http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156474 2026-04-18T01:15:08Z 2026-04-18T01:15:08Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/159143 2026-02-18T10:17:43Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

This book is the culmination of a long-term project concerned with the digitisation of Joseph Wright’s (1855–1930) English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, 1898–1905), which Manfred Markus and his team have developed at the University of Innsbruck. Starting in 2006, the first stage of the project, which was called SPEED (Spoken English in Early Dialects), sought “to digitise and exploit the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary” (Markus et al. 2010: 7) coinciding with an increasing “keen interest in computerised lexicography, on the one hand, and Late Modern English, on the other”.

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/159140 2026-02-18T10:10:59Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper places theatrical performances of the Lancashire dialect into the context of enregisterment, dialect stylisation, and the sociolinguistics of performance. I examine a selection of plays represented in Manchester and London in the late nineteenth century, including pantomimes, drolleries, comic sketches, and melodramas. The Lancashire dialect is analysed here to determine, on the one hand, the repertoire of linguistic features that were voiced on stage. On the other, I aim to ascertain whether such a repertoire varied on account of the target audience and the fact that the text of the performance was aimed for publication. The argument is made that stylisation of the Lancashire dialect in the nineteenth-century theatre shows variation as regards the set of enregistered features, which were drawn from more or less localised inventories that different audiences linked with social types that took different forms.

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier García-Bermejo Giner, María F. http://hdl.handle.net/10366/159138 2026-02-18T10:14:34Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

This chapter examines the Late Modern English element of the SC. On the one hand, it describes the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materials so far available, providing an overview of their distribution as regards text type, chronology and varieties documented. Our aim is to outline the major challenges that this compilation may entail, including the dearth of data for specific varieties and the difficulties behind the interpretation of the evidence attested in some texts. On the other hand, this chapter highlights that, despite those pitfalls and widespread criticism about its use for linguistic research (e.g. Schneider 2013), the data preserved in dialect writing and lexicography offers useful insight into the history of forms that remain little explored, while it can prove beneficial in reconstructing linguistic ideas about dialects over time. To do so, we summarise selected case studies that illustrate the potential contribution of the SC to the study of variation and change in Late Modern English dialects, including periphrastic DO in south-western dialects and the enregisterment of Lancashire speech (see Ruano-García 2020, forthcoming).

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/159137 2026-02-18T10:15:58Z 2019-03-01T00:00:00Z

This paper takes a preliminary approach to the colonial element of Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1896-1905). Drawing on the electronic version of the dictionary that has recently been launched, it examines the entries which refer to the colonial usage of words documented in British dialects, considering the links that Wright made with Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, and New Zealand, as well as the isolated evidence recorded on items used in South Africa and the West Indies. The aim is twofold. Firstly, lexicographical, as this paper explores the role of the colonial material by ascertaining the proportion of words that are cited from the colonies, and analysing the treatment they are given: attention is paid to their lexicographical function, labels, and the evidence provided to support their inclusion. Secondly, I argue that, despite the narrow coverage of Australian, Canadian, Newfoundland and New Zealand Englishes, the data may add to our understanding of the lexical links between British varieties of English and colonial speech of the late 1800s.

2019-03-01T00:00:00Z Schintu Martínez, Paula http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156537 2024-12-30T15:59:53Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

[EN] The textual material included in the Salamanca Corpus bears witness to dialectal awareness in 19th-century Derbyshire, with an important number of literary texts that reflect the local people’s habits of speech. Despite the fact that this variety ought to be of particular interest since it was used in an area which marks the transition between the North of England and the West Midlands, and the East and West Midlands, literary representations of the Derbyshire dialect remain largely unexplored (García-Bermejo Giner 1991, 1993 is the most remarkable exception). According to research in the field, the analysis of this type of representation is crucial to investigate the processes of enregisterment of dialect varieties, as Johnstone et al. (2006) and Johnstone (2009, 2013) have shown. They examine the enregisterment of Pittsburghese by looking at non-standard discourse in a range of modern sources. Less attention, however, has been paid to the study of this process in historical contexts, the works by Beal (2009, 2017, 2019), Ruano-García (2012, 2020, forthcoming), Clark (2013), Cooper (2013, 2016, 2020), and Beal – Cooper (2015) being among the exceptions. This study takes a preliminary approach to the enregisterment of 19th-century Derbyshire dialect by examining a selection of instances of dialect writing, most of which are included in the Salamanca Corpus. I aim at identifying the main linguistic forms associated with this variety in terms of spelling, morphology and lexis, as well as determining the extent to which 19th-century instances of dialect writing contribute to the enregisterment and dissemination of such linguistic forms and the values they index.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156536 2026-02-18T10:16:30Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156533 2024-11-19T13:16:04Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper explores the other side of standardization by looking at one of the early modern regional varieties of English that remained outside the “consensus dialect” (Wright, 2000: 6). Drawing on Agha’s (2003) framework of enregisterment, I examine a selection of literary representations of the ‘northern’ dialect that are now included in The Salamanca Corpus (García-Bermejo Giner et al., 2011–), as well as contemporary lexicographical evidence on northern words. My aim is to provide a window into contemporary ideas that saw and constructed the North as the ‘other’, whilst showing, as a result, that such views were immediately relevant to how the dialect and their speakers were imagined and represented alongside the emerging standard. To do so, I undertake a twofold quantitative and qualitative analysis of the evidence to identify the repertoire of forms that were associated with the dialect and the values attributed to such forms.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156529 2026-02-18T10:12:08Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper addresses the concept of flotsam in relation to language by examining the non-standard spellings used in a selection of literary representations of the Lancashire dialect written in the Late Modern English period. The analysis is placed within the framework of enregisterment and indexicality, which I explore in combination with recent sociolinguistic approaches to the study of orthography. Attention is paid to two of the frequently occurring features in these speech recreations (l-vocalisation and the rounding of /a/+nasal), arguing that the respellings employed to represent them can be taken as instances of flotsam in that they contribute to highlighting and enregistering linguistic differences.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156528 2024-07-02T08:53:05Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

This article explores the contribution of Angelina Parker to the making of the English Dialect Dictionary. Relying on EDD Online (Markus 2019a), the aim is to analyze the impact of Parker on the Oxfordshire element of the dictionary by scrutinizing the entries where Wright relied on her first-hand knowledge of the dialect for ascriptions, definitions, and senses. The article is framed within forensic dictionary analysis (Coleman and Ogilvie 2009) and takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to the data retrieved from EDD Online, with particular reference to the entries that include Parker's initials and those in which Wright quoted from the manuscript words she sent to him (now Bodl. MS Eng. lang. d. 69–74). The findings indicate that Wright reproduced faithfully from Parker's material, which he employed for citation purposes, and relied on her as the sole authority for a significant number of words, senses, and examples of the Oxfordshire distribution of an item. A connoisseur of the Oxfordshire dialect, Parker undertook her own lexicographical projects and collaborated with other dialectologists, including Alexander John Ellis and Thomas Hallam. This article seeks to cast further light on the role of correspondents in the English Dialect Dictionary, while giving Parker a deserved place in the histories of English dialectology, the Oxfordshire dialect, and women's lexicography more generally.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156518 2025-01-15T01:04:34Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper examines Horae Subsecivae (Bodl. MS Eng. lang. d. 66), an unprinted glossary of the late eighteenth century that was conceived as an addition to Franciscus Junius’s Etymologicum Anglicanum (1743). Although the manuscript drew the attention of some dialect lexicographers and antiquarians of the nineteenth century, it has remained largely ignored in recent times despite its important contribution to the dialect record of the West Country. In fact, it appears that no other compilation of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries was chiefly concerned with West Country words, most of which went unnoticed by the renowned contemporary glossaries of Francis Grose (1787) and William Humphrey Marshall (1789, 1796). My aim is to uncover Horae Subsecivae, describing its peculiarities and lexicographical method, whilst showing its significant impact on the history of West Country dialects and our knowledge of eighteenth-century lexical dialect variation more generally

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156517 2024-07-02T08:54:01Z 2022-06-01T00:00:00Z 2022-06-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156516 2024-03-13T01:02:03Z 2022-12-01T00:00:00Z

This paper examines the contribution of Horae Subsecivae to Joseph Wright's (1855–1930) English Dialect Dictionary (1896–1905) (EDD). Horae Subsecivae (‘spare hours’) is an obscure manuscript glossary that was possibly compiled by Robert Wight of Wotton-under-Edge in c.1777–78, and is now preserved amongst Wright's papers at the Bodleian Library as Bodl. MS Eng. lang. d. 66. Even though it has received little scholarly attention, Horae Subsecivae has a substantial dialect element, with a large number of words cited from Devonshire, Dorset, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. The manuscript went largely unnoticed by 18th- and 19th-century collections, and remains virtually unknown today perhaps owing to its extensive use of Latin, but it drew the attention of Joseph Wright, who employed it frequently to represent some western dialects. Drawing on the electronic version of the EDD (EDD Online; Markus, 2019a), the paper is situated within forensic dictionary analysis (Coleman & Ogilvie, 2009), which ‘uses evidence-based methodologies to interrogate the dictionaries themselves about decision-making processes involved in their compilation’ (1). In this framework, I combine archival material with quantitative and qualitative approaches to the data retrieved from EDD Online in order to ascertain the proportion of words that are cited from the manuscript, and to assess the treatment they are given. Attention is paid to their function in the context of the dictionary, labels, the western dialects about which the manuscript provides more extensive information, as well as the entries in which it is cited as the only source for words, ascriptions and senses. This paper highlights the outstanding contribution of Horae Subsecivae to the EDD, while stressing that it notably improves our knowledge of lexical variation in the dialects of the South West and the lower West Midlands. They can only benefit from further inspection as they ‘are neither as easily found nor as well researched as those of the north’ (Melchers, 2010: 82).

2022-12-01T00:00:00Z Amador-Moreno, Carolina P. Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156513 2025-04-30T20:39:19Z 2023-12-01T00:00:00Z

In this paper we look at the real voices of Irish English speakers in the nineteenth century. By turning to the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (McCafferty & Amador-Moreno, 2012), we analyse the perceptions that letter writers had of their own language use. We apply a micro-perspective analysis to the language of John Kerr, an Irish emigrant to America, in his letters to his uncle James Graham of Newpark (Co. Antrim, N. Ireland). We examine Kerr’s incisive comment on language use alongside metacommentary found in different Late Modern works, including dictionaries, essays on Irish English, as well as contemporary fictional representations of the variety of English spoken in Ireland during this period. Through this small batch of letters, we explore how the real voices of Irish English speakers echoed an enregistered Irish repertoire that may have raised awareness shaping their perceptions of their own dialect.

2023-12-01T00:00:00Z Schintu Martínez, Paula http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156510 2024-03-13T07:26:12Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

[EN] Within the framework of third-wave sociolinguistic research, Asif Agha’s (2003) theory of enregistermenthas proved a successful approach to explore the mechanisms that lead to the indexical connection between language and identity. Beal (2009, 2020), Cooper (2013, 2020), and Ruano-García (2012, 2020, 2021), among others, have investigated this phenomenon from a diachronic perspective. They have highlighted the value of dialect writing as a window into the main features associated with particular dialects, as it draws upon authenticating practices such as the use of dialect respellings, which not only signal salient phonological features, but also link them to wider schemes of sociocultural values and identities. This paper seeks to add to this field of research by looking at literary representations of Derbyshire speech (1850–1900) through the lens of enregisterment. My aims are twofold: I attempt to (1) shed light on the main phonological features of the Derbyshire dialect, while (2) determining how this variety was enregistered in the Late Modern English period, and whether meaningful text type-dependent indexical shifts might have affected the way in which this dialect was understood and thus represented by native and non-native speakers.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Ruano García, Francisco Javier http://hdl.handle.net/10366/156495 2025-01-15T01:04:41Z 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z

This article explores representations of south-western speech in nineteenth-century dialect writing. It draws on a selection of specimens from the Salamanca Corpus in order to determine what they can tell us about the language of south-western speakers at this time. By focusing on periphrastic DO and pronoun exchange, I argue that representations of south-western dialects can be taken as a missing link in the history of these two grammatical features. In fact, the analysis of their distribution and frequency, which this article explores in dialect writing for the first time, shows that they accord with later evidence to an interesting degree. At the same time, the data are placed within the third-wave sociolinguistic models of enregisterment and indexicality so as to show that the conscious representation of these morphosyntactic features reflects contemporary perceptions about their use in south-western dialects while they reveal indexical associations between place, speaker and speech. This article thus seeks to contribute to the history of south-western dialects, while underscoring the validity of dialect writing as a source of Late Modern English speech where the structural and ideological dimensions of dialect intersect.

2023-09-01T00:00:00Z