Irish English in the Oxford English Dictionary

This public lecture will be held in LTEE2 (Lecture Theatre 2), Hamilton Building East End, Trinity College Dublin. Details on how to get there will be available in the confirmation email you will received after registering for the event.

The Oxford English Dictionary has spent the last decade significantly expanding its coverage of English varieties worldwide through major editorial projects that added hundreds of new entries. Building on this work, the dictionary has recently introduced a system of regular updates for World Englishes that allows it to track and record vocabulary from major global varieties more consistently and responsively. This talk will outline how these updates are planned, how new words are chosen, how OED entries are researched, written, and revised, and how emerging sources of evidence and new technologies are enhancing editors’ ability to document the evolving lexicon of World Englishes. All this will be illustrated by examples from Irish English, a variety that is documented in the OED with exceptional historical depth, extending through centuries of written sources and ranging from older Irish loan words and long established dialect forms to more recent Irish borrowings and other lexical innovations that reflect contemporary Irish culture, media, and daily life.

Dr Danica Salazar is Executive Editor for Oxford Languages, where she leads editorial projects for world varieties of English. She also researches and writes World English entries for the Oxford English Dictionary, and represents the dictionary in lectures and conferences, as well as in international print and broadcast media. She publishes and lectures regularly on lexicography, World Englishes, and Spanish- and English-language teaching. Prior to joining Oxford University Press, she was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in English Language Lexicography at the English Faculty and Hertford College of the University of Oxford.

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