Exploring the construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’

Abstract

This paper explores how the cultural concept of the Irish Mammy is portrayed in the popular television comedy series 'Mrs Brown's Boys'. Considering the historicity and cultural aspects surrounding essential views of Irishness that have shaped the archetype of the stereotype, we draw on a corpus of (semi)scripted fictional interaction taken from the series. Using a Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis (CADA) approach to explore linguistic patterning surrounding the use of key lexical markers (e.g. Mammy), we investigate what they reveal about how the concept is represented, (de)constructed, and negotiated. The paper discusses the construction and deconstruction of the stereotype and the extent to which it draws on shared knowledge to reflect and navigate particular cultural values and concerns (Hall 2007;Hall et al. 2013). It views the deconstructio n, in particular, as a way of challenging the traditional stereotype, in light of societal change, to provide a more layered, realistic and multi-faceted insight into the identities of the Irish Mammy figure within this fictional context of Mrs Brown's Boys.

Linguistic Perceptions of Irish English in Nineteenth-century Emigrant Letters

“…For instance,Crowley (2002: 85) underlines that antiquarian John Keogh (c.1650-1725) "echoing Swift's piece 'On Barbarous Denominations' and anticipating Maria Edgeworth in her 'Essay on Irish Bulls', denounces the stigma attached to the Irish 'Brogue'. "Hickey (2012b: 17-20) discusses attitudes towards IrE, noting that positive and negative views on the dialect are not mutually exclusive.6 See Hickey (forthcoming) for a full catalogue of the most representative phonetic representations from the EModE period to the twentieth century.7 Recent research on IrE that likewise draws upon enregisterment and related third-wave models includes work on modern representations and media covering fiction (Terrazas-Calero, 2020), radio advertising (O'Sullivan, 2020), films(Walshe, 2016) and sitcoms(Murphy & Palma-Fahey, 2018). 8 The 1841 Census was in fact the first census to include a comprehensive survey of literacy in Ireland but should be approached with caution, as ÓGráda (2013: 114) warns, because it is based on selfevaluation.…”