Reading dialect varieties in the literary macrotext

Film and television adaptations of the classics frequently portray the regional and social dialects that supposedly belong to their characters even when in the original novels these same characters speak in standard dialogue or are characterised by way of a few impressionistic – linguistically speaking – brushstrokes. In novel adaptations, television programmes have proven to be even more realistic than cinema. In contemporary film and literature, on the other hand, we can count illustrious examples of how the scale of realism has tipped decidedly towards the portrayal of dialects in literature, rather than in their audiovisual counterparts: novels can be more extreme in their depiction of non-standard varieties than their relative adaptations for the screen. The interplay between literature and its adaptations for cinema and TV screens can shed light on the multifarious function of dialects in fictional dialogues and mirror the changing attitude of readers and viewers towards this socially loaded feature