Disambiguating language attitudes held towards socio-demographic groups and geographic areas in South East England

Using a digitised method, this paper investigates the language attitudes of 18-33-year olds in South East England. More broadly, this paper demonstrates that disambiguating the language attitudes held towards socio-demographic groups and geographic areas is paramount to understanding the configuration of language attitudes in an area, particularly, for areas which have high cultural and linguistic heterogeneity. A total of 194 respondents evaluated the speech of 102 south-eastern speakers. Results reveal an imperfect mapping between language attitudes towards geographic areas and the speakers from these areas. Although East London and Essex are the most negatively evaluated areas, speakers’ demographic and identity data is the most important factor conditioning language attitudes. Across South East England, working-class and/or BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) speakers, as well as those who identify their accent in geographically marked terms are evaluated most negatively, which is confounded if they are from East London or Essex.