“Then she spotted me accent an’ said te me, de ye come from the north?”: Analysing the representation of a rural South Derry accent in Frances Molloy’s No Mate for the Magpie (1985)

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of a rural South Derry accent in Frances Molloy’s No Mate for the Magpie (1985). It aims to identify the pronunciation features used by Molloy to index a rural South Derry identity as well as to assess the authenticity of the features portrayed in the novel. The analysis combines qualitative and quantitative, corpus-based methods to facilitate assessing the authenticity and consistency of Molloy’s portrayal. The qualitative analysis reveals that fourteen dialectal pronunciation features are represented in No Mate for the Magpie through respellings of words and that all of those features are likely to occur in the South Derry area, which contributes to a fairly authentic representation. On the other hand, quantitative findings suggest that the author is consistent in her use of respellings throughout the novel. In addition to providing interesting information about the authenticity and consistency of the literary portrayal, this study affords insights into: (1) the linguistic landscape of rural South Derry, which seems to be considerably influenced by Ulster Scots and (2) Molloy’s ability to create a unique portrayal of a South Derry accented voice by combining traditional respellings with her own Ulster-Scots-influenced respellings.