The Survival of Traditional Dialect Lexis on the Participatory Web

This article examines the extent to which "traditional" dialect lexis (TDL) attested in the Survey of English Dialects can be found in a contemporary online context virtually located in the North East of England, one of the most dialectally distinct parts of the country. The findings suggest that the rate of survival is perhaps higher than might be imagined, given the conclusions of previous research on lexical attrition in regional varieties of English in the UK. The article also shows the affordances of corpus-based dialect study, illustrating how access to the discursive contexts in which TDL occurs can offer insights into meaning and usage, and give access to the metalinguistic reflections of dialect users.