We hesitate to open this question again-but needs must. The number of responses to our announcement of the "IASIL Dictionary Project" in the last issue but one has been limited, to say the least-notwithstanding the immediate interest that it sparked from Gill & Macmillan, the leading Irish literary-academic publisher, in 1996. Since then, only five queries have addressed to the Dictionary Sub-Committee Chairman, Dr. Richard Wall (Calgary Univ.), three of these originated outside the Association of which we are the constituent members.
This may be due in part to an impression that the recent spate of dictionaries of Hiberno-English is beginning to cover the matter adequately, viz., Caroline MacAfee's Concise Ulster Dictionary, Diarmaid Ó Muirithe's Dictionary of Words and Phrases from Gaelic in The English of Ireland, both coming after our own Liz Christensen's First Glossary of Hiberno-English and Professor Wall's Dictionary and Glossary for the Irish Literary Revival (along with his earlier Joycean glossary), Loreto Todd's The Language of Irish Literature and Words Apart, a dictionary of English in Northern Ireland-to which may now be added Bernard Share's Slanguage: A Dictionary of Irish Slang, to appear from Gill and Macmillan before the end of this year and Muirithe's A Word in Your Ear from Four Court Press.
Yet none of these amount to a comprehensive lexicographical project of the kind that might claim to deal exhaustively with the written literature in its full extent-although Professor Wall's Literary Revival glossary does purport to cover the Hiberno-English usages of that period on a globally exhaustive basis. And even if the literature in all periods were canvassed fully, there always remains the philologist's dream of lexicographising the distinctive elements of Hiberno-English 'as she is spoken', whether in earnestness or in jest, and in all contexts of Irish life as she is lived.
In a recent discussion paper issued in the 'Working Papers in Irish Studies' series of the Department of Liberal Arts at Nova University (Ft. Lauderdale), Michael Montgomery has drawn attention to the parlous state of Hiberno-English lexicography, remarking the anomaly that of all the 'extraterritorial Englishes' the Irish variety has shown least signs of self-assertion. The reason for this may well be that, as he suggests, '[t]he Republic of Ireland has identified with the Irish language far more than with one or more varieties of English' and 'continues to invest considerable resources in promoting Irish and developing reference works for it.' Montgomery goes on to quote Martin Croghan's striking remark in an earlier issue of the Nova 'Working Papers':
A negative aspect of the absence of a standard for Hiberno-English is that in written form it is used primarily when the language of those deemed to be non-elite is portrayed for purposes of satire or symbolic violence … There has never been an official or popular understanding that Hiberno-English is the real national language of Ireland.
This begs the politically loaded question: if Hiberno-English is in fact the real language of Ireland, should we therefore attempt to establish it as the 'standard' for pedagogic purposes? (It also begs the incidental question, when a relative of Tomás Ó Criomthain puts in his oar for Hiberno-English is there not a subtext regarding the failure of the Irish state to establish Irish as the 'first national language' in anything but the fashion of a constitutional mascot?)
This begs the politically-loaded question: if Hiberno-English is in fact the real language of Ireland, should we therefore attempt to establish it as the 'standard' for pedagogic purposes? (It also begs the incidental question, when a relative of Tomás Ó Criomthain puts in his oar for Hiberno-English is there not a subtext regarding the failure of the Irish state to establish Irish as the 'first national language' in anything but the fashion of a constitutional mascot?) Fraught as it is in socio-political difficulties, the pedagogical question is happily beyond our ambit as literary lexicographers, though the treatment of ethnic variants among English speakers in modern Britain might here provide a model, if not in every sense a constructive one. Yet the fact that Dr. Croghan could pose it is perhaps indicative of the rising urgency that Irish people now feel in relation to this matter. To declare for a distinctive Hiberno-English dialect or not? To cultivate it actively, or merely to tolerate it in education while rejoicing in its literary deployments? Confusion in these matters is not necessarily an ignoble condition (to apply Brian Friel's dictum), but it is nevertheless unhelpful for the perplexed student of Anglo-Irish literature in partibus exterioris.
We can here report that a treatment of Hiberno-English precisely as a foreign language for learning purposes has been conducted according to rules of grammar honed by international teaching experience under the title of 'Iberno-English and the Teaching of Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature in an EFL Context'. The authors are Anna Asián (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and James McCullough (Univ. Autonoma de Barcelona) and their 28-page document makes a wonderful primer on the subject, more scholarly in feel and more translucent in expression than many of the academic sources that they quote from. Unlike most of those named above, the central concern in this essay is with the reader of Hiberno-English texts on first looking into Synge, Doyle, and Kennelly or, indeed, so many of the contemporary masters of non-standard English-since negotiating the same is an 'increasingly important skill' when 'more people speak non-standard varieties' (and write non-standard varieties also).
Other than this extremely worthwhile offering, the amount of work being done in universities on the grammar side of our own variety of English seems relatively scanty. In the supplementary Bibliography of Dissertations in Anglo-Irish Literature now placed on Internet under the IASIL Web Page-about which more information can be found elswhere in this Newsletter-the only title bearing on the subject is a treatise on 'Linguistic Fundamentals for Hiberno-English Syntax' completed at TCD by J. L. Kallen in 1986. Such work, it may be said, points beyond the proper remit of our concerns in IASIL-féin as being philological in bent rather than strictly literary (in respect of either one or both our 'literatures'). Yet at the same time it surely points towards an inevitable juncture in the interdisciplinary climate of Irish studies and one that we ought assiduously cultivate as reflecting our traditional concerns with form and content as much as political aspect and socio-historical context.
So far we have been considering and partly planning for a literary lexicon of Hiberno-English. An exhaustive project of this kind would involve assigning qualified readers to the major authors, genres, and periods. No doubt the existing glossaries provided by IASIL members such as Professor Wall and Dr. Christensen (working independently to date) would serve as prime material for the kind of lexicographical dictionary we want, as well as models to be contemplated seriously in drawing up the rules for selection and treating, listing and interpretation. It must be obvious, however, that a co-ordinated undertaking of this kind will bring the dictionary farther than the farthest reach of any individual scholar's efforts, no matter how insomniac-and hopefully faster also. In this relation the working methods of editorial groupings currently conducting large-scale projects such as the electronic Annotated Bibliography for English Studies (ABES) or even the New Dictionary of National Biography (NDNB) might provide suitable examples. Within Ireland, the immensely well-launched 'History of the Book' project at the Centre for Irish Literature and Bibliography at Coleraine (Univ. of UIster) might offer a further example notwithstanding the restricted numbers necessarily involved in a five-volume target outcome chiefly divided into essays on the main periods. In so far as those mega-projects draw upon the work of contributors not merely in their tens but in their hundreds, a parallel operation would mean as a minimum calling on the whole of IASIL membership-or at least a very large representative group within it-to survey the literature in something like a comprehensive way, each in relation to their specialist authors.
It is indeed most pleasant to envisage a wide and concerted search through Irish literature in English conducted voluntarily by the IASIL membership in relation to the very many authors who catch and hold our fancy at a given moment. However, the indications are that voluntarism is not going to do the job of producing a Hiberno-English Literary Dictionary of the kind required-let alone the larger fabric of the Hiberno-English language. ['Let alone'? H.E. for 'leaving aside', we assume. -Ed.] The true dictionary that we want might have a headword count in the order of 10,000 to 50,000 usages rather than the comparatively paltry 100 to 500 encompassed in the usual glossaries. It must be obvious therefrom that its compilation would call for the services of a proportionate amount of labourers in the lexical vineyard in number perhaps 100.
Such a projection in turns necessarily implies a scale of organisation involving an editorial team with the capability of maintaining a suitable system of record and retrieval (presumably on computer) as well as the final composition of the entries with their revision and cross-referencing-everything to be conducted under rules and principles agreed by a Dictionary Committee in consultation with lexicographical authorities and others verses in Irish literature in English and in Irish. Behind these, too, there must be some minimum of adminstration under the aegis of an accredited institution, for all of this takes money for salaries and fees and physical resources commencing with an office furnished with the usual array of shelves and filing cabinets.
On the face of it IASIL hardly seems the association to launch an institutionally-grounded project of this sort. In fact the only real 'competition' for the Hiberno-English undertaking might come from the Royal Irish Academy, whose long-planned H.E. Dictionary is clearly stalled at present. The main difference in the two projects is perhaps this: the RIA has taken as its bailiwick the whole language field (langue et parole) while IASIL is addressing the literary record only.
Although clear methodological differences immediately suggest themselves, these might be a less profound than at first appears. In practical terms, at least, there are goals and resources in common: RIA and IASIL both aim to draw on the knowledge and the skills of a wide panel of qualified readers and compilers. In drawing up such panels the likelihood is that they will hit repeatedly on the same persons in their letters of appointment and turn to the same publishers to bring them out at last. ('Oh no! Not another Hiberno-English Dictionary!').
Both bodies will certainly be constrained to recruit the kinds of funding that an effective project of this scale would necessarily require-if only for the purchase of computers and the stipending of the key editorial personnel, without a word said about fees and copyright. Working in rivalry they are unlikely to make progress. In partnership, they can combine institutional clout with the benefits of a wide and active international membership. These advantages suggests that we should combine forces and go looking for the necessary grants together, if it is really our intention to create a monumental work of Irish lexicography covering the whole scope of Hiberno-English as a spoken and a written language. Effectively fund-raising in a European context is increasingly a collaborative business. And we don't want make a baw of it!
For whatever reasons, the match between Anglo-Irish literature and HIberno-English philology has been oddly unproductive, notwithstanding some five hundred short studies that Dr. Montgomery has characterised as 'disparate' and 'anecdotal'-a reproof that we are surely anxious to avoid. A measure of the traditional dearth of resources in this area was the fact that Professor Maurice Harmon's Irish Studies Handbook to Anglo-Irish Literature, issued in 1977, cited J. J. Horgan's study of The English Language in Ireland (1927) as 'the standard work'-a claim more shocking if one examines that creaky piece of discourse and more shocking still when one considers how little in the way of an authorita tive study we now have to replace it.
J. J. Horgan was of course the home-grown (though hardly home-spun) Professor of English at UCD in his hour of glory. Yet here is a curious fact: the philologists who have worked in Ireland to date have largely tended to be 'non-Irish' in provenance, if not-as it certain famous instances-positively German. The most important work being done on Hiberno-English at the time of Dr. Harmon's just remark lay in the hands of Professor Alan Bliss (also at UCD) who gave us period showcases in studies such as Spoken English in Ireland 1600-1740 (1979)-containing the Irish Hudibras and other satirical texts of the bogge-witticisme ilk-as well as his edition of Swift's Dialogue in Hybernian Style and Irish Eloquence (1977), printed beautifully by Andrew Carpenter's Cadenus Press. Apparently the hibernophilic tendency in philologically-minded Englishmen has not abated. Some short time ago news reached us that T. P. Dolan of UCD-Professor's Bliss successor and a personable authority on Middle English and such matters who has contributed Hiberno-Irish lore to several Anglo-Irish conferences-is shortly to bring out a Dictionary of Hiberno-English with Gill & Macmillan. According to Dr. Montgomery's information this was originally planned as a co-venture with Diarmaid Ó Muirithe but the appearance of the latter's The Words We Use-again from Four Courts in May 1996-suggests that the 'Dolan/Ó Muirithe' partnership may have fallen into asunder for reasons that Dr. Dolan's report on the matter may sufficiently explain.
What sort of compilation is it, then, that Gill & Macmillan is determined to produce in lieu of the authoritative H. E. Dictionary that we threatened to produce two years ago? In a letter giving notice of impending publication, Dr. Dolan reported that the specimens contained in his dictionary were collected from 'interviews and/or letters with/or from correspondents'. In a similar vein, Dr. Montgomery reported on the basis of Dolan's personal communication as early as 1993 that the two editors (as then was) had 'recently commenced work on a new dictionary of Hiberno-English, and […] are receiving lists of words from all over the country.' In 'all over the country' we distinctly hear the procedure employed by Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, who is largely dependent (at least for initial stimulus goes) on queries raised by readers of his Irish Times column, of which the latest to date at the time of writing throws light upon that famous Irish phrase, 'to hazard a guess', tracing the usage back to Latin azardum and beyond to Arabic az-zahar, meaning 'to die'. This signifies that whereas the most persistent students of Hiberno-English are keen to make much of the phraseologies we use they are unwilling to falsify the widely-related pattern of indebtedness to European and other cultures met through historical contact. it would be false to say that Ó Muirithe's method is strictly anecdotal; pot pourri might suit the case better, or whatever the Arabic term for same might be.
We do not know what kind of sampling methods the editors of the Macmillan dictionary elected to use, and how their 'correspondents' were appointed-or indeed whether a specially adapted MORI poll had been designed for the purpose. No one has suggested that the plethoric notebooks and audio-records of the Folklore Commission were to be taken as material evidence of Hiberno-English usage. Even to what purpose the dictionary was being constructed seems uncertain-at least it is hard to imagine a wide concensus of Irish scholars trooping in good order behind Dr. Dolan's leadership in respect of cultural objectives:
- so far so good -
This introduces a somewhat imperial note ('All roads lead to Charing Cross'), and doubts about the cultural credentials of the project begin to gather even faster where the editor cites encouragements received from the novelist David Lodge-a writer sometimes called Catholic and therefore no doubt by implication friendly to the Irish. Lodge's readers may remember, by way of testing this proposition, the sheets sent to a London laundry in one novel which the washer-women immediately identify as coming from the nearby Irish seminary because of the soluble 'maps of Ireland' on them all.
Lodge would not of course be the first English author to appreciate instruction in the Irish parts of speech. Did not Aubrey de Vere supply Tennyson with a list of Irishisms from which the laureate distilled that touching national poem 'Tomorrow' in which an aged peasant relates to a landlord not unlike de Vere the story of a man lost in the bog whose sweetheart, on finding his petrified body decades after, drops dead herself (as we say in Ireland).
Admirers of this kind of writing might care to look at the Anglo-Irish verses that Thackeray penned under the title 'Mr Maloney's Account of the Crystal Palace' for Punch Magazine which Chris Morash quotes liberally in Writing the Famine (1995), illustrating the position assigned to Ireland in the Victorian world-order. In spite of such potentially risible outcomes and its slow rate of current progress, the Hiberno-English lexicographical project is far from dead, however. Certainly the dictionary has never been more needful than now,. when there is increasingly a question of recording distinctively Irish usage for our own enlightenment as much as for that of others.
'True for you', says Danny Mulqueen in Kate O'Brien's The Ante-Room-set in 1881-marking him out as a successful businessman of a lower grade of social culture than his daughters whose 'brogue' is said to be 'too subtle for immediate imitation' by the visiting medical men on the look out for 'indigenous drolleries' in rural Ireland. Much subtlety is likewise required to make a good job of the proposed Hiberno-English dictionary, and no cohort or association is better equipped to carry it out than the membership of IASIL, especially if associated with the Royal Irish Academy, at once the most august and underdeveloped cultural institution in Ireland. In the age of national lotteries, it should not be difficult to design a project with good prospects of attracting appropriate funding either from a governmental or a corporate patron.
At the last AGM the IASIL secretary and editor of this Newsletter offered to initiate contact with the Academy, and at the time of writing first contact has been established. It is hope that by the time we meet again for the AGM in Limerick, some idea of the plans and prospects for grant-aided co-venturing will have emerged and wholesale recruitment can begin to take place at that conference.