He towd her soe monny a mad farrant Tele: On flotsam, respellings and the enregisterment of l-vocalisation and /a/+nasal in the Late Modern Lancashire dialect

• Javier Ruano-García ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Salamanca

     Universidad de Salamanca

     Salamanca, España

     
• Localización: Altre Modernità: Rivista di studi letterari e culturali, ISSN-e 2035-7680, Nº. Extra 1, 2020 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Sc[Arti]: Riflessioni sul residuo tra selezione e divergenza), págs. 16-34
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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 (/-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.