Ebook: Lexical Variation and Attrition in the Scottish Fishing Communities

An account of the Fisher Speak project which documents the language of the Scottish East Coast

Over the last half century many scholars have recorded, analysed and theorised language death. At the same time, many sociolinguists have considered how rapid and dependable transport, mass education and increasingly globalised work patterns have affected how dialects in industrial and post-industrial societies are constructed and perceived; more often than not, these changes have been detrimental to the integrity of traditional dialects. The forces involved are most perceptible in loss of local lexis; this has been barely touched upon in the literature, primarily because the study of lexical variation and change has proved considerably more problematical in methodological terms than its phonological and morphosyntactic equivalents. This book considers these theoretical and methodological issues in relation to a representative sample of fishing communities along Scotland’s east coast, in most of which the trade is now moribund. Can the lexical variation and change found in these communities be perceived as primary evidence for dialect death?

• Documents the dialects of Anstruther, Eyemouth, Lossiemouth, Peterhead and Wick
• Advances our understanding of lexical variation and change
• Provides an in-depth study of the nature of lexical attrition in highly discrete traditional dialects
• Presents a theoretical and methodological analysis of whether language death and dialect death can be considered aspects of the same phenomenon
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