ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 shows how corpus tools can help to systematically establish the frequency and position of variety diachronically in the corpus, in terms of the ad components, Action and Comment. The main focus is on variety choice at the inter-varietal level in relation to the main varieties found in the Irish Radio Advertisement Corpus (IRAC), Irish English (IrE) and Standard Southern British English (SSBE), particularly in the subcorpora of 1977 and 1987, in which SSBE is most prevalent. The choice of variety is examined in terms of the strategies of outgroup referee design, ingroup referee design or audience design. Furthermore, the chapter considers how qualitative analysis of the ads, allowing for more in-depth investigation, can underpin this classification. The use of varieties other than SSBE and IrE as outgroup referee design is also discussed. In order to corroborate previous research, the chapter examines the extent to which audience and referee design can be manifested through accent as opposed to lexical and dialectal features, and how this can be facilitated by particular corpus tools.
