Raymond Hickey
Born
Raymond Kevin Hickey

(1954-06-03) 3 June 1954 (age 69)
Dublin, Ireland
Academic background
Alma materTrinity College Dublin
Academic work
DisciplineLinguistics
Sub-disciplineLanguage Contact,
Language Typology (Irish),
Sociolinguistics,
Varieties of English
InstitutionsUniversity of Bonn,
University of Munich,
University of Duisburg-Essen

Raymond Kevin Hickey (born 3 June 1954) is an Irish linguist specialising in the English language in Ireland, especially in the capital Dublin, working within the sociolinguistic paradigm of language variation and change. Hickey has also worked on the Irish language, specifically the phonology of the modern language. For both Irish and English in Ireland he has carried out extensive fieldwork for over three decades.

Hickey's research also covers the wider field of varieties of English – in particular their historical development and spread overseas during the colonial period – language contact, areal linguistics and language typology, as well as the history of English, both the development of its phonology and the language in the eighteenth century which led to the standardisation of English.

Outside his own professional context Hickey frequently discusses linguistic issues and has been an invited guest on Irish radio[1][2][3][4][5] and in Irish newspapers, such as the Irish Times[6][7] in particular to comment on language attitudes and/or change and their relevance to society in general.

Education and career

Hickey studied German and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin and after attaining his M.A. moved to the University of Kiel, Germany, where he completed his PhD in 1980. He was awarded his second doctorate degree (German: Habilitation) in 1985 at the University of Bonn where he was appointed professor of English linguistics in 1987. In 1991 he moved to the University of Munich, then in 1993 to the University of Bayreuth and the following year to the University of Essen (since 2003 the University of Duisburg and Essen) where he has held the chair for General Linguistics and Varieties of English since. Hickey has been visiting professor at a number of international universities and is on the editorial board of several journals. His book publications have been and continue with major publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, Wiley-Blackwell (Hoboken, New Jersey), Mouton de Gruyter (Berlin) and John Benjamins (Amsterdam).[8] In 2020 he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Limerick, Ireland. He was furthermore appointed the general editor of The New Cambridge History of the English Language by Cambridge University Press. This comprehensive work in six volumes is intended to reflect recent research insights as well as new theories and methods in English historical linguistics.

Research contributions

Among the contributions he has made to linguistic research is the notion of supraregionalisation[9] by which is meant the rise of a non-local form of language used across a broad section of society and expressing its linguistic identity. He has also tracked the sociolinguistically motivated change in Dublin English over the past three decades[10] and compiled a Corpus of Irish English with appropriate software. In the area of Irish phonology, Hickey has devised a maximally concise system of description which captures many linguistically valid generalisations about the sound structure of that language.[11] More generally he has been concerned with internal and external factors in language change,[12] the course of such change[13] and the complex of new dialect formation.[14] Among his recent research foci have been life-span[15] changes and 'bad data', fragmentary data from poorly documented sources which nonetheless can provide insights into language change.[16]

Hickey is also noted for viewing the history of English as a series of 'streams' which arose during the colonial period at several locations throughout the world and led to the rise of different standards of the language, e.g. in Canada, South Africa or New Zealand,[17] all of which are independent of, though related to the standard of English in Britain.

The study of areal features, those shared by languages or varieties in geographically delimited regions, also received impetus from his research and this field of language contact and change.[18]

Publications

Monographs

Edited volumes

Articles/chapters

About 200 articles in various linguistic journals and chapters in edited volumes.

Author's websites

See also

References

  1. ^ Murray, Lorcan (15 January 2016). "Lorcan Murray's Classic Drive. Culture File: Dub Hun Fun. Professor Raymond Hickey on fashions in the ever-changing accents of Dublin". RTÉ. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  2. ^ Murray, Lorcan (15 January 2016). "Lorcan Murray's Classic Drive. Culture File Weekly No 53". RTÉ. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  3. ^ Nolan, Liz (1 May 2015). "Liz Nolans's Classic Drive. Culture File: Why boys and girls speak differently. Why boys and girls speak differently, with Irish accents specialist, Prof Raymond Hickey". RTÉ. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  4. ^ Nolan, Liz (30 April 2014). "Liz Nolans's Classic Drive. Culture File: The great Dublin vowel shift. The great Dublin vowel shift of the 1990s with its closest observer, Prof Raymond Hickey". RTÉ. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  5. ^ Nolan, Liz (29 April 2014). "Liz Nolans's Classic Drive. Culture File: Speaking Proper". RTÉ. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  6. ^ Linehan, Hugh (18 February 2016). "So, like, what's up with the Irish accent?". Irish Times. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  7. ^ Linehan, Hugh (19 February 2016). "How the Irish, like, speak now?". Irish Times. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  8. ^ see Publications
  9. ^ 'Supraregionalisation and dissociation', in: J. K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling (eds) Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Second edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 537-554.
  10. ^ 'Development and change in Dublin English', in: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.) Language Change. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, 1998, pp. 209-243, Hickey, Raymond 2005. Dublin English. Evolution and Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also the research website Variation and Change in Dublin English.
  11. ^ The Sound Structure of Modern Irish. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2014, especially pp. 39-176.
  12. ^ 'Internally and externally motivated language change', in: Juan Manuel Hernández-Compoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds) The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 401-421.
  13. ^ 'Ebb and flow. A cautionary tale of language change', in: Teresa Fanego, Belén Mendez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds) Sounds, words, texts, change. Selected papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (11 ICEHL). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002, pp. 105-128.
  14. ^ 'How do dialects get the features they have? On the process of new dialect formation', in: Raymond Hickey (ed.) Motives for Language Change. Cambridge: University Press, 2003, pp. 213-239.
  15. ^ 'Twentieth-century Received Pronunciation: Stop articulation', in: Raymond Hickey (ed.) Listening to the Past. Audio Records of Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 66-84.
  16. ^ Keeping in Touch. Familiar Letters across the English-speaking World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2019.
  17. ^ Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  18. ^ Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2012; The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
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