The volume consists of a substantial introduction, providing a geographical and historical outline of the area, an account of the origin of the area, an account of the origin of present-day southwestern speech varieties and a synopsis of their main features. This is followed by texts of three main types: brief selections from 17th to 19th century dialect writers, aimed at depicting characteristics of southwestern speech; longer 20th century texts - verse, dialogue in novels; transcripts from tapes from 1950 onwards of speakers of different ages and social backgrounds. A part of each transcript is also provided in phonetic notation.