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Literary-dialect works are useful tools for dialect study as they are characterized by the presence of deviant spellings based on semi-phonetic spellings of Standard English. This paper analyzes these spellings and their sounds within the GOAT lexical set in the dialect of nineteenth-century Lancashire, according to the classification that Wells (1982) provides for RP [au]. For this purpose, we examined nineteen literary-dialect works. In this endeavor, the deviant spellings related to that RP diphthong were gathered and attributed to their realizations in the dialect. This paper discusses the coexistence of the different sounds related to RP [au] considering historical and sociolinguistic reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differently from other areas of linguistic research, the study of metaphor variation and change presents some uniquely difficult challenges for systematic linguistic analysis. The recent development of cognitive sociolinguistic theory has showcased the importance of the study of conceptual differences among linguistic varieties. This paper is intended as a contribution to this field of investigation: using statistical analysis of large sets of dialectal data, we will propose an analysis of onomasiological lexical variation and change across varieties of World English. In particular, we will focus on why particular emotion conceptualizations are more frequent in some of these varieties of English. Our analysis shows that local socio-cultural models of emotions affect lexical variation and change at the dialectal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]