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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1119

Part of Session 180: New Speakers in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

New Speakers of Irish: shifting identities and new allegiances

Authors: O'Rourke, Bernadette (1); Walsh, John (2)
Submitted by: O'Rourke, Bernadette (Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom)

Since independence, the Irish state’s policy on the Irish language has consisted of two interlinked components: the maintenance of Irish as the ‘native’ language of the Gaeltacht and its revival elsewhere in Ireland (Ó Riagáin 1997). These policies have had mixed levels of success. While traditional Irish-speaking communities continue to decline (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007), there has been a steady increase in the number of second-language speakers outside of the Gaeltacht who acquired the language at school as an academic subject or, in a small, but growing number of cases, through immersion schooling in Irish. Of the more than one and half million speakers of Irish (approximately 41 percent of the population) returned in the 2006 Census for the Republic of Ireland, less than 65,000 now live in one of the officially designated Gaeltacht areas. There are 72,146 daily speakers of Irish outside the education system nationally, about two-thirds of whom live outside the Gaeltacht. ‘New speakers’ of Irish can therefore be seen to play an important role in the future of the language. However, this role is sometimes undermined by ethnocultural discourses about the Irish language which tend to idealise the notion of the traditional Gaeltacht speaker (Tovey et al. 1988). In this context, such discourses can be used to deny them ‘authenticity’ as ‘real’ or ‘legitimate’ speakers which sometimes lead to certain struggles for language ownership (O’Rourke, 2011). Within Gaeltacht communities also, new types of speakers are emerging and traditional forms of Irish are changing, prompting questions about legitimate forms of the language even at the heart of its historical speech community (Ó Curnáin 2012). Concerns about linguistic purity are often voiced in both academic and public discourse, with the more hybridized forms of Irish developed amongst ‘new speakers’ (Walsh, 2007) often criticised. This paper looks at the extent to which such discourses are being internalised by new speakers and whether or not they are constructing an identity as a distinct social and linguistic group based on what it means to be an Irish speaker in the twenty first century.

Ó Curnáin, Brian, 2012. ‘An Chanúineolaíocht’. In: Ó hIfearnáin, T. & Ní Neachtain, M. (eds) An tSochtheangeolaíocht: Feidhm agus Tuairisc. Dublin: Cois Life, 83-110.

Ó Giollagáin C. et al. 2007. Comprehensive linguistic study of the use of Irish in the Gaeltacht: Principal findings and recommendations. Dublin: Stationary Office.

Ó Riagáin, P. 1997 Language policy and social reproduction in Ireland 1893-1993. Oxford: Carendon Press.

O’Rourke, B. 2011. Whose language is it? Struggles for language ownership in an Irish language classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education. Vol. 10 (5)pp327-345.

O’Rourke, B. and Ramallo, F. 2011. The native-non-native dichotomy in minority language contexts: Comparisons between Irish and Galician. Language Problems and Language Planning. 35:2, pp139–159

Tovey H.et al. 1988. Why Irish? Irish identity and the Irish language. Dublin: Bord na Gaeilge.

Walsh, C. 2007. Cruinneas na Gaeilge Scríofa sna hIar-Bhunscoileanna lán-Ghaeilge i mBaile Átha Cliath. Research Report. Dublin: COGG. Available at: http://www.cogg.ie/includes/documents/Walshereport.pdf