Language Usage and Social Categorisation in Brendan Behan’s Play The Quare Fellow

Authors

  • Patricia A Lynch

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v15i0.3595

Abstract

The language of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow (1954), a play
set in an Irish prison, is examined stylistically. This is done under the headings of naming, usage of Hiberno-English, of prison jargon, and of Gaelic. These show evidence of categorisation under the conventional class structure of upper, middle, and lower. However, there are more complex divisions present through language. These are: prisoners’ pecking-order according to crime, prisoners using more Hiberno-English and also prison jargon than the authority figures, one warder who uses language patterns similar to the prisoners, and the use of Gaelic by two characters, one a warder and the other a prisoner, who along with the warder above, represent the moral core of the play.

Keywords: Brendan Behan; The Quare Fellow; stylistics; class structure.

Author Biography

  • Patricia A Lynch
    Patricia A. Lynch is a retired faculty member of the University of Limerick’s School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication, where she lectured in English Studies/Irish Studies. Her research interests include Hiberno-English as used in Irish literature, Irish folk medicine, Post-Colonial Studies, Stylistics/Literary Linguistics, and other aspects of Irish literature. She is reviews editor for the section “Irish Studies Around the World” in Estudios Irlandeses, the online journal of AEDEI. She is co-editor of Back to the Present, Forward to the Past, 2 vols, 2006, Amsterdam: Rodopi, and author of a number of articles, most recently “New Uses of Traditional Healing in Contemporary Irish Literature”, Estudios Irlandeses, No. 7, 2012. 61-68.

References

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Downloads

Published

17-11-2013

Issue

Vol. 15 (2013): ABEI Journal 15

Section

Drama

How to Cite

Lynch, P. A. (2013). Language Usage and Social Categorisation in Brendan Behan’s Play The Quare Fellow. ABEI Journal, 15, 125-136. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v15i0.3595