SotA Anthology 2015-16 | Page 105

ENGL383

confident about what that
pronunciation is’.

© Jeff Unsworth

An example from the above
that fits into the phonetically
transparent category is
‘cump’ny’. The apostrophe
highlights the glottal stop
that Jeffrey’s mother has
used in her pronunciation
of the word, whilst the
[Ʊ] sound used makes it
explicit that this woman
is speaking in a northern
English
dialect,
which
Wigan, and more broadly
Lancashire dialect falls
under. An example where
the word being uttered
seems to be lost in the
orthographical manipulation
is ‘gowd’ or ‘towd’. It is likely
that someone who speaks
another dialect, especially
RP or Standard English, may
confuse ‘towd’, for example,
as meaning ‘towed’. This,
however, is not the case.
As Wright (1976) notes,
the ‘l’ in Lancashire dialect
is pronounced very ‘lightly’
and it is this, he suggests,
that causes the sound to
disappear ‘in the middles or
at the ends of words’. One
example of this that he gives
is the word ‘old’ which is
often pronounced as ‘owd’.
Therefore, gowd and towd,
the words which form the
ABCB rhyme scheme in this
stanza of the poem, actually
mean ‘gold’ and ‘told’ in
Wigan dialect. The difficulty
for a reader from outside
of Lancashire to interpret
the phonetic respellings
of these words illustrates
the way that Lancashire
Dialect literature seems to
be written by Lancashire
people, for Lancashire
people – somehow almost

attempting
to
prevent
outsiders from reading
the poems without great
difficulty. This emphasises
the tribe mentality that has
so often been depicted
as existing amongst the
working-classes of industrial
towns such as Wigan, and
serves to show that their
‘otherness’ has united them
against outsiders, and their
literature goes a long way to
showing this.

Figure 1: ‘On’t step’

The first stanza also gives
us the first example in the
poem of a specific dialect
word – ‘manki’n’. This
word is defined in Wright’s
Lancashireman’s Dictionary
(1982) in the infinitive as
‘mank about’, which he
defines as ‘to play tricks’.
The example Wright gives
to illustrate the use of
this in a real sentence is
‘gie o’er mankin’ about’.
Therefore, there are two
aspects to the use of this
word that are noteworthy.
Firstly, the implication of
Jeffrey’s mother’s warning
105

here implies that she is
concerned about Jeffrey’s
potential to misbehave
when the ‘posh visiters’
arrive. From this, the reader
can deduce that Jeffrey’s
mum fears ‘being shown
up’, as a Wiganer would
put it, or more simply being
embarrassed by Jeffrey’s
behaviour in front of people
who she clearly sees as
being above her socially,
and possibly morally.
Stanza two sees Jeffrey
describe Aunty Winney,
the posh visitor coming
to the house, as ‘the one
whose eye all’us flickers’.
This again poses an issue
for a reader approaching
the poem without a good
knowledge of Lancashire
dialect, as ‘all’us’ may be
misinterpreted as ‘all of
us’, because the respelling
looks very much like an
orthographically
altered
version of that phrase.
However, in Wigan dialect,
‘all’us’ is a reasonable
phonetic
respelling
of
‘always’. Therefore, Unsworth
conveys a humorous view
of posh Aunty Winney for
the reader here, as Jeffrey’s
mum seems to be elevating
her way above the rest of
the family, yet the first image
that forms in his mind’s-eye
is that of Aunty Winney’s
flickering eye. This fits in
with the comment Jeffrey
goes on to make when he
says, ‘I reckon it’s all fur
coat, un no nickers’. This
is a colloquial phrase used
to describe someone who
appears superficially to be
sophisticated, but as Oxford
Dictionaries define it – ‘have
nothing to substantiate it’.