122227 SE Linguistics Seminar / BA Paper (2018S)

Seminar Content: There are two main regional varieties of Irish English: in Northern Ireland, and in the Republic of Ireland. Both varieties share conservative features from Elizabethan English which arrived with settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The southern variety has more features transferred from the Irish (Celtic) language, so-called contact features, as a result of language shift from Irish to English as a community language in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The northern variety has more features from Lowland Scots which arrived in the early seventeenth century also through plantation. Thus different vernacular varieties of Irish English are marked by the degree of their features from Irish or Scots or neither; and at which structural levels those features are manifested: phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, or pragmatic-discoursal. It has been claimed that the presence of features from Irish causes English in Ireland to diverge from English in England; and that English and Scots have converged with each other. Those features penetrate standardized and literary varieties, too, and are often regarded as expressing crucial differences of culture and identity in each part of Ireland. In recent years, some there has been an attempt to revive Ulster Scots in a standardised written form, creating further divergence. The course will provide a comprehensive overview based on the latest research.

Seminar Objectives: the aim of this course is to provide a knowledge and understanding of the nature of Irish English and both its similarities as well as its striking differences from English English and Scottish English; it will also provide a description of English is each of the geo-political parts of Ireland, including the many features which have transferred from the Irish language. It will also discuss the linguistic underpinning of culture and identity in each part of Ireland. A pedagogical objective will be the training of students to speak as well as to write fluently and cogently about linguistic and possibly also cultural and identity topics pertaining to Irish English.

Seminar Outcomes: By the end of this seminar students will have acquired a knowledge and understanding of the nature of Irish English and both its similarities as well as its striking differences from English English and Scottish English; they will have been exposed to representations of Irish English in written texts or spoken transcriptions; and they will have encountered theoretical explanations of those differences (such as divergence and convergence). Pedagogically, they should have learned to write fluently and cogently about linguistic, cultural and identity topics pertaining to Irish English. A further outcome may be the foundations of a possible doctoral research project in this area.