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Linguistic Change in Galway City English

A Variationist Sociolinguistic Study of (th) and (dh) in Urban Western Irish English

by Arne Peters (Author)
©2016 Thesis XXII, 224 Pages

Summary

This volume is a novel approach to the corpus-based variationist sociolinguistic study of contemporary urban western Irish English. Based on qualitative data as well as on linguistic features extracted from the Corpus of Galway City Spoken English, this study approaches the major sociolinguistic characteristics of (th) and (dh) variability in Galway City English. It demonstrates the diverse local patterns of variability and change in the phonetic realisation of the dental fricatives and establishes a considerable degree of divergence from traditional accounts on Irish English. This volume suggests that the linguistic stratification of variants of (th) and (dh) in Galway correlates both with the social stratification of the city itself and with the stratification of speakers by social status, sex/gender and age group.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Tables
  • Figures
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Sociolinguistic methods
  • 1.1.1 Variationist sociolinguistics, dialectology, and urban dialectology
  • 1.1.2 Core variables and concepts of research on language variation and change
  • 1.1.2.1 Age cohorts / age groups / generations
  • 1.1.2.2 Sex and gender
  • 1.1.2.3 Social class, social stratification, and socioeconomic scores
  • 1.1.2.4 The vernacular and the Observer’s Paradox
  • 1.1.2.5 Linguistic style
  • 1.1.2.6 Speech communities, communities of practice, social networks and discourse communities
  • 1.2 Research aims
  • 1.3 Structure of the study
  • 2. Galway as social and linguistic area
  • 2.1 The city of Galway
  • 2.2 Population
  • 2.3 Socioeconomic, ethnic and linguistic characteristics of evolving Galway
  • 2.3.1 Old Galway
  • 2.3.2 Early Modern Galway
  • 2.3.3 Modern Galway
  • 2.4 Diachronic development of linguistic communities in and around Galway
  • 2.4.1 An Cladach/Claddagh
  • 2.4.2 Mionlach/Menlough/Menlo
  • 2.4.3 An Bóthar Mór/Bohermore
  • 2.4.4 An Fhaiche Mhór/Eyre Square
  • 2.4.5 Barr an Cáladh/Woodquay and Newtownsmith
  • 2.4.6 The old ‘west suburb’: Dominick Street
  • 2.4.7 Bóthar na Trá/Salthill
  • 2.4.8 An Baile Bán/Ballybane, Radharc na Mara/Mervue and Seantalamh/Shantalla
  • 2.5 Implications
  • 3. Galway City English as a variety of Irish English
  • 3.1 A feature-based approach to Irish English
  • 3.2 Irish English and three waves of sociolinguistics
  • 3.2.1 Milroy and Milroy (1978): Belfast
  • 3.2.2 Harris (1985): Belfast
  • 3.2.3 McCafferty (2001): (London)Derry
  • 3.2.4 Collins (1997): Claddagh, Galway City
  • 3.2.5 Sell (2009 and 2012): Galway City
  • 3.2.6 Peters (2012 and 2013): An Bóthar Mór/Bohermore, Galway City
  • 3.2.7 Bertz (1975, 1987), Hickey (2005), and Lonergan (2013): Dublin
  • 3.2.8 Implications
  • 3.3 English in Galway City, Connacht, and Ireland’s West
  • 3.3.1 Vowel features of Galway City English
  • 3.3.1.1 /ε/-raising (PEN/PIN merger)
  • 3.3.1.2 Final [ə] or [əi] in HAPPY
  • 3.3.1.3 Diphthongisation in GOAT/HOME and FACE/NAME
  • 3.3.1.4 PRICE and MOUTH
  • 3.3.1.5 START
  • 3.3.1.6 THOUGHT, LOT, CHOICE
  • 3.3.1.7 STRUT
  • 3.3.1.8 Schwa epenthesis
  • 3.3.2 Consonantal features of Galway City English
  • 3.3.2.1 /s/-palatalisation, /v/-/w/ interchange and /hw/-velarisation
  • 3.3.2.2 THIN, FAITH and THEN, BREATHE
  • 3.4 Dental fricatives in Irish English
  • 3.4.1 Variants of (th) and (dh)
  • 3.4.2 Patterns of distribution
  • 3.5 Implications
  • 4. Methods of data collection and analysis
  • 4.1 Fieldwork
  • 4.2 Sampling method
  • 4.2.1 Apparent-time method
  • 4.2.2 Stratified random sampling, snowball sampling and participant observation
  • 4.3 Data collection and interview design
  • 4.4 The informants
  • 4.4.1 Age and sex
  • 4.4.2 Socioeconomic index scores
  • 4.5 The corpus
  • 4.6 Research ethics and subject anonymity
  • 4.7 Univariate, bivariate and trivariate analysis
  • 4.8 Subset of data for variation analysis
  • 4.9 Factor groups and coding
  • 4.10 Phonetic analysis
  • 4.11 Summary
  • 5. Analysis of (th, dh)-variability in Galway City English
  • 5.1 The variables (th) and (dh) in the CGCSE
  • 5.2 Distribution of variants of (th) and (dh) in the subset of data
  • 5.2.1 Linguistic factors
  • 5.2.1.1 Position in word
  • 5.2.1.2 Number of syllables
  • 5.2.1.3 Position in syllable
  • 5.2.1.4 Word stress
  • 5.2.1.5 Preceding phonological environment
  • 5.2.1.6 Following phonological environment
  • 5.2.1.7 Word class and part of speech
  • 5.2.1.8 Linguistic factors: summary of findings
  • 5.2.2 Social factors
  • 5.2.2.1 Factor ‘age’
  • 5.2.2.2 Factor ‘sex’
  • 5.2.2.3 Factors ‘sex’ and ‘age’
  • 5.2.2.4 Factor ‘socioeconomic group’
  • 5.2.2.5 Factors ‘socioeconomic group’ and ‘age’
  • 5.2.2.6 Factors ‘socioeconomic group’, ‘age’ and ‘sex’
  • 5.2.2.7 Factor ‘neighbourhood’
  • 5.2.2.8 Social factors: summary of findings
  • 6. Discussion and conclusions
  • 6.1 Research aims and methodology revisited
  • 6.2 Results and implications
  • 6.3 Limitations and future research
  • Appendix I: Coding scheme
  • Appendix II: Samples from the coded data
  • Appendix III: Sample transcript from the CGCSE
  • References
  • Index
  • Series Index

Tables

Table 1.    Suggested and/or substantiated vowel features of Galway City English

Table 2.    Suggested and/or substantiated consonant features of Galway City English

Table 3.    Mobility patterns of individual speakers

Table 4.    Index of education

Table 5.    Index of employment/occupation

Table 6.    Social characteristics of the informants

Table 7.    Realisation of the variants of (th, dh)

Table 8.    Variants of (th, dh) in monosyllabic and polysyllabic words

Table 9.    Variants of (th, dh) in initial, medial and final position in syllables of monosyllabic words

Table 10.  Variants of (th, dh) in initial and final position in syllables of polysyllabic words

Table 11.  Variants of (th, dh) in stressed and unstressed words

Table 12.  Frequencies of variants of (th, dh) when preceded by different classes of sounds

Table 13.  Frequencies of variants of (th, dh) when followed by different classes of sounds

Table 14.  Word class and the variants of (th, dh)

Table 15.  Word class and the variants of (th) and (dh)

Table 16.  The variants of (th, dh) in different parts of speech (as % of N)

Table 17.  Linguistic constraints on variants of (th, dh) summarised

Table 18.  The five age groups and the variants of (th, dh)

Table 19.  Females and males and the variants of (th, dh)

Table 20.  The socioeconomic index scores and the variants of (th, dh) ← xiii | xiv →

Table 21.  The stratification of the fricative variants by socioeconomic class, age group, and sex

Table 22.  The stratification of the dental plosive variants by socioecon. class, age group, and sex

Table 23.  The stratification of the alveolar plosive variants by socioecon. class, age group, and sex

Table 24.  The stratification of the affricate variants by socioeconomic class, age group, and sex

Table 25.  Social constraints on variants of (th, dh) ordered by weight of combination of categories ← xiv | xv →

Figures

Figure 1.    The City of Galway and its neighbourhoods/districts in 2014

Figure 2.    Population growth in Galway between 1498 and 2025

Figure 3.    Medieval Galway. Adapted from Mannion (2012: 49)

Figure 4.    Pictorial map of Galway 1651. Adopted from Mannion (2012: 52)

Figure 5.    Logan Map of Galway 1818. Adapted from Mannion (2012: 54)

Figure 6.    Galway 1961/62 – population: 22,000, area: 250 hectares, density: 90 p/ha. Adapted from Mannion (2012: 62)

Figure 7.    Galway 2012 – population: 75,000, area: 2,500 hectares, density: 30 p/ha. Adapted from Mannion (2012: 63)

Figure 8.    Unemployment ratio, and social housing in the less affluent and more affluent districts of Galway City

Figure 9.    Third level education and occupational/employment groups in the most deprived and least deprived districts of Galway City

Figure 10.  Social deprivation in Galway City according to the Social Deprivation Index (Haase and Pratschke 2012)

Figure 11.  Ethnic or cultural background of people living in the less affluent and more affluent districts of Galway (as % of total population (2006); difference to 100% is ‘not stated’)

Figure 12.  Map of Dominick Street and Claddagh village 1651 (O’Dowd 1985: 39)

Figure 13.  Layout of Menlo Village, 1838. Adapted from Mannion (2012: 60)

Figure 14.  Map of Bohermore and Eyre Square in 1651 (O’Dowd 1985: 43)

Figure 15.  Map of Woodquay and Newtownsmith in 1651 (O’Dowd 1985: 40) ← xv | xvi →

Figure 16.  Spectrogram of a canonical [ð] in “from there”, produced by a 60 year old male from Galway’s Salthill district

Figure 17.  Spectrogram of a dental [imgimg] in “get there”, produced by a 60 year old male from Galway’s Salthill district

Figure 18.  Spectrogram of alveolar [d] in “as a daily”, produced by the same speaker

Figure 19.  Spectrogram of dental affricate [imgimgθ] + interdental [s] in “door widths”, produced by a 29-year-old male from Galway’s Newcastle district

Figure 20.  Waveform and spectrogram of canonical fricative [θ] in “more than three”, produced by a 22-year-old female from Galway’s Renmore district

Figure 21.  Waveform and spectrogram of alveolar [t] in “maybe three”, produced by the same speaker

Figure 22.  Waveform and spectrogram of affricate [tʃ] in “one tree”, produced by the same speaker

Figure 23.  Areas of Galway City in which the informants acquired their vernacular (number of informants in circles)

Figure 24.  Areas of Galway City in which the informants lived at the time of the interview (number of informants in circles)

Figure 25.  Distribution of male speakers (represented by triangles) and female speakers (contoured squares) according to age and socioeconomic background

Figure 26.  Frequency of variants of (dh) and (th) in the coded tokens (N=4,053)

Figure 27.  Variants of (dh, th) per speaker, displayed as percentage of all tokens and ordered by frequency of the fricative variants

Figure 28.  Variants of (th, dh) and their distribution in word-initial, word-medial and word-final position

Figure 29.  Frequency of variants of (dh) and (th) per word class

Figure 30.  Frequency of the various parts of speech in the dataset (as % of total) ← xvi | xvii →

Figure 31.  The impact of the factor ‘age’ on the occurrence of fricative and plosive variants of (th, dh)

Figure 32.  The impact of the factor ‘age’ on the occurrence of dental plosive, alveolar plosive, and affricate variants of (th, dh)

Figure 33.  The impact of the factors ‘female sex’ and ‘age group’ on the occurrence of fricative, dental plosive, alveolar plosive and affricate variants of (th, dh)

Figure 34.  The impact of the factors ‘male sex’ and ‘age group’ on the occurrence of fricative, dental plosive, alveolar plosive and affricate variants of (th, dh)

Figure 35.  The impact of the factor ‘socioeconomic score’ on the occurrence of fricative, dental plosive, alveolar plosive and affricate variants of (th, dh)

Figure 36.  The impact of the factors ‘socioeconomic score’ (2–8) and ‘age’ (I–V) on the occurrence of the fricative variants of (th, dh) (in %)

Figure 37.  The impact of the factors ‘socioeconomic score’ (2–8) and ‘age’ (I–V) on the occurrence of the dental plosive variants of (th, dh) (in %)

Figure 38.  The impact of the factors ‘socioeconomic score’ (2–8) and ‘age’ (I–V) on the occurrence of thealveolar plosive variants of (th, dh) (in %)

Figure 39.  The impact of the factors ‘socioeconomic score’ (2–8) and ‘age’ (I–V) on the occurrence of the affricate variants of (th, dh) (in %)

Details

Pages
XXII, 224
Year
2016
ISBN (PDF)
9783653066395
ISBN (ePUB)
9783653951455
ISBN (MOBI)
9783653951448
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631671788
DOI
10.3726/978-3-653-06639-5
Language
English
Publication date
2016 (June)
Keywords
dental fricatives urban dialectology multivariate analysis corpus linguistics
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2016. XXII, 224 pp., 25 tables, 40 graphs

Biographical notes

Arne Peters (Author)

Arne Peters works as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Potsdam (Germany). His main research interests involve the fields of language variation and change, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, multilingualism and World Englishes.

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Title: Linguistic Change in Galway City English
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