Introduction: What Is Dialect Writing? Where Is the North of England?

This chapter is an introduction to the contributions and themes in the volume ‘Dialect Writing and the North of England’, explaining how both ‘dialect writing’ and ‘the North of England’ are complex notions which have often been poorly understood. It shows how we need insights from a range of disciplines (including dialectology, cultural studies, structural linguistics, the study of spelling and literature) in order to fully understand dialect writing, and that a range of factors (including dialectological, cultural, geographical and political factors) conspire to determine what counts as ‘the North’. The chapter considers the range of texts that make up dialect writing, proposes a framework for interpreting this variation (in terms of intended audience and the proportion of text in non-standard language), and considers how dialect writing can be used as evidence for both the way in which contemporary dialects are stored and interpreted, and as evidence for dialects’ history.