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I survey here some of the recent evidence of dialect attrition from sociolinguistic and variationist studies carried out in England. In doing so, and by highlighting the origins of some of the ongoing changes in English dialects, I hope to make three claims in particular: firstly, that dialect death is inextricably linked to dialect contact — in order to understand how dialect death has changed the dialectological landscape of England, we need to appreciate the linguistic consequences of contact more generally; secondly, and apparently in contrast with some other speech communities, the attrition process has not led to a widespread shift toward RP or standard English. I argue, thirdly, that while some dialects are undoubtedly undergoing attrition, new varieties are emerging, driven by both expansion and relocation diffusion, and shaped by contact between local, regional, interregional, and other, including standard, varieties. Although the developments currently affecting English dialects in England are not necessarily particularly new, they are proceeding on an unprecedented spatial scale, a scale that has resulted from some rather wide-ranging social and economic developments that have accelerated contact between speakers of structurally distinct dialects.
