Franziska Wischerhoff
Supervisors:Professor Bettina Migge, Associate Professor Máire Ní Chiosáin
Thesis working title: Recent changes to ADE (Advanced Dublin English): A Sociophonetic analysis of new features and people’s attitudes towards them
Biography:
Having grown up in a small, sleepy town in the centre of Germany, I knew once I left school that I wanted to see the world and go places. I have always loved foreign languages, and even when I was still at school, I was already devouring one English novel after the other. Since it was particularly the structure of language that interested me, I quickly made the decision to study linguistics at university.
After completing my bachelor’s degree in modern languages and economics at the University of Giessen, I moved to Potsdam near Berlin to obtain a master’s degree in English and French linguistics. As part of my studies, I also spent a semester in Wolverhampton in the UK as well as two semesters in Toulouse (France).
Once I had finished my degree, I decided that I wanted to gain some professional experience and spent two years working as a translator and quality manager at a translation agency in Berlin. I learned a lot during this time and still work as a part-time freelance translator. However, I realised how much I missed doing research in linguistics and soon decided to embark on a new journey and pursue a PhD.
Thesis summary:
The areas of linguistics that I am particularly interested in are phonetics/phonology and sociolinguistics. More precisely, I like to investigate sound changes/changes in accents and the social variables that influence them. My PhD project focuses on Dublin English, a variety which has seen significant changes over the last few decades, especially when it comes to the realisation of certain vowels. It has also been argued that these changes have lead to the development of a new variety called “Advanced Dublin English”.
My aim is to investigate the dynamics of this variety and whether its use is influenced by social factors such as gender. To do so, I will carry out a sociophonetic analysis based on a series of map tasks and interviews. In addition, I want to establish whether there is evidence for a geographic spread of the new features associated with Advanced Dublin English by conducting my study not only in Dublin but also in another location.