This chapter begins by surveying the linguistic history of Ireland. Although it is situated on the periphery of the British Isles, there is evidence of contact between the island, other regions of Britain and indeed other countries in western Europe for centuries. It explores early and later contacts between the indigenised Celts and more recent colonisers and immigrants, including the Normans, the English, the Scots and twentieth-century settlers from the European Union prior to Brexit. These contacts have created a set of contemporary Irish English varieties that are not only distinctive with respect to other world Englishes but are also differentiated diatopically, ethnically and socially. Two main topics are addressed. The degree to which Irish English from different time frames is structurally similar to other dialects spoken elsewhere is considered alongside evaluating the extent to which contemporary Irish Englishes vary internally and externally with respect to their lexis, phonology, morphosyntax and discourse pragmatics. Some space is also devoted to examining how the study of Irish English has developed and what directions research might take in the twenty-first century in response to new approaches to modelling linguistic contact as well as the availability of larger and more diverse digital datasets.

This chapter includes a succinct review of World Englishes and dialect typology literature, with a focus on the main theoretical paradigms within this sphere (e.g. the Three Circles model and the Dynamic Model). We then introduce the nine regional varieties of English under study in the book: British English, Canadian English, Irish English, New Zealand English, Hong Kong English, Indian English, Jamaican English, Philippine English, and Singapore English. The discussion includes a brief summary of relevant aspects of these varieties’ sociohistories as well as their linguistic profiles.

This chapter presents a quantitative analysis of the frequency and function of you know among L1 speakers of Irish and Australian English and L2 speakers of Polish and Chinese background, residing in Ireland. Results show no significant differences in the frequency of you know in Irish as compared to Australian English. However, you know was highly correlated with I mean in Australian English only. Among the L2 speakers, you know was significantly more frequent among the Polish group as compared to both the Chinese group and the L1 group. Proficiency in English and length of residence were not found to be significant predictors of this trend, although Poles with lower levels of education were found to use more you know. Both L1 groups used more interpersonal functions of you know as compared to the L2 groups, who favored its coherence functions. The findings indicate that the prevalence of you know may contribute to its rapid adoption by L2 speakers, but more close analysis reveals potential challenges for L2 speakers to acquire the full range of functions of discourse–pragmatic markers in spoken discourse. The study shows the importance of examining both frequency and function of discourse–pragmatic markers in language contact situations.