A contrastive study of the vowel systems: Received Pronunciation and Northern Irish English.

Abstract

This work explores the vowel system of Northern Irish English (NIE), with a particular focus on the variety spoken in Derry. Despite the standard recognition in phonetic and phonological studies attributed to the Received Pronunciation (RP), this work points out the diversity of English accents within the UK. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, a description and classification of vowels have been done based on major works of experts in the field of phonetics. Once the framework of the work has been discussed, a deeper comparison of the RP and NIE vowel systems has been established. In addition, to illustrate all this data, the analysis of the NIE has been supported with real speech examples from the TV show Derry Girls, challenging the predominance of RP English and promoting the inclusion of other English accents.