The Only Way is Dickens: Representations of Cockney Speech and Cockney Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens

Abstract

This thesis examines Dickens’s representation of cockney dialect and cockney speakers, as well as representations of upwardly mobile Londoners and their speech. It identifies the linguistic features that Dickens draws upon to construct his character speech and explores the attitudes conveyed through language choice. It investigates how Dickens’s representations were shaped by wider attitudes towards language, particularly towards non-standard speech, in Victorian society. It investigates Dickens’s role in popularising cockney dialect in nineteenth-century culture, going against the tide of language prescriptivism that had started in the late eighteenth century. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining literary criticism of Dickens’s works with aspects of historical linguistics. It explores Dickens’s work both chronologically and thematically also taking into account adaptations and plagiarisms. The first three chapters focus on Dickens’s early works, firstly, his compiled work, Sketches by Boz (1833-1836), then the first two novels, The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), followed by Oliver Twist (1837-1839), drawing on other novels in each chapter to make comparisons. The final chapter analyses a selection of his novels over his writing career, including Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). This thesis argues that Dickens is influential in promoting certain ideas about cockney speech, but there are complexities in his depictions.