Dialect and vernacular features in Late Modern English correspondence : beginnings of a quest

In this contribution I intend to discuss some important methodological issues concerning the study of so-called "non-standard" features in Late Modern English (LModE) documents; for instance, among such issues, we can include the place of perceptual dialectology, as labels like prescriptivism and normativity cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration the speakers' self-consciousness deriving from the (covert) prestige of certain varieties in relation to others. In addition to addressing some terminological points, I will stress the importance of studying authentic manuscripts, as it is only when we access original texts and manuscripts that we can go beyond the layers of interpretation added by later editors, and perhaps discover new perspectives from details that had been overlooked. The contribution will deal with a range of texts encoded by people of varying education levels, in order to highlight the different methodological problems under discussion; special attention will finally be given to correspondence, on account of its validity as a source of (relatively) spontaneous usage.