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PhD Studentship
Language Variation and Change
This PhD Studentship Project – a collaboration between National Museums NI (NMNI), Queen’s University Belfast and Newcastle University – aims to address this knowledge gap by undertaking the first ever longitudinal study of Irish-English. Key objectives are to trace how dialects evolve from childhood and to explore not only what they reveal regarding the forces driving lifespan changes but also what the consequences may be for preserving intangible cultural heritage between generations. At its heart lies one of NMNI’s most significant all-island collections, the ‘Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English Speech’, initiated in the 1970s. It had a highly innovative methodology (particularly the adoption of analogue tape-recording and the collection of data from three age groups living in communities all over Ireland). The project will locate and re-record a sub-sample of the original survey respondents who were recorded as children (aged 9-12). The goal is to create an unprecedented record of how individual linguistic repertoires developed and adapted across decades of societal change. Naturally, a key benefit will be the enhancing of scientific knowledge about how language evolution operates, but the project also has a wide range of other applications. In particular, the project’s capacity to observe and preserve the dynamics and living heritage of Irish-English over time allows the collaborators to develop best practices in transforming static sound archives into dynamic, growing web-based resources that connect past and present voices across generations in museum and heritage contexts. Key research questions are: 1. How do features of Irish-English develop and change as speakers move from childhood into adulthood, and which linguistic variables remain stable or shift most over the lifespan? 2. In what ways have major societal changes – north and south of the Irish border – shaped the linguistic trajectories of individuals first recorded in the 1970s? 3. How do patterns of linguistic change relate to identity, community belonging, and the transmission of intangible cultural heritage across generations? 4. How can the TRSHES sound archive be transformed into a dynamic digital heritage over time allows the collaborators to develop best practices in transforming static sound archives into dynamic, growing web-based resources that connect past and present voices across generations in museum and heritage contexts. 5. What broader insights into mechanisms of language variation and change can be drawn from this unprecedented longitudinal study of Irish-English?