“We’re Irish dont you know”: a qualitative analysis of Irish stereotypes in the YouTube videos of the Irish comedy group Foil, Arms & Hog

Abstract

Based on a long history of studies on negative attitudes towards stereotypes, this study examines the construction and challenge of Irish stereotypes through language in the YouTube videos of Foil, Arms & Hog, a comedy group from Ireland, and the audiences’ reaction towards these. In particular, I was interested on the audiences’ evaluation, authentication and denaturalization expressed within comments, connecting ideas of identity construction, role alignment, and belonging as well as the role of humour in stereotypes. Moreover, I wanted to find out how language was used in the construction and challenge of Irish stereotypes in the comedy group’s videos. By means of employing basic quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, I analysed the use of language in the transcripts taken from the Top 5 videos within the group’s Irish themed playlist. Additionally, I collected the accompanying 790 comments, counting and analysing them qualitatively to find emerging themes and elements that could help in answering the questions. I found that specific IrE (Irish English) linguistic features, such as hedges, were used to construct and challenge Irish stereotypes in the videos. Furthermore, in the comments, the audience evaluated the performances more positively than negatively as well as authenticated them more rather than denaturalizing them. In contrast to existing literature, I argue that Foil, Arms & Hog’s comedy on YouTube has the potential to reformulate the negative attitudes towards Irish stereotypes by means of creating an environment for both the comedy group and audience to perform identities through their interactions – this could give additional insights on the dynamic nature of identification.