First of three talks by HAROLD ORTON
Last year the first two volumes of the Survey of English Dialects by HAROLD ORTON and EUGEN DIETH were published. They constitute the first fruits of an eleven years' survey undertaken by the University of Leeds into the way in which English is spoken in rural communities in the middle of the twentieth century.
In this talk Professor Orton, who is Head of the English Language Department of Leeds University, deals with the history, aims, and methods of the survey.
He writes: ' Despite the disruptive influences of our schools, of broadcasting, of the printed word, of our towns and cities, vernacular English is still very much alive. But in front of strangers, dialect speakers will try to conceal their country accent, and anyone searching for traditional dialect must make his approaches to potential informants tactfully.
* The investigations took nine fieldworkers to 311 selected rural localities. Over 1,300 set questions, chiefly about farming, nature, and the home, were put to three or four dialect-speaking natives in each locality. Their responses were transcribed phonetically in the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association. When portable tape-recorders became available, unscripted and unrehearsed sound-recordings were made of the natural speech in each locality.'
Second talk: May 29