John Benjamins Publishing Company
Irish English and recent immigrants to Ireland
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Bettina Migge
Abstract
When Ireland became a country of net immigration in the 1990s, the varieties of English spoken on the island came to function as targets of language learning and were subjected to critical evaluation by people from a wide range of backgrounds. This paper explores newcomers’ views on and attitudes towards Irish English based on interviews with 73 immigrants from a variety of national and social backgrounds. The analysis suggests that there is broad agreement about the nature of Irish English, but attitudes towards it and desire to identify with it are heterogeneous being influenced by a range of factors including people’s alignment with Ireland, their views about variation and Irish reactions to its use. Keywords: Irish English; language attitudes; language ideologies; migration
Abstract
When Ireland became a country of net immigration in the 1990s, the varieties of English spoken on the island came to function as targets of language learning and were subjected to critical evaluation by people from a wide range of backgrounds. This paper explores newcomers’ views on and attitudes towards Irish English based on interviews with 73 immigrants from a variety of national and social backgrounds. The analysis suggests that there is broad agreement about the nature of Irish English, but attitudes towards it and desire to identify with it are heterogeneous being influenced by a range of factors including people’s alignment with Ireland, their views about variation and Irish reactions to its use. Keywords: Irish English; language attitudes; language ideologies; migration
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contact details for contributors vii
- Preface xi
- Is Dublin English ‘Alive Alive Oh’? 1
- Linguistic change in Galway City English 29
- [ˈfɪlǝm] and [ˈfarǝm]? 47
- The why of Belfast rises 67
- Exploring grammatical differences between Irish and British English 85
- From Ireland to Newfoundland 101
- “A cannot get a loan for more than six years now” 131
- Is it truly unique that Irish English clefts are? Quantifying the syntactic variation of it -clefts in Irish English and other post-colonial English varieties 153
- The discourse marker LIKE in Irish English 179
- “I’m fine girl, and how are you?” 203
- “It’s lunacy now” 225
- The responsive system of Irish English 247
- A Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR) 265
- The Irish in Argentina 289
- Irish English and recent immigrants to Ireland 311
- Discourse ‘like’ and social identity – a case study of Poles in Ireland 327
- Bio Sketches 355
- Index 359
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contact details for contributors vii
- Preface xi
- Is Dublin English ‘Alive Alive Oh’? 1
- Linguistic change in Galway City English 29
- [ˈfɪlǝm] and [ˈfarǝm]? 47
- The why of Belfast rises 67
- Exploring grammatical differences between Irish and British English 85
- From Ireland to Newfoundland 101
- “A cannot get a loan for more than six years now” 131
- Is it truly unique that Irish English clefts are? Quantifying the syntactic variation of it -clefts in Irish English and other post-colonial English varieties 153
- The discourse marker LIKE in Irish English 179
- “I’m fine girl, and how are you?” 203
- “It’s lunacy now” 225
- The responsive system of Irish English 247
- A Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR) 265
- The Irish in Argentina 289
- Irish English and recent immigrants to Ireland 311
- Discourse ‘like’ and social identity – a case study of Poles in Ireland 327
- Bio Sketches 355
- Index 359
