–Irish English – Both periphery and centre
IAWE 2019 University of Limerick, 20-22 June 2019 Raymond Hickey, University of Duisburg and Essen Structure of talk
Language in Ireland The geography and history of Irish English Typical features of Irish English The spread of Irish English
Current research in Irish English studies
Irish English in the arena of varieties of English Website for Irish English: www.uni-due.de/IERC Website for Irish English: www.uni-due.de/IERC Language in Ireland Languages present during the history of Ireland
pre-Celtic Celtic Latin ScandinavianAnglo-NormanEnglish 3-5c 5-6c-> 8-10c 12-14c 12c –> BCE CE -> The Normans came to Ireland (south-east) in 1169 with some English in their retinue. The Normans settled in the countryside and built fortified towers, called ‘keeps’, while the English settled in towns as tradespeople and craftsmen, in Waterford, New Ross and Kilkenny,for instance.
The ruins of a Norman ‘keep’ Language varieties in present-day Ireland
Irish English / Scots
Northern WesternSouthern Southern Mid-Ulster Ulster Irish English Scots English Northern Ireland (UK) (Mid-Ulster English / Ulster Scots)
Republic of Ireland (southern Irish English) The geography of Ireland Provinces: 4 Counties: 32 (26 in the Republic and 6 in Northern Ireland) The names and borders of Irish counties have been stable for centuries. Identification by county is very prominent in Ireland. Dublin is by far the largest city (metro area: at least 1.5m). The other cities are much smaller. Belfast (metro area: 650,000), then Cork (350,000) with Derry, Limerick and Galway all under 200,000 The history of Irish English Periods in the development of Irish English
1) First period Late 12th century to 1600
Establishment of English on the east coast in a band from Dublindown to Waterford. English is above all present in the towns; Anglo-Norman —and of course Irish —is spoken inthe countryside. Increasing Gaelicisationin the centuries after the initial invasion led to the demise of English outside the major towns. The low point for English is reached in the 16th century with Irish in a correspondingly strong position.
2)Second period 1600 to present-day
This begins with a decisive military defeat for the Irish. The north of the country is particularly affected with settlers from Lowland Scotland moving to Ulster and establishing a firm presence there. Later on in the 17th century there are vigorous plantations of the south of the country (under Cromwell). By the end of the 17th century, the position of English is unassailable andthe general decline of Irish sets in with events like the Great Famine in the late 1840s and the ensuing mass emigration dealing a final blow to the language. Initial settlement of south- eastern Ireland by Anglo- Normans from Wales as of the late 12th century East coast dialect region Migration of Lowland Scots to Ulster in the 17th century Migration of northern English to mid-Ulster in the 17th century English and Scots in Ulster Present-day dialect divisions in Ulster Spread of English in Ireland Retreat of Irish westwards The Great Famine (1845-8)
In the second half of the 19th century the majority of the Irish population shifted to English. By 1900 less than 10% of the population were Irish speakers.
Three generations model of language shift
G1 Parent: Language A Children: Language A language b
G2 Parent: Language A Language B Children: language a Language B
G3 Parents and children: Language B Revival of the Irish language
The Gaelic League / Conradh na Gaeilge founded in 1893. Figures such as Douglas Hyde / Dubhghlas de hÍde were instrumental in raising conscious- ness about reviving the Irish language in late 19th century Ireland. The revival process has continued with varying degrees of success throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Constitutional status of Irish and English in Ireland The 26 counties of the south of Ireland became independent in 1922 as the Irish Free State. In 1937 the Constitution of Ireland came into force. According to Article 8 Irish is the official language of the country, with English enjoying co-official status. In 1949 the south became the Republic of Ireland and in 1973 became a member of the European Union (then the European Economic Community). There are many Irish-medium schools in Ireland today where English-speaking children are taught in Irish.
Sign reads: “Irish school of Waterford” Irish radio and television services are available
cuisle na cathrach = ‘the pulse of the city’(Dublin)
TG4 (Fourth television channel) a mixed Irish / English service; súil eile = ‘a different eye’ Present-day Irish-speaking areas in Ireland There are about 30- 40,000 native speakers of Irish left on the Western Seaboard in three distinct dialect regions (less than 1% of the entire population of Ireland). If you see this sign, then you are entering an officially designated Irish-speaking area. An Ghaeltacht is a collective term for these areas. The dialects of English in Ireland English in Dublin
Dublin < Dubh Linn ‘dark pool’but the usual Irish word for the city is Baile Átha Cliath ‘town at the fortified causeway’.
The local pronunciation of Dublin is [dʊblɪn]. Dublin in 1610 Dublin around 1800
Areal view of Dublin looking eastwards down the River Liffey which divides the city into a North and a South side Basic split in Dublin Enregisterment of the North-South divide in Dublin The north side of Dublin is generally working class with a strong local accent (typified in the novels of Roddy Doyle) whereas the south side is more affluent and hence avoids vernacular Dublin English and favours newer varieties variously referred to as ‘D4’(from a key postal district) or ‘Dortspeak’(from the metropolitan railway service). These newer accents have been satirised in a series of novels by the journalist Paul Howard featuring a central character Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (ROCK for short).
Roddy Doyle Paul Howard Website for Dublin English: www.uni-due.de/VCDE Pronunciation features of Irish English
General monophthong realisation of vowels; IreEng is definitely rhotic. Lack of interdental fricatives (dental stops, alveolar stops in vernacular varieties) thinker # tinker; thank # tank Paddy’s a real “dis, dem and dose”man. Fricative realisation of /t/ (intervocalically and word-finally) city, water ; but, put N.B.: This sound is not [s], i.e. hit and hiss are not homophones. Grammatical features of Irish English
Supraregional structures Verbal aspect (perfective,immediate and resultative) We’re after having our breakfast. She has the dinner cooked. Vernacular structures Verbal aspect (habitual, durative and punctual) They do be out drinking at the weekend. I gets up at half seven, so I do. Grammatical features of Irish English
Overuse of definite article How’s the mother keepin’? The both of us are comin’tomorrow. The oul’ [= ‘old’] back is botherin’me lately. Feature spread from North America Feature spread from North America
Syntax: the ubiquitous quotative like. Phonology: Short Front Vowel Lowering, DRESS [dræs], TRAP [trap]. Strongly retroflex /r/, i.e. [ɻ], car [kɑ:ɻ]. T-flapping: water [wɒ:ɾɚ]. GOOSE-fronting: soon [sy:n]. Young females lead in the use of features from North America The Spread of Irish English Transportation of Irish English overseas in the colonial period Transportation of Irish English overseas in the colonial period
Raymond Hickey Transportation of Irish English overseas in the colonial period Transportation of Irish English overseas in the colonial period Irish emigration to Australia Transportation of Irish English overseas in the colonial period Irish emigration to the USA Current research in Irish English studies The Pragmatics of Irish English
The Pragmatics of Irish English
Use of ‘now’ Now, there‘s your coffee. That‘s five sixty euros, now. Goodbye, now. Use of ‘sure’ Sure he’s only kiddin’ya. Use of ‘grand’ We had a grand time at the dinner last night. A: Is my hair okay? B: Lookit, you‘re grand. ‘Bad data’[fragmentary data] for Irish English
Early audio recordings and the language of emigrant letters ‘Bad Data’: the linguistic value of fragmentary material
‘Baddata’coversboth the earliest recordings of varieties of English and emigrant letters. The audiorecordings now go back more than a century. True, they often involve set texts and the individuals recorded are prominent people of society at the time, but they arestill genuine records of earlier accents of English.
(Cambridge University Press, 2017) Emigrants to overseas locations during the colonial period wrote back home recounting their experiences in their new environment and trying to get news of the family members in the home country and to convince potential emigrants to leave Ireland. ‘Bad Data’: the linguistic value of fragmentary material
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2019. Keeping in Touch. Emigrant Letters across the English-speaking World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
‘Letter from America’(1875) by James Brennan (1837-1907) Irish Identities –Sociolinguistic Perspectives
Non-Nationals, the New Irish
Linguistic landscapes in Ireland What languages can be seen in public spaces?
Don‘t be fooled: signs in Irish are frequently not grammatically correct.
Signs of languages in Ireland apart from English and Irish
Restaurants catering for an up-market clientele of Irish people Stores in industrial estates catering for the actual immigrants East Europeans as a perceived group of New Irish
Lithuanian Russian
Polish
English German English Irish (beag = “small”) Corpora for studying Irish English ICE -Ireland Limerick Corpus of Irish English Amador-Moreno, Carolina P. 2020. Orality in Written Texts: Using Historical Corpora to Investigate Irish English (1700-1900). London: Routledge. O’Sullivan, Joan 2020. Corpus linguistics and the analysis of sociolinguistic change. London: Routledge. Corpus of Irish English, available online at: www.uni-due.de/CP/CIE.htm
–Irish English – Periphery or centre, or both? Centre versus Periphery: The position of Irish English in the pluricentral world of English
Newfoundland
English
Irishish English BrEng; AmEng, CanEng
SAEng,AusEng,NZEng Indian English
Philippine English However, in terms of the amount and range of research produced and being produced, Irish English can hold its own with the numerically larger varieties, such as American, Canadian, British or Australian English. Irish English and World Englishes A member of the larger set? What do World Englishes cover?
Quantitatively small varieties (various African Englishes: Namibian English, Ugandan English; Asian Englishes like Brunei English). Various Caribbean Englishes and, yes, ‘Old World’varieties like Irish English. World Englishes: Defining the scope of a paradigm. What does it cover?
Consider the most cited articles from the journal World Englishes: English in China (2), English in Japan (1), English as a lingua franca (1) and the international intelligibility of English (1) From this we can conclude that there is: 1) An Asian bias in the data considered. 2) A concern with English as a second language (see special issue 37.1, 2018) and pedagogical issues (several articles over the years). What do World Englishes cover?
Is there a tension between ‘Western’and ‘Eastern’ scholarly traditions and approaches? Rüdiger, Sofia 2019. Morpho-Syntactic Patterns in Spoken Korean. English Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Percillier, Michael 2016. World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition. Insights from Southeast Asian Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Documentation and Methodology Modelling World Englishes
Deshors, Sandra C. (ed.) 2018 Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the interplay of emancipation and globalization of ESL varieties. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Forthcoming: The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes (Schreier, Hundt and Schneider, eds.) What do World Englishes cover?
But the World Englishes paradigm is also about emergent varieties with potentially huge numbers of speakers, above all in China.This has market implications for the publishing industry given that the Asian economies are increasingly central to world finance.
What do World Englishes cover?
There is a concern with gaining recognition and status in the arena of Englishes in today‘s world. Achieving linguistic independence is important for many countries. So, it is about difference, but just enough to have a distinctive profile, but not to endanger trasnational communication or trigger rejection from prescriptive quarters, witness the tension between Singlish and more general forms of English in Singapore. So one can well ask the question: What about linguistic identity in today‘s connected world? Despite globalisation, varieties of language still fulfill the essential function of expressing linguistic identity and that is as true here in Ireland as it is in other parts of the world. Allow me to finish off by returning to the question of scope. This is important for World Englishes and has both advantages and disadvantages. The main danger is that ‘World Englishes’ comes to mean all kinds of English and it loses it sharp profile as a research paradigm within English linguistics. However, a broad view is also a sign of maturity, an opportunity to connect disparate approaches to varieties of English under a single cover term and encourage exchange across boundaries and further cooperation among scholars. And it is hopefully by these means that we can help to link the centre and the periphery combining fruitful aspects of both. –Irish English – Both periphery and centre
Thank you for your attention.