Dialect Writing and the North of England
Edited by Patrick Honeybone, Warren Maguire
- Analyses examples from 18th century literary texts through to 21st century texting
- Draws on a range of sources including diaries, blogs, poetry, direct speech in fiction and cartoons in local newspapers
- Considers the cultural positioning and impact of dialect writing and investigates the mechanics of how authors produce dialect writing
Analysing examples from 18th century literary texts through to 21st century social media, this is the first comprehensive collection to explore dialect writing in the North of England. The book also considers broad questions about dialect writing in general: What is it? Who does it? What types of dialect writing exist? How can linguists interpret it?
Bringing together a wide range of contributors, the book investigates everything from the cultural positioning and impact of dialect writing to the mechanics of how authors produce dialect spellings (and what this can tell us about the structure of the dialects represented). The book features a number of case studies, focusing on dialect writing from all over the North of England, considering a wide range of types of text, including dialect poetry, translations into dialect, letters, tweets, direct speech in novels, humorous localised volumes, written reports of conversations and cartoons in local newspapers.
1. Introduction: What is dialect writing? Where is the North of England?Patrick Honeybone & Warren Maguire2. Black Country dialect literature and what it can tell us about Black Country dialectEsther Asprey 3. Dialect and the construction of identity in the ego-documents of Thomas BewickJoan Beal4. Nottingham: City of Literature. Dialect Literature and Literary DialectNatalie Braber 5. Enregistering dialect representation in Staffordshire Potteries’ cartoonsUrszula Clark 6. Russian dolls and dialect literature: the enregisterment of nineteenth century ‘Yorkshire’ dialectsPaul Cooper 7. Representing the language of Liverpool
or, the (im)possibility of dialect writingTony Crowley 8. Metaphor and Indexicality in The Pitman’s Pay: the ambivalence of dialectRod Hermeston 9. ‘Did she say dinner, Betsey, at this taam o’day?’: representing Yorkshire voices and characters in novels 1800-1836Jane Hodson 10. Which phonological features get represented in dialect writing? Answers and questions from three types of Liverpool English texts.Patrick Honeybone 11. Phonological analysis of early nineteenth century Tyneside Dialect Literature: Thomas Wilson’s The Pitman’s PayWarren Maguire 12. The graphical representation of phonological dialect features of the North of England on social mediaAndrea Nini, George Bailey, Diansheng Guo and Jack Grieve 13. The Bolton/Worktown Corpus: a case of accidental dialectology?Ivor Timmis 14. Automatic analysis of dialect literature: advantages and challengesKevin Watson & Marie Møller Jensen
This is an excellent collection, containing state of the art analyses of the popular representations of often overlooked varieties of English. The treatment is cutting edge, both in knowledge base and in methodologies.
