Produced and perceived authenticity in the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls

Abstract

The success of the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls seems partly due to its authentic portrayal of the English spoken in Northern Ireland and, more particularly, in Derry. This paper examines how authentic the performance of the Northern Irish accent by Ma Mary, one of the characters in the comedy, is from the points of view of produced and perceived authenticity. In order to determine the degree of produced authenticity, I investigate whether the pronunciation features present in Ma Mary’s speech are characteristic of Northern Irish English (NIE). On the other hand, an experiment has been designed to test the perceived authenticity of Ma Mary’s performed accent. The experiment consists of asking Northern Irish people to rate a short recording in terms of how authentic its representation of the NIE accent is. The results from the experiment confirm that the accent performed by Ma Mary is authentically Northern Irish.