References for Irish English
Surveys and monographs
Key articles
Dictionaries
Corpora
Travellers’ language
Bibliographies
1 Surveys and monographs
Amador-Moreno, Carolina 2010. An Introduction to Irish English. (second edition scheduled for 2027) London: Continuum Books.
Amador-Moreno, Carolina P., Kevin McCafferty and Elaine Vaughan (eds) 2015. Pragmatic Markers in Irish English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Barron, Anne and Klaus P. Schneider (eds) 2005. The Pragmatics of Irish English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Boisseau, Maryvonne and Françoise Roger (eds) 2006. Irish English: Varieties and Variations. Special issue of Études Irlandaises.
Cesiri, Daniela 2012. Nineteenth century Irish English. A corpus-based linguistic and discursive analysis. Lewinston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
Clancy, Brian 2016. Investigating Intimate Discourse: Exploring the Spoken Interaction of Families, Couples and Friends. London: Routledge.
Corrigan, Karen P. 2010. Irish English, Vol. 1: Northern Ireland. Edinbrugh: University Press.
Corrigan, Karen P. 2020. Linguistic Communities and Migratory Processes. Newcomers Acquiring Sociolinguistic Variation in Northern Ireland. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
Cronin, Michael and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (eds) 2003. The Languages of Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Crowley, Tony 2005. Wars of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537-2004. Oxford: University Press.
Davydova, Julia 2008. Perfect and Preterite: A corpus-based study of variation in Irish English. Arbeiten zur Mehrsprachigkeit, Universität Hamburg.
Dolan, Terence P. (ed.) 1990. The English of the Irish. Irish University Review, 20:1 Dublin: n.p.
Dolan, Terence P. and Diarmuid Ó Muirithe (eds) 1996 [1979]. The Dialect of Forth and Bargy. Second edition. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Dolan, Terence P. 2012 [1998]. A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. The Irish Use of English. Third edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Fallon, Patrick K. 2005. Printing, Literacy, and Education in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Why the Irish Speak English. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mallon Press.
Filppula, Markku. 1999. The grammar of Irish English. Language in Hibernian style. London: Routledge.
Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola and Heli Paulasto 2008. English and Celtic in contact. London: Routledge.
Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen (eds) 2002. The Celtic Roots of English. Joensuu: University Press.
Harris, John, David Little and David Singleton (eds.) 1986. Perspectives on the English Language in Ireland. Dublin: Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College.
Henry, Alison 1995. Belfast English and Standard English. Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting. Oxford: University Press.
Hickey, Raymond 2004. A Sound Atlas of Irish English. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hickey, Raymond 2005. Dublin English. Evolution and change. Cambridge: University Press.
Hickey, Raymond 2007. Irish English. Its history and present-day forms. Cambridge: University Press.
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2011. Irish English in Today’s World. Special issue of English Today.
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2011. Researching the Languages of Ireland. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2016. Sociolinguistics in Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2017. Listening to the Past. Audio Records of Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2024. The Oxford Handbook of Irish English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hickey, Raymond and Elaine Vaughan (ed.) 2017. Irish English. Special issue of World Englishes 36.2.
Hickey, Raymond and Carolina P. Amador Moreno (eds) 2020. Irish Identities. Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
Henry, Patrick Leo. 1958. ‘A linguistic survey of Ireland. Preliminary report’, Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap [Lochlann, A Review of Celtic Studies] Supplement 5: 49-208.
Hogan, James Jeremiah. 1927. The English language in Ireland. Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland.
Joyce, Patrick Weston. 1910. English as we speak it in Ireland. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Kallen, Jeffrey L. (ed.) 1997. Focus on Ireland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 2013. Irish English, Vol. 2. The Republic of Ireland. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
Kelly, James and Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (eds) 2012. Irish and English. Essays on the Irish linguistic and cultural frontier, 1600-1900. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Kirk, John M. and Dónall Ó Baoill (eds) 2000. Language and Politics: Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland. Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics, 1. Belfast: Queen’s University.
Kirk, John M. and Dónall Ó Baoill (eds) 2001. Language Links: the Languages of Scotland and Ireland. Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics, 2. Belfast: Queen’s University.
Kirk, John M. and Dónall Ó Baoill (eds) 2002. Travellers and their Language. Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics, 4. Belfast: Queen’s University.
Lucas, Angela (ed.) 1995. Anglo-Irish Poems of the Middle Ages. Dublin: Columba Press.
Lucek, Stephen and Carolina P. Amador Moreno (eds) 2022. Expanding the Landscapes of Irish English Research. London: Routledge.
Macafee, Caroline (ed.) 1996. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford: University Press.
McCafferty, Kevin 2001. Ethnicity and Language Change. English in (London)Derry, Northern Ireland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Maguire, Warren 2020. Language and Dialect Contact in Ireland: The Phonological Origins of Mid-Ulster English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Mazzi, Davide 2020. A Discourse Perspective on Bunreacht na hÉireann. A Sound Constitution? Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Mazzi, Davide 2022. A Discourse Perspective on Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Movement. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Mazzi, Davide 2023. The Discourse of Well-Being in Late-Modern Ireland. A Case Study of Letters to the Editor. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Migge, Bettina and Máire Ní Chiosáin (eds) 2012. New Perspectives on Irish English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Milroy, James. 1981. Regional accents of English: Belfast. Belfast: Blackstaff.
McCafferty, Kevin. 2000. Ethnicity and language change. English in (London)Derry, Northern Ireland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Montgomery, Michael 2006. From Ulster to America. The Scotch-Irish heritage of American English. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation.
Moylan, Séamas 2009. Southern Irish English: Review and Exemplary Texts. Dublin: Geography Publications.
Murphy, Bróna 2010. Corpus and Sociolinguistics: Investigating Age and Gender in Female Talk. John Benjamins.
Ó Baoill, Dónall (ed.) 1985. Papers on Irish English. Dublin: Irish Association of Applied Linguistics.
O’Dwyer, Fergus 2020. Linguistic Variation and Social Practices of Normative Masculinity: Authority and Multifunctional Humour in a Dublin Sports Club. London: Routledge.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmuid (ed.) 1977. The English Language in Ireland. Cork: Mercier.
O’Muirithe, Diarmuid 2002. Irish Words and Phrases. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
O’Mirithe, Diarmuid 2004a. Irish Slang and Unconventional Language. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
O’Muirithe, Diarmuid 2004b. A Glossary of Irish Slang and Unconventional Language. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
O’Muirithe, Diarmuid 2010. From the Viking Word-hoard: A Dictionary of Scandinavian Words in the Languages of Britain and Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
O’Sullivan, Joan 2020. Corpus Linguistics and the Analysis of Sociolinguistic Change. London: Routledge.
Palmer, Patricia 2000. Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peters, Arne 2016. Linguistic Change in Galway City English. A variationist sociolinguistic study of (th) and (dh) in Urban Western Irish English. Duisburg Papers on Research in Language and Culture. Volume 116. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Regan, Vera, Chloéé Diskin and Jennifer Martyn (eds) 2016. Language, Identity and Migration. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.
Rieder, Maria 2018. Irish Traveller Language. An Ethnographic and Folk-Linguistic Exploration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ronan, Patricia (ed.) 2013. Ireland and its Contacts - L’Irlande et ses contacts. Université de Lausanne: Centre Linguistique es des Sciences du Language.
Sammon, Paddy 2002. Greenspeak. Ireland in her own Words. Dublin: Town House.
Schulte, Marion 2023. The Sociophonetics of Dublin English: Phonetic Realisation and Sociopragmatic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Share, Bernard 2008 [2003, 1997]. Slanguage - a dictionary of slang and colloquial English in Ireland. Third edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Shimada, Tamami 2010. English in Ireland. Beyond Similarities. Hiroshima: Keisuisha Publishing Company.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. (ed.) 1997. The Celtic Englishes I. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. (ed.) 2000. The Celtic Englishes II. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. (ed.) 2003. The Celtic Englishes III. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. (ed.) 2005. The Celtic Englishes IV. Potsdam: University Press.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. 2007. (ed.) The Celtic Languages in Contact. Potsdam: Potsdam University Press.
Tymoczko, Maria and Colin Ireland (eds) 2003. Language and Tradition in Ireland. Continuities and Displacements. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Walshe, Shane 2009. Irish English as Representd in Films. Berne: Peter Lang.
Zwickl, Simone 2002. Language Attitudes, Ethnic Identity and Dialect Use across the Northern Ireland Border: Armagh and Monaghan. Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics, 5. Belfast: Queen’s University Press.
2 Key articles
N.B.: This list consists of early seminal articles. Since the early 2000s many significant articles have appeared in journals and edited volumes and are too numerous to list here (see the collections given in the previous section).
Barry, Michael V. 1982. ‘The English language in Ireland’, In Bailey and Görlach (eds), 84-133
Bliss, Alan J. 1984. ‘English in the south of Ireland’, In Peter Trudgill (ed.) Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 135-51
Harris, John. 1984a. ‘Syntactic variation and dialect divergence’, Journal of Linguistics 20: 303-27.
Harris, John. 1984b. ‘English in the North of Ireland’, In Peter Trudgill (ed.) Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 115-34
Harris, John. 1993. ‘The grammar of Irish English’, In James Milroy and Lesley Milroy (eds). Real English. The Grammar of the English Dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman, pp. 139-86
Hickey, Raymond. 1997. ‘Arguments for creolisation in Irish English’, In Raymond Hickey and StanisÓaw Puppel (eds). Language History and Linguistic Modelling. A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his sixieth Birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 969-1038.
Hickey, Raymond. 1999. ‘Dublin English: Current changes and their motivation’, In Paul Foulkes and Gerry Docherty (eds) 1999. Urban Voices. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 265-81.
Hickey, Raymond. 2004. ‘Irish English: phonology’, In Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider and Clive Upton. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 68-97.
Hickey, Raymond. 2007. ‘Southern Irish English’, In David Britain (eds) Language in the British Isles. Second edition. Cambridge: University Press
Filppula, Markku. 1993. ‘Changing paradigms in the study of Hiberno-English’, Irish University Review 23.2: 202-23.
Filppula, Markku. 2004. ‘Irish English: morphology and syntax’, In Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider and Clive Upton. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 73-101.
Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1994. ‘English in Ireland’, In Robert Burchfield (ed.) English in Britain and Overseas. Origins and Development. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 5. Cambridge: University Press, pp. 148-96.
Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1997. ‘Irish English: Context and contacts’, In Kallen (ed.), 1-33.
Kirk, John M. 1999. ‘The dialect vocabulary of Ulster’, in: Cuadernos de Filolgia Inglesa, 8: 305-34.
McCafferty, Kevin 2004. ‘Innovation in language contact. Be after V-ing as a future gram in Irish English, 1670 to the present’, Diachronica 21,1: 113-60.
McCafferty, Kevin. 2006. ‘Northern Irish English’, In David Britain (eds) Language in the British Isles. Second edition. Cambridge: University Press
O’Keeffe, Anne and Carolina P. Amador-Moreno 2009. ‘The pragmatics of the be + after + V-ing construction in Irish English’, Intercultural Pragmatics 6.4: 517-534.
Sullivan, James P. 1980. ‘The validity of literary dialect: Evidence from the theatrical portrayal of Hiberno-English’, Language and Society 9: 195-219.
3 Dictionaries and works treating vocabulary
Clark, James M. 1977 [1917]. The vocabulary of Anglo-Irish. Philadelphia: R.West.
Dolan, Terence. 2012 [1998]. A dictionary of Hiberno-English. The Irish use of English. Third edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Fenton, James. 2014 [1995]. The hamely tongue. A personal record of Ulster-Scots in County Antrim. Fourth edition. Newtownards: Ulster-Scots Academic Press.
Joyce, Patrick Weston 1910. English as we speak it in Ireland. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Macafee, Caroline (ed.) 1996. A concise Ulster dictionary. Oxford: University Press.
Moylan, Séamus 1996. The language of Kilkenny. Dublin: Geography Publications.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid 1996a. Dictionary of Anglo-Irish. Words and phrases from Irish. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid 1996b. The words we use. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid 1997. A word in your ear. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmuid 2004. Irish Slang and Unconventional Language. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmuid 2010. From the Viking Word-hoard: A Dictionary of Scandinavian Words in the Languages of Britain and Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Share, Bernard 2008 [1997]. Slanguage - a dictionary of slang and colloquial English in Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Todd, Loreto 1990. Words apart. A dictionary of Northern Irish English. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe.
4 Corpora and data collections
Adams, George Brendan, Michael V. Barry and Philip M. Tilling. 1976. A Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English Speech - preliminary report. Questionnaire. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies.
Barry, Michael V. (ed.) 1981. Aspects of English dialects in Ireland, Vol 1. Papers arising from the Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English Speech. Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies.
Bliss, Alan J. 1979. Spoken English in Ireland 1600-1740. Twenty-seven representative texts assembled and analysed. Dublin: Cadenus Press.
Hickey, Raymond. 2003. A corpus of Irish English, in: Raymond Hickey. Corpus Presenter. Processing software for language analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hickey, Raymond. 2004. A Sound Atlas of Irish English, Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
McCafferty, Kevin and Carolina Amador-Moreno (now finalised) A Corpus of Irish English Correspondence. University of Bergen, Norway.
O’Sullivan, Joan, Carolina P. Amador-Moreno, Anne Barron 2025. Corpus Linguistics for Sociolinguistics A Guide for Research. London: Routledge.
5 Travellers’ language
Cleeve, Brian T. 1983. ‘The secret language’, Studies 72: 252-63.
DeCamp, David and Ian Hancock (eds) 1974. Pidgins and creoles: Current trends and prospects. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Gmelch, G. and Sharon Gmelch 1977. ‘Ireland’s travelling people: A comprehensive bibliography’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 4th Series 1,3: 159-69.
Hancock, Ian F. 1974. ‘Shelta: A problem of classification’, in: DeCamp and Hancock (eds), 130-7.
Hancock, Ian F. 1984. ‘Shelta and Polari’, in: Trudgill (ed.), 384-403.
Hancock, Ian F. 1984. ‘Romani and Angloromani’, in: Trudgill (ed.), 367-83
Hancock, Ian F. 1986. ‘The cryptolectal speech of the American roads: Traveler cant and American Angloromani’, American Speech 61: 206-20.
Harper, Jared and Charles Hudson 1971. ‘Irish traveller cant’, Journal of English Linguistics 5: 78-86.
Kirk, John M. and Dónall P. Ó Baoill (eds) 2002. Travellers and their language. Belfast: Queen’s University Press.
Macalister, R. A. Stewart. 1997 [1937]. The secret languages of Ireland. Armagh: Craobh Rua Books.
Matras, Yaron 2002. Romani: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: University Press.
Matras, Yaron (ed.) 1995. Romani in contact. The history, structure and sociology of a language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
McCann, May, Séamas Ó Síocháin and Joseph Ruane (eds) 1994. Irish travellers: Culture and ethnicity. Queen’s University, Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies.
Meyer, Kuno. 1891. ‘On the Irish origin and age of Shelta’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 2,5: 257-66.
Meyer, Kuno. 1909 ‘The secret languages of Ireland’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, New Series 2: 241-6.
O’Sullivan, Joan 2008. ‘Talkin> Differen’': Linguistic Diversity and the Irish Traveller Minority. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pubishing.
Sampson, John. 1908 ‘A hundred Shelta sayings’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1st Series 1: 272-77.
Smart, B. C. and H. T. Crofton 1875. The dialect of the English gypsies. London: Asher and Co.
Trudgill, Peter (ed.) 1984. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: University Press.
Wilson, G. Alick. 1889. ‘Shelta, the tinkers’ talk’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1st Series 1: 121-2.
6 Bibliographies
Royal Irish Academy. 1972. Handlist of work in progress and work completed on Anglo-Irish dialect studies. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.
Aldus, Judith Butler. 1976. ‘Anglo-Irish dialects. A bibliography’, Regional Language Studies Newfoundland 7: 7-28.
Aldus, Judith Butler. 1997. Irish English. A bibliography. Mimeograph.
Corrigan, Karen. 1990. ‘Northern Hiberno-English. The state of the art’, In Dolan (ed.), 91-119.
Glauser, Beat, Edgar W. Schneider and Manfred Görlach. 1993. A new bibliography of writings on varieties of English 1984-1992/3. Varieties of English around the World, General Series, Vol. 12 Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hickey, Raymond. 2002. A Source Book for Irish English Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tristram, Hildegard L. C. 1997. ‘Bibliography’, in Tristram (ed.), 362-427.
Viereck, Wolfgang, Edgar W. Schneider and Manfred Görlach. 1984. A bibliography of writings on varieties of English 1965-1983. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Varieties of English around the World, General Series, Vol. 3.
For a complete set of annotated references for Irish English (over 2,500 in all), see: Raymond Hickey (2002) A Source Book for Irish English. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).