Dublin English: Evolution and change

Raymond Hickey

Jul 2005 · John Benjamins Publishing

About this ebook

The present book describes the English language in all its facets as spoken in present-day Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland. It covers the entire range of its history since the first arrival of English there several hundred years ago. Apart from the evolution of English in the capital, the book also concentrates on the significant changes which have been taking place in the speech of Dublin in the past 15 years or so. The rapid change of Dublin English is seen as a correlate to the many social and economic developments which have occurred in recent years. The type of linguistic change in Dublin is driven by dissociation (the mirror-image of accommodation) and will be of particular interest to scholars working within the ‘language variation and change’ framework as it will to those more generally concerned with varieties of English and their specific profiles vis à vis more standard forms of English.