Late Modern Lancashire English in lexicographical context: representations of Lancashire speech and theEnglish Dialect Dictionary

Abstract

The longstanding vernacular literary pedigree of the county of Lancashire has made it home to a large body of regional writings comparable only to those of the neighbouring Yorkshire. Both past and present scholarship have acknowledged this fact, arguing that the literary tradition of the dialect may be taken as a source to get some insight into the linguistic history of the county. Research so far concentrated on the linguistic mining of Lancashire literary texts has shown that they provide valuable guidance to approach the language of bygone times, especially in terms of phonology and morphology (see Brunner, 1920; Haworth, 1920, 1927; Whitehall, 1929; Shorrocks, 1988, 1992, 1999; Wagner, 1999; Ruano-García, 2007, 2010b). To my knowledge, there is however little research that has attempted to evaluate the lexicographic potential of these documents, and their contribution to Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (henceforth EDD), so as to further our understanding of lexical variation in regional Englishes of the Late Modern English period (LModE).

Partridge in print and online

“…There are also additional filters one can envisage adding value for specialist audiences. The fascinating analysis by Ruano-García (2012) of sources cited in the English Dialect Dictionary (1898–1905) to illustrate Lancashire dialect suggests that an option to filter citations by genre e.g. autobiography, fiction, glossary (online or printed), multi-media (film, radio, popular music) would offer invaluable insight into the relative frequency of publication types represented in NPD , thereby contextualising research enquiries and, presumably, informing future data elicitation.…”