Locating Dialect in Discourse

The most extensive study of a Scottish dialect ever made, this work combines dialectology and sociolinguistics to present social differences within the compass of a single dialect. While most dialect and sociolinguistic studies concentrate on a narrow range of variables, this study examines phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and discourse features, and examines social differences in the use of these features. Macaulay treats the interviews as speech events, demonstrating how such factors as topic, genre, and the interview situation itself affect the quality of the language recorded. The variety of speech recorded in the interviews he has conducted refutes any claim that good data cannot be obtained through dyadic interviews.