ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the English speech of Ireland which complements that provided for England by the Survey of English Dialects (SED) and for Scotland by the Linguistic Survey of Scotland (LSS). It describes the methodology of the Tape-recorded Survey of Hiberno-English Speech (TRS) and it is determined by SED. TRS take advantage of other recent dialect research and accounts the criticisms made of 'traditional' dialect surveys. The chapter adopts the methods of SED and LSS. The purpose of TRS was to record the sounds of the English of Ireland, was practicable within the scope of a linguistic survey. SED decided to collect data from a systematic network of localities throughout the whole of Ireland. The network of SED required localities selected at 15-mile intervals. Consideration of the data from the three age-groups suggests that there are clear distribution patterns which together identify a wide isogloss area dividing a northern and southern speech.
