Marion Schulte’s (Universität Rostock) examination of the English spoken in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, focuses on the phonetic realisations of principally two variables – /t/ and the price vowel – and the social and contextual factors that potentially influence interspeaker and intraspeaker variation. Schulte is keen to emphasise how the monograph (based on her postdoctoral habilitation doctorate studies) intersects across phonetics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics.
The introduction chapter (pp. 1–18) provides a succinct overview of the above disciplines, and effectively provides the road for the research gap the study attempts to fill: a locally grounded analysis of spoken data to track the diachronic development of linguistic features in a World English. Indexicality is at the core of the study, the main concern being to correlate macro-social factors such as class, gender and national identities with stancetaking and performance of identities in researcher-led interview interaction with younger speakers (most were attending secondary school or university at the time of interviews).
Chapter 2, ‘Sociolinguistics of Dublin English’ (pp. 9–34), outlines pertinent patterns in Irish society and previous studies that were influenced by these dynamics. While the northside and southside (divided by the River Liffey) have been the traditional distinctions within the capital, recent studies have shown that this crude binary masks salient social-class distinctions based on location of residence and occupation. Importantly these social identities relate to different ways of speaking within the capital, which can be further mapped to a range of linguistic variants.
Chapter 3, ‘Pragmatics of Irish English’ (pp. 35–44), focuses on the areas within this discipline examined in depth later: the interactional patterns relating to the like and kind of pragmatic markers, and their connection to elements such as phonetic variability, embedded social meanings and stances.
Chapter 4, ‘Sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and phonetic variation’ (pp. 45–51), presents the major literature in these areas and connections between them, in a coherent and focused manner. A central underlying idea comes from Ochs (Reference Ochs, Duranti and Goodwin1992), who postulated the connection between stances, indexical meanings, social identities and language use. Another important area relating to the study in question is how sociopragmatic variation combines with phonetic variation to create indexicalities that can be utilised in interaction.
Chapter 5, ‘Data and methodology’ (pp. 52–68), outlines the auditory and acoustic phonetic analysis of the interview data.
Chapter 6, ‘Vowel variation: /ai/ in Dublin English’ (pp. 69–109), first relates the phonetic analysis of the pragmatic marker like to previous studies, before breaking down the realisations in terms of the lexical and pragmatic functions of both the like and kind of items. The statistical analysis suggests that linguistic factors best predict pragmatic and lexical functions of like (rather than social factors). The qualitative analysis, however, elucidates the pragmatic and social elements which influence salient usage and phonetic patterns found in realisations of the price vowel in the discourse markers.
Chapter 7, ‘Consonantal variation: Word-final /t/ in Dublin English’ (pp. 110–42), begins by showing that slit /t/ or fricated realisations of word-final /t/ have become much more acceptable over the years in national radio and television archive data. This realisation used to index a local Irish identity, along with formality and appropriateness in modern clips. Schulte then digs into these indexicalities through examination of the aforementioned sociolinguistic interview data she collected around 2020. The main results of this qualitative analysis infer that the possible indexical field of the word-final slit /t/ include social meanings related to expert knowledge, formality, assertiveness and emphasis. Interestingly, a dropped/unreleased variant is favoured by male speakers, with their female counterparts typically appropriating a glottalised realisation, and with both male and female speakers indexing non-conformity to these two variants.
Chapter 8, ‘Discussion and conclusions’ (pp. 143–53), contains four subsections, beginning with a discussion of the connections between phonetics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. The main argument that sociophoneticians can consider stancetaking and communication norms alongside the more mainstream linguistic and macro-level social factors is well presented. The remaining three subsections contextualise this variation in terms of the theory surrounding indexical fields, sociolinguistics and World Englishes.
It is important to mention that while like has gained exposure worldwide and in Irish English, this study can be rightly considered the first systematic sociophonetic study of the price or /ai/ vowel segment found in the salient discourse marker. The spoken data comes from a relatively wide sample: it is mentioned at the beginning of chapter 5 that 19 out of 54 interviews were chosen for analysis in the study (p. 52). However, it would be useful to have noted the rationale for selecting these interviews, as a guide to conduct follow-on studies.
A number of different social meanings and stances are associated with word-final /t/ realisations (p. 150). A short section then mentions that glottalised variants are associated with less affluent speakers, and the fricated variant indexed with poshness and affluence, before discussing indexical fields in general terms. Based on the data analysis presented in chapter 7, it is my opinion there is a lot more room for examination of the indexical field related to slit /t/, for example. An illustration and extended discussion – in order to begin a discussion with fellow Dublin English and indexicality researchers and to lay the ground for future developments – would have been a helpful addition. Furthermore, while I agree that it is beyond the investigation by Schulte to develop a methodology to examine polysemous stances and social meanings related to a linguistic variant, there should have been reference to recent developments in this area. The recent edited volume relating to third-wave sociolinguistics by Hall-Lew et al. (Reference Hall-Lew, Moore and Robert2021b), Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theorizing the Third Wave, offers some promising methods. For example, Maegaard & Pharao (Reference Maegaard, Pharao and Hall-Lew2021) examine perceptual inferences of multiple indexical fields of variables, based on the sequence of ideas or concepts in preceding speech. Tamminga (Reference Tamminga and Hall-Lew2021) also presents a method quantifying microvariation between vocalic variants, with pairing of regression models and discursive evidence. Lectal focusing in interaction (Sharma Reference Sharma and Hall-Lew2021) examines data to highlight instances of style-shifting or intraspeaker variation, something close to the centre of the data analysis chapters. These methods could have been a start to consider preliminary ideas of how to advance this area. Hall-Lew et al. (Reference Hall-Lew, Moore, Podesva and Hall-Lew2021a: 17) mention that, ideally, methods such as the above, with discourse analysis and ethnography and beyond, can be combined to provide fullest analysis of social meaning. This and other suggestions below are presented as a form of constructive criticism that the author may take on board and advance when possible, and maybe in collaboration with others in the field. A salient thought that emerged in the examination of the volume is that the time is ripe for a collective of Dublin English scholars to come together with their respective datasets and a reasoned but realistic plan to examine areas that demand further examination or clarification.
One of the final comments in the monograph (p. 153) alludes to the under-development of how speakers and listeners perceive phonetic variation: this is an area that will continue to develop. Schulte bookended the sociophonetic analysis with interpretations of interview data in her analysis of like in chapter 6, which could lay the foundations for perceptual experiments of like, alongside other items in the price lexical sets such as right. The latter lexical item also includes a word-final /t/, which offers another area for future examination. The argument that the indexing of expert stance and frication of /t/ is shared across the Dublin English speech community (p. 135) is one that could really lend itself to perceptual work. Going beyond perceptual experiments, it is possible to say that there are areas for fruitful further examination of the data found in the current monograph. The phonetic analysis of like in chapter 7 shows that lexical functions (grammatical or particle) and pragmatic functions (quotative or verb) correlate with different phonetic realisations. I would argue that there is much more room to interrogate this data regarding how and where the commonalities are, for example how phonetic variation relates to instances of specific pragmatic functions and stancetaking like that of an expert. This would lead us to a sociopragmatic examination of greater depth and breadth in terms of the typical behaviour of like and word-final /t/, specifically regarding what speakers are doing sociopragmatically (in terms of stancetaking etc.) in the discourse surrounding instances of the salient phonetic realisations. If time allows, I would encourage the researcher to pursue this element in her data – possibly in collaboration with others – to push the realm of third-wave sociolinguistics further.
In summary, the monograph presents a robust understanding of salient phonetic variants in an important region for the study of Irish and World Englishes. The diachronic analysis of radio data in chapter 7 (p. 113) convincingly delineates major changes in realisations of /t/ intervocalic/prepausal position. The case studies explore factors contributing to phonetic variation, all fricated but to varying degrees, and why. Sports commentators seem to misalign with the high-status fricative /t/: an interesting question Schulte poses regarding this is if it is due to speed of enunciation (deletion is markedly quicker to articulate than frication), lack of pragmatic work or something else. Irish sports players frequently use a fricated /t/ in interviews, but from observation they would never use fricative /t/ on the pitch during matches, possibly due to speed and articulation considerations. This is one of the interesting questions that emerge in the monograph that make it a valuable addition to the research vault of Irish English, sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, sociopragmatics, World Englishes scholars and more. Fine-grained phonetic distinctions relating to the localisation of global patterns are coherently related to pragmatic positions adopted by the interviewees, which as a whole expand the horizons of Dublin English studies and beyond.
