Article published in:
Letter Writing in Late Modern EuropeEdited by Marina Dossena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 218] 2012
► pp. 163–178
The problem of reading dialect in semiliterate letters
The correspondence of the Holden family, 1812–16 and of Richard Taylor 1840–51
This qualitative study is concerned with the letters sent by two inhabitants of Lancashire in the first half of the nineteenth century, who had been transported to New South Wales: Thomas Holden (or Holding) and Richard Taylor. The corpus also includes letters to Holden from his family. The forces at work among working class people who had some writing ability – industrialisation, evangelicalism and the Sunday school tradition of education – are then discussed, with Holden and Taylor’s adherence to these norms demonstrated. The essay shows that, although all those writing are semi-literate, the language used which transgresses educated norms tends not to be dialectal but rather non-standard. It is suggested, therefore, that spoken dialect and written non-standard are strikingly different from each other, and not just because of the medium. Even in the early nineteenth century dialect speakers had a strongly developed sense of what was appropriate and could be understood outside their home districts.
Published online: 16 April 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.218.10mil
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.218.10mil
Cited by
Cited by other publications
No author info given
Timmis, Ivor
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 december 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.