ABSTRACT
Among the varieties of urban English in the British Isles, that of Dublin enjoys a special position. There are several reasons for this. The most important is that, while geographically within these islands, the English-speaking sector of the Republic of Ireland does not look to England for a standard reference accent of English. In the south of Ireland the prestige form of English is that spoken in the capital, Dublin. Here the ceiling in terms of standardness is the speech of educated, weak-tie speakers on the south side of the city. For the southern Irish, Received Pronunciation is an extra-national norm not aspired to. Indeed, the emulation of anything like this accent of English is regarded as snobbish, slightly ridiculous and definitely un-Irish. The sociolinguistic significance of this fact is considerable and will be evident in the discussion of the vowel shift currently in progress in the capital. At present, the speech of Dublin is going through a major sound change which started in the early to mid-1980s and which has led to a considerable gap between strongly local forms of Dublin English (henceforth DE) and those of the more fashionable quarters of the city.l This change is the main subject of the present chapter.
