Dialect Writing and the North of England

'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.' Robert McColl Millar, University of Aberdeen 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 and 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. Patrick Honeybone and Warren Maguire are both Senior Lecturers in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Cover image: illustration by Ralph Beilby in A General History of Quadrupeds by Thomas Bewick, 1800 Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-4256-5 Barcode