Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 9:2 (2018) ► pp.297–328

Exploring the construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’

Making and breaking the stereotype

| University of Edinburgh
| National University of Ireland, Galway

This paper explores how the cultural concept of the Irish Mammy is portrayed in the popular television comedy series ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’. Considering the historicity and cultural aspects surrounding essential views of Irishness that have shaped the archetype of the stereotype, we draw on a corpus of (semi)scripted fictional interaction taken from the series. Using a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach to explore linguistic patterning surrounding the use of key lexical markers (e.g. Mammy), we investigate what they reveal about how the concept is represented, (de)constructed, and negotiated. The paper discusses the construction and deconstruction of the stereotype and the extent to which it draws on shared knowledge to reflect and navigate particular cultural values and concerns (Hall 1997; Hall et al. 2013). It views the deconstruction, in particular, as a way of challenging the traditional stereotype, in light of societal change, to provide a more layered, realistic and multi-faceted insight into the identities of the Irish Mammy figure within the fictional context of Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Keywords: gender, culture, Irish-English, identity, construction, deconstruction, stereotype
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The concept of the Irish Mammy
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Corpus-assisted discourse studies
  • 4.Analysis: Making and breaking the Irish Mammy stereotype
    • 4.1Love
    • 4.2Control and interference
    • 4.3Sex
    • 4.4Sexual orientation
    • 4.5Culture
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.16022.mur
References
Aull, Laura and Brown, David
2013 ‘Fighting words: a corpus analysis of gender representations in sports reportage’. Corpora 8(1): 27–52 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barna, LaRay
1985 ‘Stumbling blocks in intercultural communication’. In Larry Samovar & Richard Porter (Eds.), Intercultural Communication: A reader. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 330–338.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul
2010 Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
BBC
2011 Mrs Brown’s Boys. [ONLINE] Available at: [URL]. [Accessed 31 March 2016].
Beacom, Brian
2013 The Real Mrs Brown: The Authorised Autobiography of Brendan O’Carroll. London: Hodder and Stoughton.Google Scholar
Beaumont, Caitríona
1999 ‘Gender, Citizenship and the State in Ireland, 1922–1990’. In David Alderson, Fiona Becket, Scott Brewster & Virginia Crossman (Eds.), Ireland in Proximity. History, Gender, Space. London: Routledge, 94–108.Google Scholar
Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen Rosa and Rosamund Moon
2010 ‘Curvy, hunky, kinky’: Using corpora as tools for critical analysis’. Discourse and Society 21(2): 1–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carter, Cynthia and Linda Steiner
(Eds) 2004 Critical Readings: Media and Gender. Maidenhead: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Cilliers, Christo
2008 ‘Media and sexual orientation: the portrayal of gays and lesbians’. In Pieter J. Fourie (Ed) Media Studies, Volume 2: Policy, Management and Media Representation. Cape Town: Juta, 331–357.Google Scholar
Condren, Mary
1995 ‘Sacrifice and Political Legitimation: The Production of a Gendered Social Order’. In: Joan Hoff and Moureen Coulter (Eds), Irish Women’s Voices: Past and Present. Special Issue, Journal of Women’s History 61: 4–7:11.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2009 ‘Keyness: Words, part-of-speech and semantic categories in the character-talk of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14(1): 29–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2003 Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gledhill, Christine and Vicky Ball
2013 ‘Genre and Gender: The Case of Soap Opera’. In: Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans and Sean Nixon (Eds), Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage, 335–384.Google Scholar
Guirdham, Maureen
2011 Communicating across Cultures at Work. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart
1992 ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’. In Stuart Hall, David Held & Tony McGrew (Eds.), Modernity and its Futures. Milton Keynes: Open University Press & Cambridge: Polity Press, 274–291.Google Scholar
1997 Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart, Jessica Evans and Sean Nixon
2013 Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Hewstone, Miles
1989 ‘Changing stereotypes with disconfirming information’. In: Daniel Bar-Tal, Carl Grauman, Arie Kruglanski and Wolfgang Stroebe (Eds), Stereotyping and Prejudice: Changing Conceptions. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Austin
2013 “We’ve All to Grow Old”: Representations of Aging as Reflections of Cultural Change on the Celtic Tiger Irish Stage. Doctoral Dissertation, The Ohio State University. Available at: [URL] Accessed: 2-2-2015.
Hilliard, Betty
2004 ‘Motherhood, sexuality and the Catholic Church’. In: Patricia Kennedy (Ed), Motherhood in Ireland: Creation and Context. Cork: Mercier Press.Google Scholar
Inglis, Tom
2002 ‘Sexual Transgression and Scapegoats: A Case Study from Modern Ireland’. Sexualities 5 (1): 5–24 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 ‘Origins and legacies of Irish prudery. Sexuality and social control in Modern Ireland’. Eire-Ireland 40(H3&4): 9–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karan, Kavita
2008 ‘Advertising and the visual portrayal of the women: Modern Indian stereotypes’. In: Katherine Frith & Kavita Karan (Eds.), Commercializing women: Images of Asian women in the media. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 95–118.Google Scholar
Kidd, Jenny
2016 Representation. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Koester, Almut
2010 Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Litosseliti, Lia
2006 Gender and Language. Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Aine
2004 ‘”Oh Mother Where Art Thou?”: Irish Mothers and Irish Fiction in the Twentieth Century’. In: Patricia Kennedy (Ed), Motherhood in Ireland: Creation and Context. Cork: Mercier Press.Google Scholar
McLoughlin, Dympna
1994 ‘Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’. Irish Journal of Psychology 15 (2–3): 266–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mulderrig, Jane
2011 ‘Manufacturing consent: a corpus-based critical discourse analysis of New Labour’s educational governance’. Journal of Educational Philosophy and Theory 43(6): 562–578. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Carroll, Brendan
1994 The Mammy. Dublin: O’Brien Press.Google Scholar
1995 The Chisellers. Dublin: O’Brien Press.Google Scholar
1996 The Granny. Dublin: O’Brien Press.Google Scholar
2003 The Old Wan. Dublin: O’Brien Press.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, Anne, Michael McCarthy and Ronald Carter
2007 From Corpus to Classroom. Language Use and Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Online Oxford English Dictionary
[URL]. Accessed: 18-10-2016
Palma-Fahey, María
2005 A cross-cultural discourse and pragmatic analysis of two soap operas: Fair City and Amores de Mercado compared. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.Google Scholar
2007 ‘Understanding idioms and idiomatic expressions in context: a look at idioms found in an Irish soap opera’. TEANGA. The Irish Year Book of Applied Linguistics (2003–04) 2007 Dublin: Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 84–104.Google Scholar
Partington, Alan
2008 ‘The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies’. In: Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley and Eric Castello (Eds), Corpora for University Language Teachers. Bern: Peter Lang, 189–213.Google Scholar
Quaglio, Paulo
2009 Television Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rich, Adrienne
1976 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago.Google Scholar
Rowbotham, Judith
1989 Good Girls Make Good Wives: Guidance for Girls in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Scott, Mike
2012 Wordsmith Tools. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Mike
1996 Text and Corpus Analysis: Corpus-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Valiulis, Maryann G.
1995 ‘Power, Gender, and Identity in the Irish Free State.’ In: Joan Hoff and Moureen Coulter (Eds.), Irish Women’s Voices: Past and Present. Special Issue. Journal of Women’s History 61:4–7:11.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2012 ‘Language, Power and Identity’. Language Teaching 45(2): 215–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Díaz-Sierra, Sara
2022. Produced and perceived authenticity in the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls . English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 43:2 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Strange, Louis
2023. Irish English and national identity in the linguistic landscape of Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2023:284 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Language and Characterisation in Television Series [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 106], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.