"But that's dialect, isn't it?" Exploring geographical variation in the SCOTS corpus

Anderson, W. (2013) "But that's dialect, isn't it?" Exploring geographical variation in the SCOTS corpus. In: Bamford, J., Cavalieri, S. and Diani, G. (eds.) Variation and Change in Spoken and Written Discourse: Perspectives from Corpus Linguistics. John Benjamins: Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ISBN 9789027210388

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Abstract

This paper considers the ways in which geographic variation can be explored both quantitatively and qualitatively using the Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech (SCOTS). The resource is a freely accessible online corpus of written and spoken texts in the Germanic languages of Scotland (Scottish English and Scots), which can offer an insight into current Scots usage and speaker attitudes towards language. The paper introduces the corpus, giving an overview of the geographically-defined varieties of Scots represented in it, and demonstrates how the complex web of variation can be analysed quantitatively using integrated corpus tools. It then begins to explore qualitatively the ways in which participants in spoken documents talk about geographic, and closely related social, language variation in Scotland.

Item Type:Book Sections
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Anderson, Professor Wendy
Authors: Anderson, W.
Subjects:P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
P Language and Literature > PE English
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
Publisher:John Benjamins
ISBN:9789027210388

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