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1. Background

Change in presentYday spoken British English is reportedly characterised by dialect levelling-the reduction of regional differences between dialects and accents. The details, however, are complex, with homogenisation across a region (Torgersen/Kerswill 2004, Kerswill/Williams 2005) alongside geographical diffusion from a metropolis (Kerswill 2003). Yet there is also local differentiation and innovation (Britain 2005, Watson 2006). Phonology and grammar do not change in tandem (Britain 2007). The role of London has been held to be central, with its influence claimed for the diffusion of THYfronting (Kerswill 2003: 233-7), labiodental/r/(Foulkes/Docherty 2000) and TYglottalling (Sivertsen 1960). Vowels, in contrast, seem to homogenise within a region, focusing on a local centre: thus around London there is strong convergence across the'Home CountiesГ (Cheshire et al 1999, Williams/Kerswill 1999, Torgersen/Kerswill 2004). Grammatical and discourse features are also subject to levelling and diffusion (Cheshire et al. 1989, 2005). In the past, London has both promoted dialect mixtures and spread morphosyntactic innovations, following the inYmigration of speakers of nonYcontiguous dialects (Nevalainen/RaumolinYBrunberg 2003: 165) and different languages. Immigration to London continues, so London should still be influential linguistically. However, the paucity of studies of London English is a lacuna in our understanding of levelling and diffusion, as we have no direct evidence that innovations have started here. Our project, as the first largeY scale sociolinguistic study of spoken English in London, aimed to fill this gap …