority-community language in contexts of high immigration. This chapter poses the question of just how ‘multiethnic’ such a language variety may be in practice, focusing on Multicultural London English (MLE), a multiethnolect spoken by young, working-class people in inner-city areas of London (Cheshire et al., 2008; 2011). Earlier research demonstrated that neighbourhood, ethnicity and the ethnic diversity of an individual's social network predicted the use of MLE. More recently, scholars working in a variety of contexts have documented a number of differences in the use, function and distribution of MLE features (Drummond, 2018; Gates, 2018; Ilbury, 2019). In this chapter, we consider the ‘recontextualisation’ (Bauman and Briggs, 1990) of MLE. We first discuss its status as a speech style that is associated with particular social practices, such as participation in the grime music scene. We then reflect on the association of MLE with a contemporary Black British identity. Finally, we consider the ways in which MLE features have acquired a type of ‘cultural capital’ that speakers use to index their belonging to certain (youth) subcultures (Cutler and Røyneland, 2015).