ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the same framework can be applied to enrich our understanding of nineteenth-century dialect literature and performance. Of course, dialect literature is not the only form of evidence for the enregisterment of local features. One factor that the late nineteenth century and the present day have in common is an increase in opportunities for dialect contact, both through geographical mobility and the social mobility offered by education. Enregisterment takes place 'due to a variety of discursive and metadiscursive activities', by which a particular set of features associated with an accent are 'represented collectively in the public imagination as a stable variety and maintained across time and region via meta-pragmatic practices that reiterate the value of this variety and its link to social status'. In nineteenth-20century England, new urban dialects arose as a result of migration to the cities of the industrial revolution, which led to dialect contact and thus koineization.
