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.

Table of contents

Preface ix I. Investigating Dublin English 1 Introduction 1 Collecting data 8

II. English in present-day Dublin Introduction 27 Recent changes in Dublin English 45 Attitudes to Dublin English 92 The wider context 107 The grammar of Dublin English 115 The vocabulary of Dublin English 133 Placenames in Dublin 146

III. Reaching back in time The history of English in Ireland 150 Letters as linguistic evidence 158 Literary texts as linguistic evidence 166 Prescriptive comments by Dublin authors 178 Early modern Dublin English 189 Medieval Irish English 194 Supraregionalisation 202

IV. Guide to the CD-ROM 211

V. Lexical sets for Dublin English 225

VI. Glossary 233

Maps 239 References 243 Index 261 Sound files referred to in book 269

"Dublin English: Evolution and Change is a unique study of a significant urban variety of English which is undergoing major change. It offers a compelling and persuasive analysis - backed up by a few hundred speaker recordings - which will be of special interest to sociolinguists world-wide." J.K. Chambers