How the accents you hear on Irish radio and TV ads have changed

Analysis: we've gone from 1970s and 1980s ads spoken in 'posh' Received Pronunciation to today's Advanced Dublin English

By Joan O'Sullivan, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

When you listen to an ad on RTÉ radio or TV today, you're likely to hear it spoken in an Irish accent. But up until the 1990s, the voiceover of many of the ads on RTÉ radio used what is known as standard British or Received Pronunciation (RP), or at least an imitation of this accent. RP is traditionally associated with BBC newsreaders and presenters and with high social status.

In distinguishing an Irish accent and a standard British accent, the pronunciation of the 'r' sound is an important feature. RP accents generally do not pronounce 'r’ in syllable-final position (as in river) and where ‘r’ is followed by a consonant (as in dark), while Irish English accents do.

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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today With Claire Byrne, Vera Regan from UCD on children acquiring English accents thanks to Peppa Pig

The standard British accent is non-rhotic, whereas Irish English accents are generally rhotic. In my research on accents in radio ads in Ireland over the last five decades, I found that the majority of the ads in the 1970s and 1980s used non-rhotic accents, even for products like Siúcra Irish Sugar, which exploited the Irish word for sugar.

While this is particularly true of the voiceover or slogan of the ad, it's also so in many of the scenarios in the ad depicting the ‘ordinary’ consumer (e.g. customers in a supermarket discussing a product). What is really interesting is that the voices used in these ads were generally not those of British presenters but of well-known Irish media personalities such as Larry Gogan, Frank Kelly, Mike Murphy and Bill Golding. Alongside the non-rhotic pronunciation, these voices often showed ‘telltale’ features of Irish English (e.g. what legendary broadcaster Gay Byrne referred to as the ‘the Soft Irish Tee’). So the emulation of the RP accent through the ‘r-less’ ‘BBC’ accent was actually very conscious and deliberate.

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This accent choice can be explained by what we call prescriptivism, the belief that there are right and wrong ways to use a language. Prescriptivists attempt to set out specific rules for ‘proper’ use of language, and to explain to others how a language should be used. Although he had a no issue with the ‘r’, we could say that Gaybo was a prescriptivist, in relation to what he terms ‘the Soft Irish Tee’. A letter to the Irish Times in 2004, refers to an albeit tongue in cheek article by the broadcaster in the paper, where he declares that media professionals are suffering from ‘bad habits and verbal tics’ by indulging in this 'soft' pronunciation of ‘t’.

The deliberate attempt at an imitation of the standard (non-rhotic) accent in the ads is another example of prescriptivism and standard language ideology which positioned RP as ‘correct’ and Irish English rhotic pronunciation as inappropriate. Language ideology is best explained as the way language is represented and given meaning in a ‘speech community’. A speech community is a group of people (e.g. a town/city, region or country) who share attitudes and values about what is appropriate language use for particular situations and contexts.

From Lyric FM's Culture File, linguist Prof Rayond Hickey on the great Dublin vowel shift of the 1990s

Language ideologies emerge from the way language is represented, particularly in the public sphere like the media. In the Irish context, an RP accent is associated with ‘poshness’, and its use in advertising in Ireland, especially in the voiceover (associated with authority and expertise in the ad) reinforced its status as more prestigious than an Irish English accent.

Is this still the case? Irish English expert, Prof Raymond Hickey, points out that ‘putting on’ an English accent is regarded as snobbish and pretentious in the Irish speech community. Indeed, we’ve seen a general move towards the acceptability of more informal speech in the public sphere. In my research, I found that the use of RP dwindled from the 1990s onwards and Irish accents became much more prevalent in radio advertising. Does this mean a move away from prescriptivism and standard language ideology? Well, yes and no…

From RTÉ Lyric FM's Culture File in 2016, Prof Raymond Hickey on fashions in the ever-changing accents of Dublin

What has replaced the RP accent in the ads is what Hickey refers to as Advanced Dublin English. The forerunner of this accent has been variously termed Dublin 4, D4 or Dortspeak; it emerged during the years of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, and is associated with modernity, progress and globalisation.

When the accent began to receive media attention, though, it became the object of satire and mockery. Examples include TV programmes like Dan and Becs, featuring an affluent couple from Dublin’s southside and Paul Howard's Ross O'Carroll Kelly books, plays and newspaper columns.

From RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show, marking 25 years of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly with author Paul Howard, former rugby player Gordon D'Arcy and journalist Roisin Ingle

This led to the dropping, over time, of the main ‘offending’ features of D4 or Dortspeak (like roundabout pronounced as rindabite, dart as dort). According to Hickey, the accent lost ‘connotations of snobbishness and condescending poshness’ and becoming a more acceptable quasi-standard for Irish English. It is this accent, Advanced Dublin English, that we hear most in Irish radio ads today. Dortspeak is still used in ads, but mostly in a satirical way.

While we no longer depend on RP for prestige in broadcast ads, it could be said that we have replaced it with another type of standard. That said, the acceptability of a (quasi) standard Irish English rather than standard British English shows a new confidence in our own language variety. And sorry Gaybo, the ‘Soft Irish Tee’ is still with us despite your best efforts!

Dr Joan O'Sullivan is a lecturer in Applied Linguistics and is programme co-ordinator for the MA and Structured PhD in Applied Linguistics at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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