Marta DEGANI - Alexander ONYSKO
University of Verona, University of Innsbruck

The English Dialect Dictionary, published in 6 volumes between 1898 and 1905, can be considered today as the first scholarly compendium of English dialects (cf. Onysko, Markus and Heuberger 2009). The idea of creating a dictionary that would provide “so far as is possible, the complete vocabulary of all English dialect words” (Preface vol.1) in use during the 18th and 19th centuries was born with the foundation of the English Dialect Society in 1873. The actual task of compiling the English Dialect Dictionary, however, was taken up by one person in particular, Joseph Wright. Thus, it was his endeavour and zeal that made the realization of this ambitious project possible (cf. Holder 2004).

Interest in the philological study of dialects was a newly emerging field of scholarly research in the second half of the 19th century. This, arguably, gave some official acknowledgement to the existence of English dialects. The question, however, remains of how the notion of dialect was understood at that time and thus which words and expressions could find entrance into the English Dialect Dictionary.

To reconstruct the understanding of dialect as it emerges from Joseph Wright’s six- volume work, our paper is going to take a closer look at the history of its making and the lexicographical structure of its entries. Apart from discussing Wright’s role as the ultimate authority of deciding on the inclusion of dialect terms in the dictionary, we will focus on the different parts of its entry structure and its lexicographical labelling. In addition, we will tease apart the different semantic domains that are covered by the many headwords in order to provide insight into the major concerns of what was considered as dialect speech at that time. Altogether, this combined approach touching upon history, lexicographical strategies, and semantic analysis of the English Dialect Dictionary will allow drawing conclusions on the scholarly notion of (English) dialect at the turn of the 20th century.

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