Linguistic Cityscapes as Mindscapes: The Representation of the Estuarian Dialect of Contemporary London in Christine Brooke-Rose's *Next*

In her novel *Next*, Brooke-Rose presents the linguistic cityscapes of Estuarian English in London. Her objective is to focus on the homeless in a contemporary, multilingual urban setting, and identify their social and psychological make-up through portraying the language varieties they deploy. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse briefly the concept of Estuary English as a particular kind of dialect and relate it to the concept of ‘speech community’, in order to see whether these notions can be applied to Brooke-Rose’s novel *Next*, which has been often described in terms of the Estuarian dialect it allegedly represents (see for example the cover jacket of the Carcanet edition). As we shall see, although these concepts certainly apply to the novel by Brooke-Rose who, strong of her position as a linguist, in her work never ceases to analyse the uses (and abuses) of language, they are also somewhat contradicted and exposed in their inadequacy. The aim of this article, then, is to locate and draw attention to the schism existing between ‘theory’ and the critique that Brooke-Rose, always suspicious of fixed and narrow definitions, accomplishes in this text.