Dialects - Dialectal Variations
English Language: AQA A Level, topic 3.4.5
Dialect - Dialectal Variations
One of the easiest ways to map dialectal variations is to look at what names people give to things.
Example
- The bread in the picture can be called a bread roll, barm cake, bap, cob, roll, or bun.
Traditional and mainstream dialects
- Peter Trudgill believes that we can classify dialectal words into two categories – traditional and mainstream.
- Traditional dialects use ‘old’ and often rural lexemes and grammatical constructions.
- Mainstream dialects are the more common lexical and grammatical constructions, used by a majority within a geographical area.
- Through a process called lexical attrition, the traditional dialectal words are dying out.