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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1105

Part of Session 127: Language outside of the city (Other abstracts in this session)

‘Ní Chuireann Aon Duine BABY Sa Chúinne’ – centralising and peripheralising tensions in the marketing of ‘cool’ Irish t-shirts.

Authors: Kelly-Holmes, Helen (1); Atkinson, David (2)
Submitted by: Kelly-Holmes, Helen (Unviersity of Limerick, Ireland)

As a privileged, minoritised language, Irish is both central and peripheral in contemporary Ireland. It is impossible to classify Irish as either exclusively ‘peripheral’ (de Swaan 2004) or as ‘central’ (de Swaan 2004).  Irish is clearly central in some domains, being the first official language of the Republic and given a privileged status in the education system and other official domains . However, it is certainly peripheral in other areas, for example, entertainment, media, commerce, etc. Its centralisation or peripheralisation thus varies depending on the actors, location, context etc., and, the periphery-centre dynamic involves constant change and renegotiation.

Attempts to reverse the peripheralised position of Irish by drawing it into the centre can have mixed effects, as for example the implementation of top-down acquisition policy and status policy has shown (cf. Ó Laoire 2008, Mac Ghiolla Chriost 2005). Bringing Irish into central domains such as commerce and media have also had mixed results, and can serve to highlight the centralisation-peripheralisation tensions. (cf. Kelly-Holmes 2010, Walsh 2010).

The focus in this paper is on an e-commerce site (hairybaby.com) that sells t-shirts with slogans such as the one in the title of this paper, an Irish rendering of the famous line from the film ‘Dirty Dancing’ – ‘nobody puts baby in the corner’.  The inspiration for hairybaby.com was in fact a recognition of the peripherality of Irish culture in the global economy, with the entrepreneurs asking: ‘why are there no cool Irish shirts for sale?’ (www.hairybaby.com)

In this paper, we hope to contribute to the panel by highlighting the complexity of the tensions that characterize centre-periphery relations in the contemporary era, and how this impacts on multilingualism.  We examine www.hairybaby.com with the following questions in mind:

What norms / normativities can we observe?  Are there commercial norms or language trends and if so how do these work? How do they differ from the norms of the established institutions (e.g. education, government)? Do they reflect peripheral or central multilingualism?

Do commercial norms  centralise or peripheralise a minoritised language? Do they work on the basis of exploiting the existing peripheralisation? And, if so, do they reinforce or challenge this position?

References:

De Swaan, A. (2004) Words of the World: The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity.

Kelly-Holmes, H. (2010) Rethinking the macro-micro relationship: Some insights from the marketing domain. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 202, 25–40.

Mac Giolla Chríost, D. (2005) The Irish Language in Ireland: From Goídel to Globalisation. London: Routledge.

Ó Laoire, M. ( 2008) The language situation in Ireland: An update. In: R. Kaplan and R. Baldauf (eds). Language Planning and Policy in Europe, Vol. 3: The Baltic States, Ireland and Italy. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 193–261

Walsh, J. (2010) From Industrial Development to Language Planning: the Evolution of Údarás na Gaeltachta. In H. Kelly-Holmes and G. Mautner (eds.) Language and the Market. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave,  123-134.