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Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New perspectives
Edited by Chiara Fedriani and Andrea Sansó
[Studies in Language Companion Series 186] 2017
► pp. 399–413

Chapter 14
A pragmatic approach to Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary

Discourse markers in focus

| University of Innsbruck

Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (EDD; 1898–1905) represents a landmark publication in Late Modern English dialectology. This article explores the potential of the EDD and its digital version (EDD Online) for historical pragmatic research and discusses essential theoretical and methodological considerations that arise from taking a pragmatic approach towards this complex historical document of non-standard English varieties. Besides traditional lexicographic information, the EDD also contains evidence of a great variety of different dialectal documents that are written to mimic spoken language. Three exemplary discourse markers (DM) – aweel, lor-a-massy and arrah – will be introduced and analysed from a pragmatic perspective.

Keywords: historical pragmatics, dialectology, discourse markers, non-standard English varieties, English Dialect Dictionary
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definition and methodology
  • 3.Case studies
    • 3.1Aweel
    • 3.2Lor-a-massy
    • 3.3Arrah
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.186.15giu
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