Northern Irish English: historical and sociolinguistic developments

Abstract

For a relatively small region, home to less than two million people, the linguistic landscape of Northern Ireland is remarkably diverse. This is not the result of chance: the richness of the input to Northern Irish English, which includes different languages and dialects, has contributed to it. Precisely, the focus of this paper will be the contextualisation of such origins, a vital step towards a better understanding of both the internal structure of this variety and the development of sociolinguistic attitudes. As a result of the introduction of the English language in Northern Ireland in the twelfth century and later, more vigorously, in the seventeenth century through a series of plantations, Northern Irish English emerged in a context of colonisation and was influenced by the speech of varying communities, including Scottish settlers who brought with them varieties of Scots and English settlers stemming from the Midlands, who spoke various forms of Early Modern English. The mixing of the indigenous Irish language with transported forms of English created a complex picture and gave Northern Irish English the distinct, albeit heterogeneous, profile that characterises it. The political and economic hegemony achieved by the English-speaking newcomers also affected the emerging varieties during the period of contact, with new linguistic features arising as a result of the language shift from Irish to English. However, it is not only the settlement history of Northern Ireland that makes it a compelling place to conduct (socio)linguistic research. The tumultuous twentieth century, which witnessed episodes such as the development and culmination of an ethnonationalist conflict, the industrialisation of Belfast and (London)Derry, and a trend of rural repopulation, provided opportunities to explore new linguistic processes and take different approaches. The relationship between linguistic variation and extralinguistic factors including gender, age, social class, or ethnicity, along with the intricate and sometimes problematic connection between language and identity, has been widely explored both in rural and urban settings since the second half of the twentieth century and offers plenty of possibilities for future work.