The validity of literary dialect: Evidence from the theatrical portrayal of Hiberno-English forms

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhether or not literary dialect constitutes a reliable source of linguistic evidence is a question to which linguists have generally been content to respond in a negative fashion. Literary portrayals, they hold, are too much a work of the creative imagination to merit serious linguistic consideration. An interpretive analysis of one class of Hiberno-English representations, however, shows that since their inception, the theatrical portrayals of the variety have, by and large, reflected numerous aspects of the dialect quite accurately. In addition, the evidence attests a historical transition from lexico-phonological to syntactic representation: a shift which suggests that at different stages of transitional bilingualism, an emergent variety may be characterized by different forms of mother-tongue interference. Given the general absence of longitudinal studies, literary portrayals, once accepted as linguistic data, may open the way to the at least partial reconstruction of the linguistic contours involved in the language crystallization process. (Non-standard varieties; English dialects; language crystallization; variation in literary dialect; transitional bilingualism; Hiberno-English, Irish, Ireland.)