Spaces and exchanges

According to Samuel Johnson, a famous English writer : “you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”.

According to Samuel Johnson, London gives to its citizens all the presents that life can give us, such as friends, relationships, love, knowledge, studies, money, advertising etc…

This quote illustrates perfectly our notion “space and exchanges”.

Indeed, London is a big place, in which many exchanges are made at all levels. For example, London is one of the leader cities in the world in terms of business, attractiveness for tourists and entrepreneurs and last but not least, multiculturalism.

Thus we can ask ourselves : how does the city of London manage to keep its worldwide attractiveness at a so high level ?

First of all, we are going to see the promotion made by London’s leaders which make this city so attractive. Then, we are going to see the consequences of this attractiveness.

2017 was one of the most important years for London because of the decision they made to leave the EU. This decision, the Brexit, had a strong impact on London, but unfortunately, this impact was, in a way, negative. Indeed, the tourists were fewer and fewer and London’s attractiveness dropped. To remedy this, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, launched the LondonIsOpen campaign. This promotion took different forms, especially videos which staged numerous famous British celebrities who performed in their own discipline. The goal of M. Khan is to show to the world that the capital is still open for business and retains its entrepreneurial and creative spirit. Obviously, the videos highlighted the qualities of London, which is, according to Sadiq Khan, “the best city in the world”, taking as examples its creativeness and the fact that it is full of opportunities.

There are also some artists who praise their love for London. For example, the poet Benjamin Zephania, who has Jamaican roots and who wrote the London Breed.

In this poem, he talks about the advantages but also the drawbacks of living in London.

Throughout the poem, he uses a lot of oxymoron in order to illustrate the diversity that we can find in London. This diversity concerns food, the cultures, the religions, the breeds, the languages and all the aspects and characteristics that can distinguish us from others.

Despite the numerous drawbacks of this city, such as the pollution, the dangers, the crowd, this artist loves this great place.

Although these promotions are recent, London is attractive since centuries.

The consequence is a fantastic variety and mix of cultures.

For example, we studied a text which discusses a London address, which is home to many cultures. Indeed, 59 Brick Lane was firstly a church when French Protestants fled religious persecution under Louis XIV. Then, 59 Brick Lane became a cinagog for Eastern European Jews, who faced countless pogroms after the assassination of the Tsar of Russia in 1881.

At last, this cinagog became a mosque for Muslims from Bangladesh, who had served in the UK’s merchant navy during WWII. Nowadays, this area continues to adapt. It became a capital for food and is visually impacting.

Moreover, this multiculturalism can even create a new language, called the MLE for Multicultural London English. MLE is the voice of young London. At the beginning, it was considered as a poor interpretation of Jamaican, named Jafaican for fake Jamaican, but research had suggested that MLE has much more complex roots. Indeed, it is spoken by people from all ethnic backgrounds and is a mix of sounds from places as diverse as the Caribbean, Greece, Asia and Africa. This new accent is infiltrating the English language and the linguistic experts say it is beginning so common in their inner cities that it is going to eclipse the traditional London accent, the cockney.

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