‘[H]ushed and lulled full chimes for pushed and pulled’

The history of Northern Irish English is rather episodic because studies of written Ulster English tend to be case studies of particular writers, texts or text types, and only a small number of linguistic features have been examined. This chapter surveys work done on this variety of English based on literary and letter data, commentaries and folklore collections. There is a brief discussion of ways of systematically approaching texts and principles to be applied in studying written texts. Recent and ongoing developments using synchronic and diachronic corpora containing written texts from the region are also discussed.