Studying Dialect

This book provides an accessible yet comprehensive introduction to the study of the dialects of English as they are spoken around the world, from the earliest dialect dictionaries of the sixteenth century to contemporary research emerging from the field of geolinguistics. Organised into ten thematic chapters, it explores and evaluates the methods and purposes of each approach to the study of dialectal variation, with full explanations of technical terms throughout. Illuminating one of the most productive fields of interest in language study, this compelling book is essential reading for students of dialect and regional difference in English.

Studying Language introduces key ideas about how English functions within its social and cultural contexts. It explores core topics of study such as language variation, pragmatics, stylistics and critical discourse analysis. Case studies provide worked analysis of sample texts, suggestions for further study and a further reading section.

English has always been a language made up of dialects, and its diversity has fascinated its speakers for centuries. This book tells the story of that fascination, giving a complete history of work on dialects of English from the sixteenth century to the present day, from the earliest dialect dictionaries to modern research in geolinguistics, and looking at English dialects across the world. Written in accessible style, Studying Dialect is the most comprehensive introduction available. It evaluates and explains the methods and purposes of one of the most productive areas of interest in language study.

Traditional dialects have been encroached upon by the increasing mobility of their speakers and by the onslaught of national languages in education and mass media. Typically, older dialects are “leveling” to become more like national languages. This is regrettable when the last articulate traces of a culture are lost, but it also promotes a complex dynamics of interaction as speakers shift from dialect to standard and to intermediate compromises between the two in their forms of speech. Varieties of speech thus live on in modern communities, where they still function to mark provenance, but increasingly cultural and social provenance as opposed to pure geography. They arise at times from the need to function throughout the different groups in society, but they also may have roots in immigrants’ speech, and just as certainly from the ineluctable dynamics of groups wishing to express their identity to themselves and to the world. The future of dialects is a selection of the papers presented at Methods in Dialectology XV, held in Groningen, the Netherlands, 11-15 August 2014. While the focus is on methodology, the volume also includes specialized studies on varieties of Catalan, Breton, Croatian, (Belgian) Dutch, English (in the US, the UK and in Japan), German (including Swiss German), Italian (including Tyrolean Italian), Japanese, and Spanish as well as on heritage languages in Canada.

In this volume, language researchers studying morphosyntax, the lexicon, and pragmatics share and evaluate methods of eliciting and analyzing language production in various populations and settings. For all language researchers, applied and theoretical.

Studying Language in Interaction is a holistic practical guide with a hybrid purpose: To emphasize a particular approach to language in the world—a theory of language that has room for communicative repertoire and sociolinguistic diversity—and to provide a practical guide for new researchers of language in interaction. Each chapter focuses on one way of communicating, providing a set of strategies to observe, note, and reflect on context-specific ways of using multiple languages, of sounding, naming, using social media, telling stories, being ironic, and engaging in everyday routines. This approach provides a practical guide without stripping out all the wonder and nuance of language in interaction that originally draws the novice researcher to critical inquiry and makes language relevant to the humans who use it every day. Studying Language in Interaction is not only a practical research guide; it is also a workbook for being in the world in ways that matter, illustrating that any research on language in interaction involves both tricks of the trade and a sustained engagement with humanity. With extensive pedagogical resources, this is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology, and education who are embarking on fieldwork projects.