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English dialects: an introduction
246
Reviewz
All in ail, :his book can be strongly recommended to all who have to do with English language education whether as native or second language and I feel that many linguists could profit from reading it. Many of us pay lip service to the equality of speech varieties but we do not always consider the full implicatioas of such an at. tirade.
References Fasold, R.W. and R.W. Shuy (eds.), 1970. Teaching standard English in the inner city. Washington: Center for Applied Lil~guistics. Trudgill, P., 1975. Review of B. Bernstein, Class, codes and control. St. Albany: Paladin (1973). In: Journal of Linguistics, Vol. I l (1975), 147-151.
Martyn F. Wakelin (ed.), Patterns in the folk speech of the British Isles. The Athlone Press, London, 1972. Martyn F. Wakelin, English dialects: an introduction. The Athlone Press, London, 1972. Beat Glauser, The Scottish-English linguistic border: lexical aspects. The Cooper Monographs, English Dialect Series 20. Francke Verlag, Bern, 19"/4. Reviewed by N.S.H. Smith, Institute of General Linguistics, University of Amsterdam, Spuist,~aat 2 i0, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Anyone reading these three books on dialect would assume that the state of British dialectology was flourishing. In fact it is desperate - the only two posts in existence - in EdinburgJl - will probably not outlast their present occupants. This is a great pity in that while it is still possible to do useful work on the traditional or 'folk' dialects, their life will ~robably fade away over the next twenty years~ In 'Patte :ns...', a collection of nine articles on vari,~us facets of dialect, the most interesting articles are 'The Scotch.l~,sh Dialect Boundaries in Ulster' by R.J. Gregg, 'Anglo-Welsh Dialects in South-East Wales' by D.R. Parry and 'Fomls of the Femi. nine Pronom: in Modern English Dialects' by Pauline Duncan. Gregg's articie represents the first ever detailed ac~,ount of the distribution of Anglo-Irish and Scotch-lrish dialects of Ulster. It is doubtful whether it would be possible under the present political climate. There were 125 informants in all. Of these all but two were easy to classify either as Scots or Anglo-lrish. There proved to be three separate areas of Scots speech: round the head of Strangford Lough to the east of Belfast, lnost of N. Antrim and the N.E. comer of Co. Derry, and the
Reviews
247
Laggza district of Co. Donegal in Eire. Notable is the density of the coverage in N. Dow1~. Pa~'ty's is the first modern s~arvey of the English dialects of S.E. Wales proper. Apart from features of the phonology which are to be ascribed to Welsh influence, he al~o finds features of various extra-Welsh English dialects. Welsh influence in morpI~ology and s y n t ~ is not marked. Notable is the preservation of 3rd person singular verb forms in -th in file Gower peninsula, a feature linking this locality with Devon and Somerset on the other side of the Bristol Channel. The article on the feminine pronoun by Pauline Duncan is a valuable contribution to the Gstory of this much argued-about pronoun. She sums up all the theories on the development of the various dialect forms and adds a few possibilities of her owr~. it is ~mrhaps interesting to give a survey of the various forms that occur for the nominative: she in the North, East and South-East, her in the West Midlands and S~.~uth.West, boo in the North'West Midlands and shoo, a blend of she and boo, in South:west Yorkshire. Wakelin's book, English Dialects, is a good account of the (mainly rural) dialects of Modem English. It could not have been written without the Survey of English Dialects carried out by Leeds University, of which Wakelin was one of the editors. The weakest chapters are, as one might expect, those on grammatical variation and social class. The first weakness is to be explained by the fact that the above-mentioned survey concentrated on phonetic and lexical information, and perhaps to be excused by the fac~ that there is not sc much syntactic variation among the dialect:; of English. The second weakness is t o be explained by the fact that the survey was deliberately aimed at one social class -- elderly members of the rural working class. Glauser's book on the border between Scots and English dialects is an exemplary work. He himself applied a questionnaire of 106 items in 80 localities, using also other surveys of another 22 localities for the same items. The resulting phonetic responses give the impression of a high degree of accuracy. He has shown that the geographical border, roughly identical with the linguistic border, far from disappearing, is gaining new strength because dialect speakers south of the border are gradually co~ning to regard their dialect vocabulary, which often was the same as north of the border, a border which was rather phonological than lexical, as being 'Scottish', and then ceasing to use it. Glauser shows himself to b,? a worthy disciple of the Swiss school of British Dialectology.
Reviewz
All in ail, :his book can be strongly recommended to all who have to do with English language education whether as native or second language and I feel that many linguists could profit from reading it. Many of us pay lip service to the equality of speech varieties but we do not always consider the full implicatioas of such an at. tirade.
References Fasold, R.W. and R.W. Shuy (eds.), 1970. Teaching standard English in the inner city. Washington: Center for Applied Lil~guistics. Trudgill, P., 1975. Review of B. Bernstein, Class, codes and control. St. Albany: Paladin (1973). In: Journal of Linguistics, Vol. I l (1975), 147-151.
Martyn F. Wakelin (ed.), Patterns in the folk speech of the British Isles. The Athlone Press, London, 1972. Martyn F. Wakelin, English dialects: an introduction. The Athlone Press, London, 1972. Beat Glauser, The Scottish-English linguistic border: lexical aspects. The Cooper Monographs, English Dialect Series 20. Francke Verlag, Bern, 19"/4. Reviewed by N.S.H. Smith, Institute of General Linguistics, University of Amsterdam, Spuist,~aat 2 i0, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Anyone reading these three books on dialect would assume that the state of British dialectology was flourishing. In fact it is desperate - the only two posts in existence - in EdinburgJl - will probably not outlast their present occupants. This is a great pity in that while it is still possible to do useful work on the traditional or 'folk' dialects, their life will ~robably fade away over the next twenty years~ In 'Patte :ns...', a collection of nine articles on vari,~us facets of dialect, the most interesting articles are 'The Scotch.l~,sh Dialect Boundaries in Ulster' by R.J. Gregg, 'Anglo-Welsh Dialects in South-East Wales' by D.R. Parry and 'Fomls of the Femi. nine Pronom: in Modern English Dialects' by Pauline Duncan. Gregg's articie represents the first ever detailed ac~,ount of the distribution of Anglo-Irish and Scotch-lrish dialects of Ulster. It is doubtful whether it would be possible under the present political climate. There were 125 informants in all. Of these all but two were easy to classify either as Scots or Anglo-lrish. There proved to be three separate areas of Scots speech: round the head of Strangford Lough to the east of Belfast, lnost of N. Antrim and the N.E. comer of Co. Derry, and the
Reviews
247
Laggza district of Co. Donegal in Eire. Notable is the density of the coverage in N. Dow1~. Pa~'ty's is the first modern s~arvey of the English dialects of S.E. Wales proper. Apart from features of the phonology which are to be ascribed to Welsh influence, he al~o finds features of various extra-Welsh English dialects. Welsh influence in morpI~ology and s y n t ~ is not marked. Notable is the preservation of 3rd person singular verb forms in -th in file Gower peninsula, a feature linking this locality with Devon and Somerset on the other side of the Bristol Channel. The article on the feminine pronoun by Pauline Duncan is a valuable contribution to the Gstory of this much argued-about pronoun. She sums up all the theories on the development of the various dialect forms and adds a few possibilities of her owr~. it is ~mrhaps interesting to give a survey of the various forms that occur for the nominative: she in the North, East and South-East, her in the West Midlands and S~.~uth.West, boo in the North'West Midlands and shoo, a blend of she and boo, in South:west Yorkshire. Wakelin's book, English Dialects, is a good account of the (mainly rural) dialects of Modem English. It could not have been written without the Survey of English Dialects carried out by Leeds University, of which Wakelin was one of the editors. The weakest chapters are, as one might expect, those on grammatical variation and social class. The first weakness is to be explained by the fact that the above-mentioned survey concentrated on phonetic and lexical information, and perhaps to be excused by the fac~ that there is not sc much syntactic variation among the dialect:; of English. The second weakness is t o be explained by the fact that the survey was deliberately aimed at one social class -- elderly members of the rural working class. Glauser's book on the border between Scots and English dialects is an exemplary work. He himself applied a questionnaire of 106 items in 80 localities, using also other surveys of another 22 localities for the same items. The resulting phonetic responses give the impression of a high degree of accuracy. He has shown that the geographical border, roughly identical with the linguistic border, far from disappearing, is gaining new strength because dialect speakers south of the border are gradually co~ning to regard their dialect vocabulary, which often was the same as north of the border, a border which was rather phonological than lexical, as being 'Scottish', and then ceasing to use it. Glauser shows himself to b,? a worthy disciple of the Swiss school of British Dialectology.