It was argued in the first chapter that as a result of its particular history, Liverpool emerged as a place influenced by not only national and international developments but by very specific local features. With this context in mind, the aim of this chapter is to start upon a consideration of one aspect of Liverpool's cultural past – its language. To begin with, this will take the form of an analysis of the dominant narrative of the history of language in Liverpool, a story, as will become clear later, that was constructed through various media – from the work of folklorists, journalists and practitioners of specific types of popular culture to the research of professional linguists. This is a necessary step towards understanding a phenomenon that is otherwise somewhat peculiar: the fact that in Britain and Ireland at least, Liverpool and Liverpudlians are most widely recognized by their association with a distinct form of spoken language. Or as John Belchem puts it in ‘“An accent exceedingly rare”: Scouse and the Inflexion of Class’ (one of the few sustained historiographical accounts of the topic), the identity of Liverpudlians ‘is constructed, indeed it is immediately established, by how they speak rather than what they say. Instantly recognizable, the accent is the essential medium for the projection and representation of the local micro-culture’ (Belchem 2000b: 33). Of course this is not to claim that Liverpool and its inhabitants are not connected, often metonymically, with other cultural modes – comedy, football and popular music for example. But it is the link with language that predominates and it will be argued in this chapter that this connection is based on a particular understanding of Liverpool's linguistic history that needs to be challenged and revised. In order to do this it will be useful to start by examining a variety of issues from a number of historical, textual and theoretical perspectives. The material that will be considered ranges from eighteenth-century histories of Liverpool to the most accomplished recent historical accounts…