The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway

This is a comprehensive investigation of the term dramway, local to south-west Britain and best recorded in Gloucestershire. It does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary or in well-known national and regional dialect dictionaries. It is of historical, theoretical and sociological interest. Th...

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Main Author: Richard Coates
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 2022-12-01
Series:Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/6732
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author Richard Coates
author_facet Richard Coates
author_sort Richard Coates
collection DOAJ
description This is a comprehensive investigation of the term dramway, local to south-west Britain and best recorded in Gloucestershire. It does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary or in well-known national and regional dialect dictionaries. It is of historical, theoretical and sociological interest. The aim here is to answer two linguistic questions, one historical and the other both theoretical and socio-onomastic. Firstly, how can its origin be explained? and secondly, is it an ordinary word (a common noun), a proper name or something else (and to what purpose)? The paper draws on local industrial and railway history sources, archival, printed and online, and on writings in linguistics and onomastics to illuminate, through extensive discussion of the example-word, some complex strands of the process of its becoming-a-name and becoming-a-meme in a bilingual setting and in a context of post-industrial decline and consequent heritage and tourism management.
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spelling doaj-art-6469684e0b0e4dc4a67354172a30a44d2025-08-20T02:32:41ZengUniversité Jean Moulin - Lyon 3Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology1951-62152022-12-012010.4000/lexis.6732The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramwayRichard CoatesThis is a comprehensive investigation of the term dramway, local to south-west Britain and best recorded in Gloucestershire. It does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary or in well-known national and regional dialect dictionaries. It is of historical, theoretical and sociological interest. The aim here is to answer two linguistic questions, one historical and the other both theoretical and socio-onomastic. Firstly, how can its origin be explained? and secondly, is it an ordinary word (a common noun), a proper name or something else (and to what purpose)? The paper draws on local industrial and railway history sources, archival, printed and online, and on writings in linguistics and onomastics to illuminate, through extensive discussion of the example-word, some complex strands of the process of its becoming-a-name and becoming-a-meme in a bilingual setting and in a context of post-industrial decline and consequent heritage and tourism management.https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/6732proper namecommon nounsocio-onomasticshistorical linguisticsmorphosyntax
spellingShingle Richard Coates
The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology
proper name
common noun
socio-onomastics
historical linguistics
morphosyntax
title The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
title_full The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
title_fullStr The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
title_full_unstemmed The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
title_short The history, linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
title_sort history linguistic status and potential of the term dramway
topic proper name
common noun
socio-onomastics
historical linguistics
morphosyntax
url https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/6732
work_keys_str_mv AT richardcoates thehistorylinguisticstatusandpotentialofthetermdramway
AT richardcoates historylinguisticstatusandpotentialofthetermdramway