James Joyce Quarterly

Abstract:

This essay offers the most complete and up-to-date description of Joyce’s use of Hiberno-English in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I seek not to offer an interpretation of the novel, but to explore Joyce’s accurate and meaningful representation of the vernacular grammar and vocabulary of the Irish in his Bildungsroman. The first section of the essay focuses on the dialecticisms related to the morphology and the syntax of pervasive use in Ireland; each non-standard feature is briefly described and then illustrated by an example from the novel. The second part, on the other hand, consists of a comprehensive glossary of the Hiberno-English terms and phrases employed by Joyce, including Irish loan-words, lexical items from other English dialects, and outdated terms or usages in Standard English that are retentions from the variety brought to Ireland. Each entry contains basic information on grammar, etymology—where relevant—and meaning, as well as an illuminating example from A Portrait.