Maid in Cornwall

Abstract

Abstract While the research literature on regional dialect levelling is substantial (e.g. Williams and Kerswill 1999; Britain 2002; Watt 2002; Jansen 2019), this process is under-explored and under-theorised when it comes to patterns of lexical usage. Using maid as a case-study, in this article I provide a detailed account of processes of lexical levelling in Cornwall. I consider the usage of maid from two perspectives, that of onomasiology and semasiology. From an onomasiological perspective, maid, as a variant of the concept woman, exhibits socio-stylistic reallocation, with attested usages of maid in this study being limited to older speakers in careful speech styles. From a semasiological perspective, two senses of maid, ‘woman’ and ‘female servant or attendant’, have undergone structural reallocation in apparent-time with maid ‘woman’ being the prototypical sense for older speakers but a more peripheral sense for their younger counterparts.