Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface Liverpool: language, culture and history
- 1 The sea, slavery and strangers: observations on the making of early modern Liverpool and its culture
- 2 Language in Liverpool: the received history and an alternative thesis
- 3 Language and a sense of place: the beginnings of ‘Scouse’
- 4 Frank Shaw and the founding of the ‘Scouse industry’
- 5 What is ‘Scouse’? Historical and theoretical issues
- 6 Liverpools: places, histories, differences
- Appendix. Stories of words: naming the place, naming the people
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix. Stories of words: naming the place, naming the people
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface Liverpool: language, culture and history
- 1 The sea, slavery and strangers: observations on the making of early modern Liverpool and its culture
- 2 Language in Liverpool: the received history and an alternative thesis
- 3 Language and a sense of place: the beginnings of ‘Scouse’
- 4 Frank Shaw and the founding of the ‘Scouse industry’
- 5 What is ‘Scouse’? Historical and theoretical issues
- 6 Liverpools: places, histories, differences
- Appendix. Stories of words: naming the place, naming the people
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The whole subject is very mysterious and well worthy of research. (Stephan Jack, ‘Dialect Expert’, 1945)
Despite its significance, the received version of Liverpool's linguistic history is not the only narrative told about language in Liverpool. For on a more specific level, there are word-stories that have been woven about both the name of the place itself and the terms used to refer to the people who live in it. The purpose of this appendix, then, will be to explore the ways in which ‘Liverpool’, ‘Liverpolitan’, ‘Liverpudlian’, ‘Dicky Sam’, ‘Whacker’, ‘Scouse’ and ‘Scouser’ have been explained and made the subject of particular types of narration. As will become clear, the stories of these words have been spun by various types of cultural and linguistic analysts, both professional and amateur: etymologists, onomasticians, historians, social observers, journalists, folklorists and practitioners of popular culture have all had their say. Sometimes ‘scientific’, sometimes highly speculative, sometimes pointed, sometimes comic, the narratives are united only by the underlying sense that the terms under review are worthy of attention – a proper subject of analysis and therefore in need of investigation. Thus, given that all stories in one way and another are posited on a necessary confidence in the significance of their subject matter, the narratives to be analysed in this chapter play an important role in the formation of the notion that the language of Liverpool is a discursive object in its own right.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- ScouseA Social and Cultural History, pp. 143 - 165Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012