Multicultural London English 

Over the past two decades, sociolinguistic research has increasingly documented a new variety of British English that was first identified and described in the context of highly diverse multilingual inner-city neighbourhoods in London – what academics have labelled ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE). The emergence of MLE in (East) London can be largely attributed to large-scale population changes in the post-war period when migrants from the Commonwealth and beyond settled in the area, leading to high levels of linguistic and cultural diversity. This chapter first provides an overview of MLE, focussing on the ways in which the languages spoken by migrant communities have contributed to its ‘feature pool’. It then goes on to consider some more recent developments in the spread and social indexicality of the variety, including the diffusion of MLE beyond London and the possible emergence of a more general variety – Multicultural British English (MBE;) – that is spoken outside of London.