Overview

A Sound Atlas of Irish English offers a unique and comprehensive audio overview of the English language as spoken in present-day Ireland. In all, there are over 1,500 recordings which were made between the mid 1990s and 2002. The recordings cover both genders and all ages (from 11 to over 80). Each county of the 32 in Ireland is represented and there is a proper spread according to population. The capitals, Belfast and Dublin, have large numbers of speakers, making the Sound Atlas particularly suitable for sociolinguistic work within a variationist framework. All the data can be accessed easily from the supplied DVD by means of a Java application which allows the user to browse among the data by county and to view and listen to lexical set realisations and free text. The DVD contains much additional information about Irish English - varieties, historical development, current distribution, etc. - as does the accompanying book which offers many details concerning specific features of forms of Irish English and information on the methodology used for the sound atlas. A Sound Atlas of Irish English has basically a twofold purpose. It is on the one hand a research tool for those scholars who are interested in Irish English from an internal point of view, so to speak, and on the other hand it is a source of reliable and up-to-date information on the kinds of English spoken in Ireland and which can be used for comparative work, e.g. when looking at the sources of features found in varieties around the world, such as US English, Canadian, Australian/New Zealand English and the like. The Sound Atlas can be used by academics and students alike. The latter group is especially relevant in this context. With the Sound Atlas, students can gain a much clearer picture of Irish English by listening to the sound files. The sound atlas is supplemented by A Survey of Irish English Usage which consists of over 1,000 questionnaires from speakers with information on the acceptance of grammatical features specific to Irish English. The data of the survey, along with analytical software, is contained on the DVD and discussed in the book. The software will run under any version of Windows as well as on Macintosh computers and under the Linux operating system. It may be, but need not be, installed to the hard disk of a computer.

Full Product Details

9783110182989

Table of Contents

Reviews

To sum up, the book constitutes an excellent tool not only for the scholars or students interested in Irish English, but also for the study and analysis of some of the fundamental issues that are still being discussed in Dialectology and Language Variation and Change. It is also a useful tool not only for those involved in the teaching of Varieties of English around the world, Sociolinguistics, and Language contact, but also for drama students who may be interested in working on the speech of an Irish character. Carolina Amador Morenoin: Linguist List 16.21195/2005

Author Information

Raymond Hickey is Professor of English Linguistics at Essen University, Germany.

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