Teaching Irish English?

The study of Irish English, within areas such as sociolinguistics (Hickey, Reference Hickey2005), stylistics (e.g. Amador-Moreno, Reference Amador-Moreno2006) or historical linguistics (Hickey, Reference Hickey2007a), continues apace. However, we cannot say that there is an enterprise in the teaching of ‘Irish English’ in Ireland, or internationally. While Irish English is the object of study by many, both in Ireland and around the world, describing and understanding it rather than ‘learning’ it is their primary focus. In other words, the study of Irish English remains an academic endeavour. However, emergent studies at an intercultural level do have a bearing on the study of the English language in a global sense. That is, the emergence of a greater understanding of Irish English at a pragmatic level feeds into our understanding of the cultural differences that belie the variation in the language that we use when interacting with speakers of other Englishes. Therefore, while there are no widely-used pedagogical materials or course books for the teaching of Irish English specifically and there is no critical cohort of ‘learners of Irish English’, there is a growing body of research into how the variety differs from other Englishes. The findings from this relatively new line of research are important for anyone interested in using the English language in an Irish context or with Irish people in an international context. Concrete examples of such contexts are found in Martin (Reference Martin, Barron and Schneider2005) and Cacciaguidi-Fahy and Fahy (Reference Cacciaguidi-Fahy, Fahy, Barron and Schneider2005) who look at interactions in the business and financial services contexts.

Conceptually, it is worth noting Grundy's (Reference Grundy2008: 232) distinctions about when cross-cultural communication occurs (when a non-native member operates in someone else's culture), when intercultural communication occurs (when interactants communicate outside their own cultures, often using a lingua franca that isn't the first language of either), when intracultural communication occurs (when interactants share a common culture and (first) language) and finally trans-cultural communication (a term coined by Grundy, referring to any communication that is not intracultural). Within these terms, we need to consider learning about Irish English from the perspective of intracultural communication as well as the more overarching concept of trans-cultural communication.

Learning about how our ways of communicating might differ pragmatically and knowing how this might differ from our non-Irish interlocutor(s) is important in a more globalised context. The work of Schneider and Barron (Barron and Schneider eds, Reference Barron and Schneider2005; Schneider and Barron eds, Reference Schneider and Barron2008) on the pragmatics of Irish English (see Vaughan and Clancy this volume) has led to numerous insights at an intercultural level and has inspired a worthwhile research framework within which such research can be conducted. In particular, the notion of variational pragmatics, a term which they coined (Barron and Schneider eds, 2005; Schneider and Barron eds, Reference Schneider and Barron2008) allows for a paradigm shift from solely looking at Irish English in terms of sociolinguistics. Variational pragmatics is at the intersection of sociolinguistics and pragmatics. An example is the work of Murphy (Reference Murphy2010) which brings together the dimensions of sociolinguistics and pragmatics by looking at the factors of gender and age in Irish English. Her work focuses on the use of pragmatic features such as hedges, boosters, response tokens, etc. across females of different age groups. Her methodology is corpus-based, whereby she recorded and transcribed everyday conversations of Irish women across different age groups. Of note, she does not flag this as a study of Irish English, rather as a study of language, age and gender in one particular variety of English.

A number of works provide insights into how Irish English is used in particular institutional contexts, each of which has pedagogical implications, for example Farr (Reference Farr, Barron and Schneider2005) looks at teacher education contexts, Martin (Reference Martin, Barron and Schneider2005) looks at indirectness in business negotiation. Binchy (Reference Binchy, Barron and Schneider2005) considers Irish English politeness strategies in service encounters. Kelly-Holmes (Reference Kelly-Holmes, Barron and Schneider2005) focuses on Irish English in advertising, taking a pragmatics-relevance approach.

Using a corpus

Barker and O'Keeffe (1999) lauded the moves to build corpora of Irish English and saw these as having pedagogical relevance in that they would allow for a descriptive approach to the grammar of Irish English. Now that we have corpora of Irish English, let us gather together what is pedagogically salient in terms of what we have learnt from them. As a starting point, we look at the top 30 key words from the one-million word Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) (Farr, Murphy and O'Keeffe, Reference Farr, Murphy and O'Keeffe2004). This corpus represents casual conversation in mostly everyday contexts of families and friends chatting. Note that key words are not necessarily the most frequent words in a corpus but are those with the most unusual frequency. They are calculated using software, in this case Wordsmith Tools (Scott, Reference Scott2009), which statistically compares them to a reference corpus (for more on key words, see Scott, Reference Scott, O'Keeffe and McCarthy2010 and Evison, Reference Evison, O'Keeffe and McCarthy2010). Therefore, when we compared the LCIE corpus word frequency list with the word frequency list of a larger corpus (in this case the five-million word Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English), we were able to establish a keyword list based on Irish English casual conversation. Table 1 below lists the top 20 items. Vocalisations, typographical inconsistencies, extralinguistic information, proper and subject-specific nouns have been removed (e.g. aam, Limerick, laughs)

Table 1:

Most frequent 20 lexical items in the Limerick Corpus of Irish English

From this we can find some empirical pointers for English Language teaching in an Irish context. For example, we see items which we would expect such as ye, the Irish English form of you, which is commonly used in casual conversation. Examples from LCIE are the following:

We see the discourse marker shure (note that in LCIE the Irish English usage of sure is spelt shure to make it readily distinguishable from sure in concordance searches). This is used as a mitigator or hedge in initial position. Its most common pattern of use being but shure, used to soften the effect of but in the introduction of a counter point:

We also see the discourse marker now which has additional pragmatic functions in Irish English. Apart from its lexical use as a temporal marker and its standard uses as a discourse marker (see Aijmer, Reference Aijmer2002; Defour, Reference Defour2008), for example, marking a new phase of discourse, usually in clause initial position, it is used very often in Irish English in clause final positions within specific contexts. Research into the use of now in standard British English refers to its use predominantly in formal contexts. Aijmer (Reference Aijmer2002) notes that the largest number of examples of now are more formal than ordinary conversation and contain more structure and Defour (Reference Defour2008) notes that now is more likely than well to occur in formal contexts. However, Vaughan and Clancy (Reference Vaughan and Clancy2010) find that in LCIE, it is predominantly found in conversations between families and friends. It is within these more relational contexts that we find it used in clause-final positions, performing such functions as:

Marking events: functioning in a deictic way to point to an event's completion.

Evident also are the use of taboo items such as jesus and fuckin (as well as other forms in the top 50 key words). The high tolerance of taboo language in Irish English is discussed by Farr and Murphy (Farr and Murphy, Reference Farr and Murphy2009; Murphy, Reference Murphy2009). O'Keeffe and Adolphs (Reference O'Keeffe, Adolphs, Schneider and Barron2008) also allude to it in their discussion of response tokens in Irish and British English. Religious references and swearwords appear in both the British and Irish data as response tokens. However, their use in the British data is limited to God and oh God, while the Irish data comprises God, oh God and oh my God and the swear words Jesus and Jesus Christ. Here is an example from LCIE:

Referring to the differing use and frequency of religious references O'Keeffe and Adolphs comment that it points to greater informality within the Irish data where it seems more acceptable to use Jesus as a response token.

There are two modal verbs in the top 20 key words. On exploring these in the corpus, we can audit their additional functionality in Irish English. These are will and would. Will performs its standard English functions in Irish English, such as marking certainty in the future, making predictions, expressing conditionality, expressing willingness and in the speech acts of offers and promises, requests and commands, and so on (see Carter et al, Reference Carter, McCarthy, Mark and O'Keeffe2011). However, there seems to be a very high frequency in the use of will in simple household commands and requests in family (i.e. intimate) settings. Where in another variety of English one would say Would you mind, we find in Irish English [vocative] will you…?

On close examination of will in the corpus, we also find its high occurrence in the context of offers and this is attributed to the offer-refusal-reoffer sequence in Irish English, especially in the offers relating to food. O'Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (Reference O'Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter2007) and Barron (Reference Barron, Barron and Schneider2005) have looked at this in greater detail through corpus-based analyses and discourse completion tasks, respectively. The following exchange from LCIE shows how this reoffering manifests and hence the use of will in its manifestation:

We see a directness about the offering and reoffering. As O'Keeffe et al. (Reference O'Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter2007) and Barron (Reference Barron, Barron and Schneider2005) note, it is a cultural norm of politeness in Irish English to refuse a first offer. This poses a challenge for offers of food, etc. in trans-cultural contexts.

The uses of will point to directness or baldness in relation to commands, requests and offers in family discourse in Irish English which is consistent with Clancy's (Reference Clancy, Barron and Schneider2005) study of Irish English in family contexts. As a counterpoint to this seeming directness in family contexts, we find the opposite in relation to the use of would. As has been noted by Farr and O'Keeffe (Reference Farr, O'Keeffe, Reppen, Fitzmaurice and Biber2002) in an in-depth corpus-based study of the use of would, its use in Irish English exceeds that of British or American English and they account for this in its use as a hedge to mitigate or downtone the force of assertions. Most specifically, there is a strong usage pattern for would within Irish English to downtone uncontroversial facts. Hence it is the downtoning of non-disputed propositions. Here are some examples from the corpus and we compare them with their unhedged versions:

In a pedagogic sense, this use of would with propositional assertions which are not in doubt may be quite confusing for non-native speakers of English who will associate this use of would with uncertainty. Farr and O'Keeffe also noted its use in face-threatening situations such as teaching practice critiques, where the teacher trainer uses I would when she really means you should:

Another word on the key word list which we will focus on in terms of its importance, in a pedagogical sense of raising awareness of the differences between Irish and other varieties of English, is the definite article. To put it in context, the is usually the first or second most frequent word in any corpus so its appearance in the top 20 keywords points to some salience or extra functionality in Irish English. On perusal of the corpus data, one finds it frequently used in place of other determiners. For example, in other varieties, your would be more likely in this example:

Or a pronoun would be used in the following:

The following nouns (chemistry and dinner) would have no determiner (zero determiner):

Finally, we look at tense and time reference. One of the signature, if not caricaturing, forms in Irish English is the be + after + Verb-ing structure which is used in certain contexts where the present perfect would ordinarily be used. Examples from LCIE:

O'Keeffe and Amador-Moreno (Reference O'Keeffe and Amador-Moreno2009) explored its use in LCIE. They found the form to be very prevalent and they outline its main functions as;

1) The immediacy/recency of outcome function: This has been well-documented (Filppula, Reference Filppula1999; McCafferty, Reference McCafferty2004, and Ronan, Reference Ronan, Filppula, Klemola, Palander and Penttilä2005; Hickey, 2007a) and it refers to actions, events or changes of state that have happened in the very recent past. 32% (n = 30) of all uses of the structure fall into this category:

2) The narrative function: Kallen (Reference Kallen and Cheshire1991) noted the frequent use of the structure in narrative situations. O'Keeffe and Amador-Moreno found 32% (n = 30) of all occurrences of the be after + V-ing structure in narratives:

3) The news marking function: O'Keeffe and Amador-Moreno found 26% (n = 25) of all occurrences of the be after + V-ing structure in a news marking context. That is where it marked new, often surprising information between the speaker and the listener(s). Rather than functioning as a narrative device they argue, it operates more akin to a discourse marker because it flags up new information for the listener. Harris (Reference Harris1984) encapsulates this by referring to this as the ‘hot news’ function. The structure therefore acts as a pragmatic marker in this context, both marking new information and also intensifying it for the listener.