Comments on: Sexy Leprechaun Accents

By: Sophie Grace

Sophie Grace — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 19:01:45 +0000

Did anybody ever find anything on language attitude studies of Dublin English? I’m a linguistics student and am extremely interested on working on a topic like this… would appreciate any articles/papers found.

Thanks.

By: vocalised

vocalised — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:03:52 +0000

A 20-minute search for a published language attitudes study on *Dublin* English, specifically, has proved unsuccessful… Let me know if you (any of you) find anything! If not, I’ll add it to my list of potential student projects. Sort of like any project including the analysis of the use of subtitles…

The issue about borders is really interesting to me. This workshop was very good, and I’m looking forward to the next one. Whether or not perceived differences increase at a border seems to depend on a number of different factors, and I’m not sure it’s always evident what those factors are. The AISEB project folks (cited in the blog) would have a lot to say about this, I think.

And yes, “Paddy McGuinness,” LOL, what a name!

By: Madeleine Adkins

Madeleine Adkins — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:51:59 +0000

I just noticed the image above of the program’s host. I would hazard a guess that if people are participating in a program where the host’s name is “Paddy McGuinness”, then there’s a reasonable probability that they are already fond of Irish people and Irish accents!

By: Rebecca Starr

Rebecca Starr — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:07:10 +0000

Another random note — I’m not sure how “Southern Irish” was being used in the studies you looked at, but Dublin English is a very distinctive variety, as noted here on p. 12: http://www.uni-due.de/IEN/Southern_Irish_English_(Hickey).pdf . Dublin English would probably score lower on attractiveness than other Irish varieties, since it’s less Irish-sounding, and in particular has less of that bouncy intonation contour than other Irish accents, but it would also be easier for British people to understand.

By: Madeleine Adkins

Madeleine Adkins — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:47:52 +0000

Random thoughts on the topic….

I recall learning many years ago that linguistic differences (and perceived differences) increase right at the border between to groups. Can’t cite you anything off-hand.

Irish accents do seem to be high up on the attractiveness continuum among English speakers in general. I find it intriguing that one of the winners of The Glee Project (a new US reality program) this summer is a young man from Derry (NI), Damian McGinty. I don’t know if Northern Irish accents are seen as desireable in general, but I wouldn’t guess it. And it was fascinating to watch Damian’s informal conversation because they were actually subtitled–while he’d won many viewers’ hearts, they couldn’t actually understand him.

By: vocalised

vocalised — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:31:38 +0000

It’s definitely true that I didn’t do a proper lit review for this blog post; the first few papers I looked at didn’t test for reactions to Southern Irish accents, so I gave up the search. To be continued…

And I totally agree with your second point; I was thinking of something along those lines but couldn’t find the right words. Thanks for your comment!!

By: Rebecca Starr

Rebecca Starr — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:27:39 +0000

I’ve definitely seen previous studies where Irish accents score way higher than Scottish accents. Irish accents are overall on the top of all English varieties, globally. I think you’re just not looking at the right previous lit!

Not understanding Scottish accents is a thing I’ve seen quite a bit on British panel shows. Plus a lot of really negative stereotypes about Scottish people. I’d imagine these would be magnified in the North, since some of these same stereotypes apply there and they’d want to distinguish themselves from their neighbors.