Cover not available
Article published In:
English World-Wide
Vol. 43:2 (2022) ► pp.167–191

Produced and perceived authenticity in the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls

 | Universidad de Extremadura
The success of the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls seems partly due to its authentic portrayal of the English spoken in Northern Ireland and, more particularly, in Derry. This paper examines how authentic the performance of the Northern Irish accent by Ma Mary, one of the characters in the comedy, is from the points of view of produced and perceived authenticity. In order to determine the degree of produced authenticity, I investigate whether the pronunciation features present in Ma Mary’s speech are characteristic of Northern Irish English (NIE). On the other hand, an experiment has been designed to test the perceived authenticity of Ma Mary’s performed accent. The experiment consists of asking Northern Irish people to rate a short recording in terms of how authentic its representation of the NIE accent is. The results from the experiment confirm that the accent performed by Ma Mary is authentically Northern Irish.
Keywords: authenticity, salience, Derry Girls , Northern Irish English, performed language, representation, perception
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Performed language and authenticity
  • 3.The concept of salience
  • 4.Produced authenticity
    • 4.1Consonants
    • 4.2Vowels
  • 5.Perceived authenticity
    • 5.1Experiment design
    • 5.2Results for perceived authenticity
    • 5.3Results for salience
    • 5.4Results for participants’ ability to tell where the speaker is from
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 18 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.20012.dia
References (63)
Sources
Al’s Action English. 2019a. “How to Do a Northern Irish Accent”. YouTube <[URL]> (accessed January 14, 2019).
. 2019b. “How to Speak with a Northern Irish Accent”. YouTube <[URL]> (accessed January 21, 2019).
Lynch, Martin. 2003. Dockers and Welcome to Bladonmore Road. Derry: Lagan Press.Google Scholar
Meier, Paul. 2007. Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen. Jacksonville: Paul Meier Dialect Services.Google Scholar
Molloy, Frances. 1985. No Mate for the Magpie. London: Virago.Google Scholar
Norn Iron Tees. (n.d.). <[URL]> (accessed October 14, 2020) DOI logo
References
Alvarez-Pereyre, Michael. 2011. “Using Film as Linguistic Specimen: Theoretical and Practical Issues”. In Roberta Piazza, Monika Bednarek, and Fabio Rossi, eds. Telecinematic Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 47–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Amador-Moreno, Carolina P. 2006. An Analysis of Hiberno-English in the Early Novels of Patrick MacGill: Bilingualism and Language Shift from Irish to English in County Donegal. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
2010. An Introduction to Irish English. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Amador-Moreno, Carolina P., and Ana M. Terrazas-Calero. 2017. “Encapsulating Irish English in Literature”. World Englishes 361: 254–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter, Birgit Barden, and Beate Grosskopf. 1998. “Subjective and Objective Parameters Determining ‘Salience’ in Long-Term Dialect Accommodation”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21: 163–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corrigan, Karen P. 2010. Irish English. Vol. 11: Northern Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. “Dialect Stylization in Radio Talk”. Language in Society 301: 345–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. “Sociolinguistic Authenticities”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 71: 417–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Douglas-Cowie, Ellen. 1984. “The Sociolinguistic Situation in Northern Ireland”. In Peter Trudgill, ed. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 533–545.Google Scholar
Fought, Carmen. 2006. Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Andy, and Allan Bell. 2010. “Performing Pasifika English in New Zealand: The Case of Bro’town”. English World-Wide 311: 231–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, John. 1984. “English in the North of Ireland”. In Peter Trudgill, ed. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 115–134.Google Scholar
. 1985. Phonological Variation and Change: Studies in Hiberno-English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond. 2000. “Salience, Stigma and Standard”. In Laura Wright, ed. The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 57–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. “How and Why Supraregional Varieties Arise”. In Marina Dossena, and Charles Jones, eds. Insights into Late Modern English. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 351–373.Google Scholar
. 2004. A Sound Atlas of Irish English. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
. 2007. Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hodson, Jane. 2014. Dialect in Film and Literature. London: Macmillan International Higher Education. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ives, Sumner. 1971. “A Theory of Literary Dialect”. In Juanita V. Williamson, and Virginia M. Burke, eds. A Various Language: Perspectives on American Dialects. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 145–177.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. Florian, and Kodi Weatherholtz. 2016. “What the Heck is Salience? How Predictive Language Processing Contributes to Sociolinguistic Perception”. Frontiers in Psychology 71: 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2009. “Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification and the Enregisterment of an Urban Dialect”. American Speech 841: 157–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus, and Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese””. Journal of English Linguistics 341: 77–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kallen, Jeffrey L. 2013. Irish English. Vol. 21: The Republic of Ireland. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, and Ann Williams. 2002. “Salience as an Explanatory Factor in Language Change: Evidence from Dialect Levelling in Urban England”. In Mari C. Jones, and Edith Esch, eds. Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 81–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kingsmore, Rona K. 1995. Ulster Scots Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Kozloff, Sarah. 2000. Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kristiansen, Gitte. 2001. “Social and Linguistic Stereotyping: A Cognitive Approach to Accents”. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 91: 129–145.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Leigh, Philip J. 2011. “A Game of Confidence: Literary Dialect, Linguistics, and Authenticity”. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCafferty, Kevin. 1998a. “Barriers to Change: Ethnic Division and Phonological Innovation in Northern Hiberno-English”. English World-Wide 191: 7–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998b. “Shared Accents: Divided Speech Community? Change in Northern Ireland”. Language Variation and Change 101: 97–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. “(London)Derry English: Between Ulster and Local Speech – Class, Ethnicity and Language Change”. In Paul Foulkes, and Gerard J. Docherty, eds. Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold, 246–264.Google Scholar
. 2001. Ethnicity and Language Change: English in (London) Derry, Northern Ireland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “William Carleton between Irish and English: Using Literary Dialect to Study Language Contact and Change”. Language and Literature 141: 339–362. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Northern Irish English”. In David Britain, ed. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 122–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDonald, Henry. 2018. “‘There is nothing fake about it’: Real Derry Girls revel in TV show’s wit”. The Guardian February 10, 2018 <[URL]> (accessed September 30, 2020).
Milroy, James. 1981. Regional Accents of English: Belfast. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, James, Lesley Milroy, and Sue Hartley. 1994. “Local and Supra-Local Change in British English: The Case of Glottalisation”. English World-Wide 151: 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Bróna, and María Palma-Fahey. 2018. “Exploring the Construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’: Making and Breaking the Stereotype”. Pragmatics and Society 91: 297–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Sullivan, Joan, and Helen Kelly-Holmes. 2017. “Vernacularisation and Authenticity in Irish Radio Advertising”. World Englishes 361: 269–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piazza, Roberta, Monika Bednarek, and Fabio Rossi, eds. 2011. Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Planchenault, Gaelle. 2012. “Accented French in Films: Performing and Evaluating In-Group Stylisations”. Multilingua 311: 253–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poussa, Patricia. 1999. “Dickens as Sociolinguist: Dialect in David Copperfield ”. In Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers, and Päivi Pahta, eds. Writing in Nonstandard English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 27–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rácz, Péter. 2013. Salience in Sociolinguistics: A Quantitative Approach. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg, and Franziska Günther. 2016. “Toward a Unified Socio-cognitive Framework for Salience in Language”. Frontiers in Psychology 71: 1–4. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W., and Christian Wagner. 2006. “The Variability of Literary Dialect in Jamaican Creole: Thelwell’s The Harder They Come”. Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages 211: 45–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toolan, Michael. 1992. “The Significations of Representing Dialect in Writing”. Language and Literature 11: 29–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2001. “What is Authenticity?”. Discourse Studies 31: 392–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wales, Katie. 2017. “Dickens and Northern English: Stereotyping and ‘Authenticity’ Reconsidered”. In Sylvie Hancil, and Joan C. Beal, eds. Perspectives on Northern Englishes. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 41–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walshe, Shane. 2009. Irish English as Represented in Film. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2011. “‘Normal people like us don’t use that type of language. Remember this is the real world’. The Language of Father Ted: Representations of Irish English in a Fictional World”. Sociolinguistic Studies 51: 127–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “The Language of Irish Films”. World Englishes 361: 283–299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “Salience and Stereotypes: The Construction of Irish Identity in Irish Jokes”. In Raymond Hickey, and Carolina P. Amador-Moreno, eds. Irish Identities: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 173–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English. Vol. 31: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar