eye-dialect

[Peter Trudgill]

I immodestly quote from my "A glossary of sociolinguistics" (in the
USA: Oxford U. P., 2003):

"A term used to refer to the representation of nonstandard dialects
in writing, particularly with reference to spellings such as <wot>
for what where the spelling does not actually indicate a
pronunciation difference from that represented by the standard
orthography, but where it rather has the role of simply indicating
that the speaker is using a nonstandard dialect or low prestige
accent. For example, writing <o> instead of <a> in what actually
tells us nothing about the vowel the speaker is supposed to be using
and is probably rather a way of indicating that the speaker is using
a glottal stop at the end of the word rather than [t]."
--
Peter Trudgill
Professor of English Linguistics
Fribourg University
Av. de l'Europe 20
1700 Fribourg
Switzerland

Telephone (UK):
01603 618036