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.

The Scots dialects of northern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland are among the most traditional varieties of 'English', exhibiting features not current elsewhere for centuries. Until recently, they were spoken in communities whose traditional occupations have encouraged the equation of speech with local identity. They have all also been affected by contact with Gaelic, or Norse, or both. In recent years, however, the decline of traditional industries has been matched by the discovery of oil off their coasts, encouraging in-migration of speakers of many varieties of English and other languages. How well have these varieties maintained their traditional natures at the start of the 21st century? Northern and Insular Scots provides: * An approachable description of the phonological, structural and lexical natures of these varieties * A history of the varieties in relation to the areas in which they are spoken * Examples of the language of native speakers * An annotated bibliography which points the reader towards more specialised works.

This book is a comprehensive but accessible description of English as it is spoken in New Zealand. New Zealand English is one of the youngest native speaker varieties of English, and is the only variety of English where there is recorded evidence of its entire history. It shares some features with other Southern Hemisphere varieties of English such as Australian English and South African English, but is also clearly distinct from these. For the past two decades extensive research has focused on the evolution and ongoing development of the variety. New Zealand English presents the results of this research in an accessible way. Key Features *A succinct but comprehensive account of the phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical and discourse features which are characteristic of the dialect. *A discussion of the historical development of New Zealand English. *A description of the current social and regional variation within the variety. *An indication of the areas where change is currently occurring. *Sample texts and an annotated bibliography of relevant literature. There are also several associated audio files, which provide examples of many of the phenomena discussed: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects/

The Scots dialects of northern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland are among the most traditional varieties of 'English', exhibiting features not current elsewhere for centuries. Until recently, they were spoken in communities whose traditional occupations have encouraged the equation of speech with local identity. They have all also been affected by contact with Gaelic, or Norse, or both. In recent years, however, the decline of traditional industries has been matched by the discovery of oil off their coasts, encouraging in-migration of speakers of many varieties of English and other languages. How well have these varieties maintained their traditional natures at the start of the 21st century? Northern and Insular Scots provides: * An approachable description of the phonological, structural and lexical natures of these varieties * A history of the varieties in relation to the areas in which they are spoken * Examples of the language of native speakers * An annotated bibliography which points the reader towards more specialised works.

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.

This book is a comprehensive but accessible description of English as it is spoken in New Zealand. New Zealand English is one of the youngest native speaker varieties of English, and is the only variety of English where there is recorded evidence of its entire history. It shares some features with other Southern Hemisphere varieties of English such as Australian English and South African English, but is also clearly distinct from these. For the past two decades extensive research has focused on the evolution and ongoing development of the variety. New Zealand English presents the results of this research in an accessible way. Key Features *A succinct but comprehensive account of the phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical and discourse features which are characteristic of the dialect. *A discussion of the historical development of New Zealand English. *A description of the current social and regional variation within the variety. *An indication of the areas where change is currently occurring. *Sample texts and an annotated bibliography of relevant literature. There are also several associated audio files, which provide examples of many of the phenomena discussed: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects/