Dublin 4 is a postal district of Dublin, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 including the suburbs of Sandymount

Sandymount

Sandymount is a coastal seaside suburb in Dublin 4 on the Southside of Dublin in Ireland. It is in the Dublin South East Dáil constituency and the East Pembroke Ward. It was once part of Pembroke Township, which took its name from the fact that this area was part of the estate of the Earl of...

, Ballsbridge

Ballsbridge

Ballsbridge is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, named for the bridge spanning the River Dodder on the south side of the city. The sign on the bridge still proclaims it as "Ball's Bridge" in recognition of the fact that the original bridge in this location was built and owned by a Mr...

, Donnybrook

Donnybrook, Dublin

Donnybrook is a district of Dublin, Ireland. It is situated on the southside of the city, in the Dublin 4 postal district, and is home to the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ. It was once part of the Pembroke Township...

, Ringsend

Ringsend

Ringsend is a southside inner suburb of Dublin, the capital of Ireland. It is located on the south bank of the River Liffey, about two kilometres east of the city centre, and is the southern terminus of the East Link Toll Bridge....

 and Irishtown

Irishtown, Dublin

Irishtown is a district of Dublin, Ireland. It is situated on the southside of the River Liffey, between Ringsend to the north and Sandymount to the south, and is to the east of the River Dodder.-History:...

 on the South side of Dublin

Southside (Dublin)

The Southside is not an official administrative area but a colloquial term referring to the area of County Dublin bounded to the north by the River Liffey to the east by Dublin Bay, to the south and west by the boundaries of County Dublin...

.

The headquarters of the national broadcaster RTÉ

Raidió Teilifís Éireann

Raidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on January 1, 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on December 31, 1961, making...

, the RDS

Royal Dublin Society

The Royal Dublin Society was founded on 25 June 1731 to "to promote and develop agriculture, arts, industry, and science in Ireland". The RDS is synonymous with its main premises in Ballsbridge in Dublin, Ireland...

, Merrion Centre, University College Dublin

University College Dublin

University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...

, Aviva Stadium

Aviva Stadium

The Aviva Stadium is a sports stadium located in Dublin, Ireland, with a capacity for 50,000 spectators. The stadium is built on the site of the old Lansdowne Road venue, which was demolished in 2007, and replaces that stadium as home to its chief tenants: the Irish rugby union team and the...

, Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 and a number of foreign embassies to Ireland are all located in Dublin 4. The Dublin 4 area is fixed by the Irish postal authorities.

Popular culture

'Dublin 4' or its abbreviation, 'D4', is sometimes used as a pejorative adjective to describe an Irish upper class and upper-middle class attitude, based on the perceived opinions and characteristics of some residents of this area. In this sense it is sometimes contrasted with "the plain people of Ireland" by Irish commentators such as Desmond Fennell

Desmond Fennell (Irish writer)

Desmond Fennell is an Irish writer, cultural philosopher and linguist, specialising in the essay and the reflective travel narrative, who lives in Dublin...

.

During the 1990s, the term changed to refer more to the alleged wealth and posh life-style of residents. The fictional jock Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is a fictional wealthy "D4" rugby union player created by journalist Paul Howard.The character first appeared in a January 1998 column in the Sunday Tribune newspaper and later transferred to The Irish Times...

 was meant as a caricature of this.

The term has been used to describe very aspirational middle-class people from south Dublin and also used by Fianna Fáil

Fianna Fáil

Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party , more commonly known as Fianna Fáil is a centrist political party in the Republic of Ireland, founded on 23 March 1926. Fianna Fáil's name is traditionally translated into English as Soldiers of Destiny, although a more accurate rendition would be Warriors of Fál...

 members who like to portray themselves as being on the side of "the plain people of Ireland".

Accent

A change in accent occurred between those born roughly before 1970 and those born in the early 1970s or later.

In the early 1980s, a group of people in Dublin 4 developed a different accent, partly in rejection of older views of Irishness. The accent was known as "Dublin 4", "Dartspeak" or later "DORTspeak" (after the Dublin 4 pronunciation of DART

Dublin Area Rapid Transit

The Dublin Area Rapid Transit is part of the suburban railway network in Ireland, running mainly along the coastline of Dublin Bay on the Trans-Dublin route, from Greystones in County Wicklow, through Dublin to Howth and Malahide in County Dublin.Trains are powered via a 1500V DC overhead catenary...

, which runs through the area). The accent quickly became the subject of ridicule.

Quotes

Two examples of "Dublin 4" being used to refer to alleged wealth:
Sometimes the antonym

Antonym

In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to the fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not...

 plain people of Ireland or plain people was contrasted with it: