‘Pack up your blarting’: The language of the senses in Black Country dialect

Abstract

This chapter examines literary and vernacular sources to consider how sensory experiences become encoded in dialect; looking at how words change meaning over time, how the dialect remains vital, and at the kinds of sensory experiences residents reported having. I explore the Aristotelian model of the senses, relating it to words which were present in my doctoral fieldwork and broaden the discussion of these words and their history. Using speech and writing by Black Country people, drawing on poetry, fiction and spoken data I critique the idea that the dialect is in any greater danger of becoming less vital than any other regional dialect of the UK. Using current linguistic research, I consider the future of the dialect, questioning what experiences speakers may wish to encode through language in a changing Black Country.