This volume is one of the first detailed expositions of the history of different varieties of English. It explores language variation and varieties of English from an historical perspective, covering theoretical topics such as diffusion and supraregionalization as well as concrete descriptions of the internal and external historical developments of more than a dozen varieties of English.

The current book intends to provide a flexible and comprehensive bibliographical tool to those scholars working or interested in Irish English. A whole range of references (approx. 2,500) relating to Irish English in all its aspects are gathered together here and in the majority of cases annotations are supplied. The book has a detailed introduction dealing the history of Irish English, the documentation available and contains an overview of the themes in Irish English which have occupied linguists working in the field. Various appendixes offer information on the history of Irish English studies and biographical notes on scholars from this area. All the bibliographical material is contained on the accompanying CD-ROM along with appropriate software (Windows, PC) for processing the databases and texts. The databases are fully searchable, information can be exported at will and customised extracts can be created by users from within an intuitive software interface. This bibliography is part of a larger project, called the Irish English Resource Centre. Additions and updates to the bibliography can be found on the centre’s website.

This book presents a series of essays that examine the ideological, personal, and political difficulties faced by the group variously termed the Anglo-Irish, the Protestant Ascendancy, or the English in Ireland, a group that existed in a world of contested ideological, political, and cultural identities. At the root of this conflicted sense of self was an acute awareness among the Anglo-Irish of their liminal position as colonial dominators in Ireland who were viewed as other both by the Catholic natives of Ireland and by their English kinsmen. The work in this volume is highly interdisciplinary, bringing to bear examination of issues that are historical, literary, economic, and sociological. Contributors investigate how individuals experienced the ambiguities and conflicts of identity formation in a colonial society, how writers fought the economic and ideological superiority of the English, how the cooption of Gaelic history and culture was a political strategy for the Anglo-Irish, and how literary texts contributed to the emergence of national consciousness. In seeking to understand and trace the complex process of identity formation in early modern Ireland the essays in this volume attest to its tenuous, dynamic, and necessarily incomplete nature. David A. Valone is an Assistant Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. Jill Marie Bradbury is an Assistant Professor of English at Gallaudet University.

This book is a general introduction to the English spoken in Ireland, its most characteristic features, and its historical development. It provides a practical introduction to the topic of Irish English (also known as Hiberno-English), the variety of English that arose in Ireland as a consequence of contact between the Irish and the English languages. As well as looking at the specific examples where substratum from Irish can be observed, the book analyses other features unique to Irish English, from different perspectives (taking into account, for example, the pragmatic implications of certain syntactic structures in current spoken Irish English). It offers the reader a comprehensive coverage of the history and most salient features of this variety of English, while discussing key concepts such as bilingualism and language shift. The material is presented in a simple and accessible manner. It encourages the reader to discuss and think critically about some of the topics and to use the last section of each chapter as a basis for further investigation. An Introduction to Irish English contains exercises and practical activities with each chapter, as well as suggestions for further reading. It deals with both real data and fictional representations of this variety and it includes excerpts from Literature, media and film scripts, as well as other contexts, including everyday conversation, political debates, newspapers, e-mail, blogs, etc.