To What Extent Do Irish Fluency and Gender Affect Prevalence of Irish-influenced Phonological Features in Irish English?

This thesis presents research into the variety of Irish English spoken in the Múscraí area of County Cork, Republic of Ireland. The focus of the research is to examine phonological features of Irish English which may have been influenced by Irish and how these interact with speakers' levels of Irish fluency and to a lesser extent, to their gender. The use of dental stops [t d] as realisations of /θ/ and /ð/ in THINK/THIS lexical sets are considered, as they are seen as a hallmark feature of West Irish Englishes (Hickey, 2004). In addition to th-stopping, levels of rhoticity and vowel epenthesis (both classed as supraregional features of Irish English by Hickey (2004)) are also examined. All data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews with participants living or working in the West Cork Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area). Analysis consisted of examination of questionnaire results and transcription of all interviews, followed by comparison of use of the focus variables between interviews and questionnaires. Distinct trends noted in this work were that fluency and gender did not necessarily correlate positively with use of the focus variants as predicted. Fluent Irish speakers were more likely to use [d] stops in place of /ð/ than non-fluent speakers in interviews, but this finding was reversed in the reading tasks, with non-fluent participants using [d] more frequently. Men generally used dental stops more frequently than women. However, it was female speakers who took the lead in r-dropping. Both male and fluent Irish speakers reported using epenthetic variants more often than non-epenthetic variants during the sound file segment of the study, but only two examples of epenthesis could be found across all interviews and reading tasks. This indicates a more complex sociolinguistic situation in Múscraí English than might be expected.