Marginal Dialects: Scotland, Ireland and Beyond

This collection deals with a range of different language contexts – English (as well as Scots in Scotland and Ireland), French, Italian, Catalan, Luxembourgish, Breton and Chinese. As the title suggests, it discusses situations in Scotland and Ireland, certainly, but also Canada and the United States, the French Caribbean, Brittany (and France in general), Nigeria, Hong Kong, central Italy and Sardinia. The frameworks in which it is discussed include diachronic and corpus-based analyses, findings based on fieldwork and primary data collection but also discussions which are macrosociolinguistic at heart, being concerned primarily with the ways in which language varieties are used within a society and how this use is judged and, often, controlled. It would be true to say, however, that practically all of the essays in this volume combine elements of both viewpoints in their discussions. Despite the many disparities of place, subject and language, the essays form a whole. It is to be hoped that the synergies found in these pages will encourage further cross-pollination.