Southeastern phonology: vowels and diphthongs happY

Accents in the South of England have undergone happY tensing, a term coined by Wells (1982: 257–258) to describe a historical process by which the short final  in happY has been replaced by a closer vowel of the [i(:)] type. There is still uncertainty about the exact phonetic quality of [i(:)] but the general consensus is that it patterns with FLEECE rather than KIT. In addition, London and South-eastern accents have diphthongal happY variants. With regard to these variants, the general socio-phonetic principle is: the more central the starting-point, the more basilectal the variant. The most basilectal variant is [əi] with a fully central starting-point. Suburban working-class speakers and middle-class speakers use a variant with a less central starting point, which we have chosen to transcribe as [^əi].