The Empire Speaks Back: Northern Irish English as a Post-Colonial Dialect

There has been a resurgence of interest in English dialects within academia & outside it. The former is due to a greater focus on dialect within linguistic theory. It may also result from the wider availability of resources like: www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk & www.ncl.ac.uk/necte. Popular interest has been encouraged by BBC 'Voices' (www.bbc.co.uk/voices/) as well as a renewed political focus on the regions. There has also been pressure to recognise the validity of non-native (including post-colonial) Englishes & their literatures. The demands of these diverse audiences have been met by popular books, like Mc Bride (1993) & authoritative works such as Kortmann et al. (2004). However, in-depth, current research on specific regions in the British Isles remains rare. While the geographical/historical facts inducing dialect differences & the methodologies for investigating these are discussed at length in textbooks & journals, the former tend to concentrate on generalities & the latter on specific features. There is a lack of detailed, fieldwork-based, scholarly documentation of particular varieties. Hence, this project's main goal is to record/analyse the major dialects of Northern Irish-English (NIrE) & to situate these globally as well as within the context of other British Isles' Englishes. A secondary goal would be to use the research to raise awareness amongst non-academic audiences in Northern Ireland (NI) of their dialects' genesis/history & the impact of these issues on contemporary dialectal diversity across the region.
In addition to bringing my particular expertise to this project (see 'Publications List'), my rationale for focusing on NIrE is due to its uniqueness amongst non-Celtic British Isles' varieties. Like Welsh English, NIrE was initially learned as a second language. This scenario arose from the region's colonization by speakers of English/Scots dialects, beginning in the Middle Ages & reaching a peak during what is termed 'The Plantation Period' of Irish history. James I initiated this & he intended to 'plant' Protestants in Ulster to quell indigenous Irish rebellions. From 1605-1697, around 200,000 migrated from Scotland, continuing a tradition of migration between the regions that had already endured for generations (see Visual Evidence 1). The scheme also persuaded English settlers to colonize, hailing from urban centres like London as well as more rural areas like Norfolk. The greatest numbers by far, though, migrated from the NW Midlands. This intensive colonization process created the possibility that an innovative type of English could emerge. This new variety is characterized by: (i) novel forms; (ii) the incorporation of features drawn from the indigenous language & others caused by the mixing of Irish with the Scots/English dialects of the new settlers. Interestingly (and not uncommonly when migratory movements of these kinds arise), modern varieties of NIrE still retain this mixed heritage. Moreover, the colonization is preserved culturally in the region by ethnic divisions between the descendents of the migrant/indigene populations. Thus, Catholics celebrate events like 'St. Patrick's Day' while their Protestant neighbours commemorate 'The Glorious Twelfth' each July, celebrating the day in 1690 when King William III's Boyne victory ensured the ultimate success of the Plantation scheme. The linguistic consequences of this contact (including the correlation between language and ethnic identity in NI) are equally clear to the trained observer, though native speakers are less conscious of them. They permeate all aspects of the speech used within these communities (accent, grammar and vocabulary). Moreover, many of the features that are to be the focus of this project have travelled to regions that have been intensively settled post-colonization by NI migrants. Hence, this research will also have important implications for the study of transported dialects, which has recently become very topical.