‘Folk-Speech’ and ‘Book English’: Re-presentations of Dialect in Hardy's Novels

Abstract

In an attempt to evaluate the fidelity of Hardy's representation of dialect speech, critics have made implicit or explicit reference to dialects actually spoken at the time Hardy wrote his novels of rural life. To this end, comparisons are often made between features of ‘Wessex dialect’ and contemporary records of dialects produced by amateur dialectologists, such as Hardy's friend William Barnes. In this article I propose a new approach to the relationship between non-fictional records of dialects in the nineteenth century and the literary representation of dialect speech in Hardy's novels. I argue that the considerable practical and theoretical difficulties that are to be found in non-fictional records of dialects, mean that Hardy's version of dialect speech cannot be read back on to authentic dialect speech. Only when the non-literary definition and representation of dialects are recognised as problematic, can questions be asked which reveal the true complexity of dialect speech in the novels. I demonstrate a reading of the language of Hardy's novels as a complex intersection of contemporary rules of definition of dialects, which are re-presented in the texts as internally and mutually contradictory discourses. Focusing upon the discursive construction of the sign of ‘Wessex dialect’, I indicate how Hardy's literary version of dialect speech can be read as a political critique of the definition and representation of the opposition between ‘folk-speech’ and ‘book English’ at the time the novels were written.