Raymond Kevin Hickey (born 3 June 1954) is an Irish linguist specialising in the English language in Ireland, especially in the capital

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, working within the sociolinguistic paradigm of language variation and change. Hickey has also worked on the Irish language, specifically the phonology of the modern language. For both Irish and English in Ireland he has carried out extensive fieldwork for over three decades. Hickey's research also covers the wider field of

varieties of English Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, and other aspects of grammar. For the classification of varieties of English in pronunciation only, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects ...

– in particular their historical development and spread overseas during the colonial period. In this context he has focused on

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

areal linguistics Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geoli ...

and

language typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, as well as the history of English, both the development of its phonology and the language in the eighteenth century which led to the standardisation of English. Outside his own professional context Hickey frequently discusses linguistic issues and has been an invited guest on Irish radio and in Irish newspapers, such as ''

The Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It was launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is Ireland's leading n ...

'' in particular to comment on language attitudes and/or change and their relevance to society in general.

Education and career

Hickey studied German and Italian at

Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Univ ...

and after attaining his M.A. moved to the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

, Germany, where he completed his PhD in 1980. He was awarded his second doctorate degree (German: ''Habilitation'') in 1985 at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

where he was appointed professor of English linguistics in 1987. In 1991 he moved to the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

, then in 1993 to the

University of Bayreuth The University of Bayreuth (German: Universität Bayreuth) is a public research university located in Bayreuth, Germany. It is one of the youngest German universities. It is broadly organized into seven undergraduate and graduate faculties, with ...

and the following year to the University of Essen (since 2003 the

University of Duisburg-Essen The University of Duisburg-Essen () is a public research university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the 2019 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', the university was awarded 194th place in the world. It was originally ...

) where he held the chair fo
General Linguistics and Varieties of English
until 2020. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of th
University of Limerick, Ireland
Hickey has been visiting professor at a number of international universities and is on the editorial board of several journals. His book publications have been and continue with major publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Wiley-Blackwell, de Gruyter Mouton and John Benjamins. see Publications

Research contributions

Among the contributions he has made to linguistic research is the notion of supraregionalisation'Supraregionalisation and dissociation', in: J. K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling (eds) ''Handbook of Language Variation and Change''. Second edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 537-554. by which is meant the rise of a non-local form of language used across a broad section of society and expressing its linguistic identity. He has also tracked the sociolinguistically motivated change in Dublin English over the past three decades'Development and change in Dublin English', in: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.) ''Language Change. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics''. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, 1998, pp. 209-243, Hickey, Raymond 2005. ''Dublin English. Evolution and Change''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also the research website ''Variation and Change in Dublin English''. and compiled
Corpus of Irish English
with appropriate software. In the area of Irish phonology, Hickey has devised a maximally concise system of description which captures many linguistically valid generalisations about the sound structure of that language.''The Sound Structure of Modern Irish''. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2014, especially pp. 39-176. More generally he has been concerned with internal and external factors in language change,'Internally and externally motivated language change', in: Juan Manuel Hernández-Compoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds) ''The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics''. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 401-421. the course of such change'Ebb and flow. A cautionary tale of language change', in: Teresa Fanego, Belén Mendez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds) ''Sounds, words, texts, change. Selected papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (11 ICEHL)''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002, pp. 105-128. and the complex of new dialect formation.'How do dialects get the features they have? On the process of new dialect formation', in: Raymond Hickey (ed.) ''Motives for Language Change''. Cambridge: University Press, 2003, pp. 213-239. Among his recent research foci have been life-span'Twentieth-century Received Pronunciation: Stop articulation', in: Raymond Hickey (ed.) ''Listening to the Past. Audio Records of Accents of English''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 66-84. changes and 'bad data', fragmentary data from poorly documented sources which nonetheless can provide insights into language change.''Keeping in Touch. Familiar Letters across the English-speaking World''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2019. The study of areal features, those shared by languages or varieties in geographically delimited regions, also received impetus from his research and this field of language contact and change.''Areal Features of the Anglophone World''. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2012; ''The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. In 2020 Hickey was appointed the general editor of the New Cambridge History of the English Language. This comprehensive work in six volumes is intended to reflect recent research insights as well as new theories and methods in English historical linguistics. Here Hickey has emphasised that the history of English is a series of 'streams' which arose during the colonial period at several locations throughout the world and led to the rise of different standards of the language, e.g. in Canada, South Africa or New Zealand,''Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. all of which are independent of, though related to the standard of English in Britain. With the boo
Life and Language Beyond Earth
Hickey has offered a broad-based, interdisciplinary consideration of whether intelligent forms of life might exist on exoplanets and be, in principle, able to engage in interstellar contact. Covering issues from astronomy, evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, neuroscience and linguistics, the book assesses the likelihood of intelligent exolife arising and how systems of communication, functionally comparable to human language, might develop on other planets with conditions and environments similar to those on Earth.

Publications

Monographs

*Hickey, Raymond 2023
and Language Beyond Earth.''
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xxiii + 671 pages. *Hickey, Raymond 2023
Sounds of English Worldwide.''
Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, xiii + 432 pages. *Hickey, Raymond 2014

Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, xxviii + 456 pages. *Hickey, Raymond 2014
''The Sound Structure of Modern Irish''.
Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, xiii + 481 pages. *Hickey, Raymond 2011
''The Dialects of Irish, Study of a Changing Landscape''.
Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 508 pages + DVD. *Hickey, Raymond 2007
''Irish English. History and Present-day Forms''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xx + 504 pages. *Hickey, Raymond 2005
''Dublin English. Evolution and Change''.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 291 pages + CD-ROM. *Hickey, Raymond 2004. ''A Sound Atlas of Irish English''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 171 pages + DVD. *Hickey, Raymond 2003
''Corpus Presenter. Software for language analysis''.
''With a manual and'' A Corpus of Irish English ''as sample data''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 292 pages with CD-ROM. *Hickey, Raymond 2002
''A Source Book for Irish English''.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, xii + 541 pages. *Several computer books about database management systems. *Hickey, Raymond 1980. ''Satzstrukturen des Deutschen und Englischen, eine kontrastive Analyse im Rahmen der Dependenzgrammatik''. entence structures in German and English, a contrastive analysis within the framework of dependency grammar PhD thesis, University of Kiel.

Edited volumes

*Hickey, Raymond (general ed.) 2025
''The New Cambridge History of the English Language.''
6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2020
''English in Multilingual South Africa''.
The Linguistics of Contact and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2020
''English in the German-speaking World''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2020
''The Handbook of Language Contact''.
Second edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. *Hickey, Raymond and Carolina P. Amador Moreno (eds) 2020
''Irish Identities. Sociolinguisitic Perspectives''.
Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton. *Hickey, Raymond (eds) 2019. ''Keeping in Touch. Familiar Letters across the English-speaking World''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2017
''The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xxviii + 1005 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2017
''Listening to the Past. Audio Records of Accents of English''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xxxii + 574 pages. *Hickey, Raymond and Elaine Vaughan (eds) 2017
''Irish English''.
Special issue of ''World Englishes'' 36.2. Malden, MA: Wiley. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2016
''Sociolinguistics in Ireland''.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 420 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2015
''Researching Northern English''.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 483 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2012
''Areal Features of the Anglophone World''.
Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 503 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2012
''Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 421 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2011
''Irish English in Today's World''.
Special issue of ''English Today'' 27.2, June 2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2011
''Researching the Languages of Ireland''.
Uppsala: Uppsala University, 351 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2010

Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 863 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2010
''Eighteenth-Century English. Ideology and Change''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 426 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2010
''Varieties of English in Writing. The Written Word as Linguistic Evidence''.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 378 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2004
''Legacies of Colonial English. Studies in Transported Dialects''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 712 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2003
''Motives for Language Change''.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 286 pages. *Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2002
''Collecting Views on Language Change. A Donation to Roger Lass on his 65th Birthday''.
Special volume of ''Language Sciences'' 24.3-4. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 302 pages. *Hickey, Raymond and Stanisław Puppel (eds) 1997
''Language History and Linguistic Modelling. A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday''.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2 vols., 2121 pages. *Hickey, Raymond, Merja Kytö, Ian Lancashire and Matti Rissanen (eds) 1997. ''Tracing the Trail of Time. Proceedings of the conference on diachronic corpora, Toronto, May 1995''. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Articles/chapters

About 200 articles in various linguistic journals and chapters in edited volumes.

Author's websites

Irish English Resource Centre

Variation and Change in Dublin English

Studying Varieties of English

Studying the History of English

Discover Irish

Sounds of Irish

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hickey, Raymond Living people Linguists from Ireland Alumni of Trinity College Dublin University of Kiel alumni University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of the University of Bonn Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Academic staff of the University of Duisburg-Essen 1954 births