This fascinating book tracks changes in the varieties of English used in radio advertisements in Ireland over four decades and links these to language ideology.
Chapters 1–4 are accessible but thorough introductions to the study's methods and theoretical and social contexts. Chapter 1 explains corpus methods and terminology. It introduces the five corpora of advertisements (1977, 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017) and the reference corpus: the Limerick Corpus of Intimate Talk (LINT). Chapter 2 describes the regional and nonregional varieties of Irish English, including a number of Dublin Englishes. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of language ideology. It explains the social meaning of variety choice in Ireland and the concept of authenticity as an ideological construct. Chapter 4 surveys a number of frameworks and theories relevant to the study, covering heteroglossia, the genres of advertising, and audience and referee design.
Chapters 5–9 describe the corpus study itself. Chapter 5 justifies and describes the corpus design, linking the choice of dates to political and attitudinal changes. Crucial to the study is the distinction in the adverts between ‘action’ segments (enacted dialogues) and ‘comment’ segments (equivalent to the TV voice-over). Also central to the methodology is the detailed annotation of the corpus for selected linguistic features, including aspects of accent and dialect. Rhoticity and nonrhoticity are marked, for example, as are dialectal features and what are called features of pseudo-intimacy.
Chapter 6 quantifies the accent features of the adverts, contrasting British and Irish accents in the Action and Comment components across the diachronic corpus. The change is dramatic, from 50% (Action) and over 90% (Comment) Southern British accent in 1977 to over 80% (both segment types) Irish in 2017. Particular features such as rhoticity are then studied in detail. Chapter 7 compares the representation of varieties of Irish English over the decades. It notes the emergence of Advanced Dublin English, which, the book suggests, has spread across demographic groups and become the representative of modern Ireland. The adverts exploit the difference between urban and rural varieties, sometimes using what is referred to as ‘strategic inauthenticity’. Chapter 8 explores indexicality and the meanings associated with linguistic features, such as nonrhotic pronunciations associated with the ‘advisor’ role while rhotic pronunciations index solidarity. Chapter 9 introduces the concept of conversationalisation (Fairclough) and both quantifies and discusses the presence of pseudo-intimate discourse in the Action and Comment advert segments in comparison with the LINT corpus. Chapter 10 summarises the findings of the study and argues for the positive contribution of corpus tools.
The book demonstrates the value of a detailed mixed-method diachronic study, even though the corpus used is relatively small. It assumes little prior knowledge and is suitable for the novice in either corpus linguistics or sociolinguistics. In every chapter, graphs showing comparative frequencies are supplemented by sets of concordance lines and close examination of extended examples. For me, chapters 6–8 are most valuable in expounding the central argument about the meaning of variation. The book inevitably raises questions about whether generalisations can be made from the specific genre of radio advertisements to language variation in Ireland as a whole. However, there is substantial insight in using this apparently inconsequential genre as a lens to examine social changes in Ireland and the Irish sense of self.
