This chapter asks ‘what can dialect literature do?’ Or, put another way, what else can dialect literature do besides showing how people talk in particular places? Focusing in particular on the issue of orthography, it proposes a model for identifying the multiple communicative functions that non-standard spelling performs in dialect literature. The chapter repurposes Jakobson’s taxonomy of communicative factors and functions (Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’. In Poetry in Theory: an anthology, ed. J. Cook, 350–60. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004 [1960]), and combines it with recent work on orthography from a broad range of subject areas to account for the eighteen different functions of non-standard spelling in dialect literature, ranging from projecting identity to communicating metalinguistic information and from creating aesthetic effects to appealing to specific audiences. With good reason, much of the discussion surrounding respelling in dialect literature has tended to focus on its relationship with the spoken linguistic varieties it seeks to represent and the social identities associated with those varieties. But respelling can and often does bring other functions into play, and recognising this is key to appreciating the breadth and richness of stylistic effects at work in early dialect literature.