Corpus Linguistics and the Analysis of Sociolinguistic Change: Language Variety and Ideology in Advertising

Corpus Linguistics and the Analysis of Sociolinguistic Change demonstrates how particular styles and varieties of language are chosen and represented in the media, to reveal changing language ideologies and sociolinguistic change. Drawing on a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish radio station between 1977 and 2017, this book shows how corpus linguistic tools can be creatively employed, in conjunction with frameworks and concepts such as audience and referee design and indexicality, and examines how accents and dialects (vernacular and prestige) are exploited in the ads across the decades. In addition, this book:

• illustrates the key principles of corpus design for sociolinguistics studies and offers a framework for future diachronic corpus studies of advertising on social media;
• provides a model for analysing corpus data at both inter-varietal and intra-varietal levels in terms of both accent and dialectal features and explores the efficacy of using particular corpus linguistic tools;
• identifies key factors which can be used by researchers as evidence for sociolinguistic change and links these factors to relevant theories and frameworks;
• demonstrates how corpus tools can be used to compare advertising discourse with naturally occurring discourse, with particular reference to markers of (pseudo) intimate discourse.

Building on the growing body of research relating to variation and change in Irish English, this book is key reading for researchers and advanced students undertaking research within the areas of sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics.

Joan O’Sullivan is a Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.