scholarly journals ‘New speakers’ on Irish language community radio: new understandings of linguistic variation on Raidió na Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
John Walsh ◽  
Rosemary Day
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Community Radio ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
New Speakers

Paradoxes of Engagement with Irish Language Community Management, Practice, and Ideology

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Community Management ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
The Core ◽  
English Speaking

Since gaining independence in 1922, the Irish Government’s pro-Irish language policy has gone through several stages of development, moving from openly coercive maintenance strategies in designated areas (Gaeltacht) and obligatory Irish-medium schooling throughout the country, to a contemporary stance where the state sees Irish speakers as customers who require services. Policy for the majority Anglophone population is now based on a heritage role for Irish. Despite the evolution of state and community policies, some early ideological stances have remained at the core of decision-making. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the state has further reassessed its positions. The power of ideologically driven state language policy has inevitably produced mismatches which may paradoxically have further endangered the future of Irish as a community language. This chapter focuses on the stance of the monolingual English-speaking minority and inactive Irish speakers in Gaeltacht regions.

scholarly journals “Caint na ndaoine”. The Irish Language as a Precedent for Standardisation

Adeptus ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Carlo James Waskowski Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Low German ◽  
Regional Language

“Caint na ndaoine”. The Irish Language as a Precedent for StandardisationCritics of the standardisation of the Irish language argue that the “modernisation” of the Irish orthography has been detrimental to the preservation of the various dialects that form native spoken Irish. The effects of standardisation on Irish consequently form an important precedent for language standardisation. The potential alienation of a language’s native speakers is an outcome of standardisation that is obviously destructive for a language community that exists in a minority. The issues that surround the movement for a standardised Plattdeutsch are similar to those faced in the standardisation of Modern Irish. Since the recognition by the European Union of Low German (Plattdeutsch) as a regional language in 1998, there has been newfound momentum in the movement for its reestablishment as a unified language of Northern Germany. One of the great difficulties of this movement however is the lack of any universal orthography due to the separate nature of the language’s dialects. Given the sociolinguistic similarities of these two (albeit unrelated languages), a study of the effects of the standardisation of Irish is useful for an assessment of the possibility of a standardised Plattdeutsch. “Caint na ndaoine”. Język irlandzki jako precedens standaryzacjiKrytycy procesu standaryzacji języka irlandzkiego uważają, że „modernizacja” irlandzkiej ortografii zaszkodziła ochronie wielu dialektów składających się na oralny język natywnych Irlandczyków. Skutki standaryzacji irlandzkiego stanowią więc ważny precedens standaryzacji języków. Możliwe wyobcowanie natywnych użytkowników języka jest w oczywisty sposób destrukcyjnym dla trwania wspólnoty mniejszościowej rezultatem procesu standaryzacji. Zagadnienia towarzyszące ruchowi na rzecz standaryzacji języka dolnoniemieckiego są podobne do problemów standaryzacji, wobec których stanął współczesny irlandzki. Uznanie przez Unię Europejską dolnoniemieckiego (Plattdeutsch) jako języka regionalnego w 1998 dało nową siłę ruchowi na rzecz ustanowienia go ujednoliconym językiem północnych Niemiec. Jedną z wielkich trudności tego procesu jest brak uniwersalnej ortografii, co wynika z różnorodności dialektów tego języka. Zważywszy na socjolingwistyczne podobieństwo tych dwóch (niespokrewnionych ze sobą) języków, studium efektów standaryzacji języka irlandzkiego jest użyteczne dla oceny możliwości standaryzacji dolnoniemieckiego.

scholarly journals A needs survey of overseas Irish language learners

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-68
Author(s):  
Ronan Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Needs Assessment ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Endangered Languages ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Collaborative Language

The vast majority of endangered languages are expected to have vanished from community use within one to two generations (Lackaff & Moner, 2016). One such language, Irish, may die out as a vernacular within a decade in the Irish-speaking regions of Ireland (Ó Giollagáin & Charlton, 2015). However, there is growing interest in the Irish language overseas, particularly in the USA (Schwartz, 2020). In this study, a survey was conducted with 92 respondents to identify the needs of learners living outside of Ireland. The findings of this needs assessment suggest that overseas Irish learners would benefit from the provision of an online Irish language community that connects members through communicative and collaborative language activities. Positioned in the context of similar developments and innovations internationally (e.g. Henry, Carroll, Cunliffe, & Kop, 2018), this research builds on existing literature in online sociocultural language learning.

scholarly journals Commercialising thecúpla focal: New speakers, language ownership, and the promotion of Irish as a business resource

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Brennan ◽  
Bernadette O'Rourke
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
New Speakers

AbstractThis article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two Irish towns to examine the mobilisation of the Irish language as a resource for business by new speakers of Irish. We examine how local community-level Irish language advocacy organisations have implemented initiatives to specifically promote the use of Irish in business, primarily as visual commercial engagement with the language paired with the use of thecúpla focal. The article explores how new speakers of Irish understand what might be perceived as the tokenistic mobilisation of Irish and what value they invest in their efforts to use thecúpla focal. We explore tensions over language ownership that emerge as more fluent proprietors of ‘bilingual businesses’ position themselves in relation to the ‘newness’ of these speakers. (Irish, commodification, language ownership, language advocacy, language policy, commercialisation, language in business, new speakers)*

Geographical retreat and symbolic advance?

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
John Coakley
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
East European ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Celtic Languages ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
The Republic ◽  
National Languages

Abstract Language policy in the Republic of Ireland has an unusual starting point: the geographical base of the Irish language is very weak and territorially dispersed, yet the constitutional status of the language is extremely strong. The article explores this paradox. It sets Irish language policy in two contexts: that of successful nationalist movements mainly in Central and Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, and that of the struggling Celtic languages of Western Europe. It explores the evolution of the language and its weakening demographic status since the nineteenth century, noting that while its demographic weakness mirrors that of the other Celtic languages, its constitutional entrenchment resembles that of the national languages of Central and East European states. It attempts to explain this by suggesting that the language has played a marginal role in nationalist mobilisation; the language served as a symbol of a specific cultural heritage rather than as the vital lingua franca of the community. The central role of the language in nationalist ideology, however, failed to address the reality of continuing decline in the Irish-speaking districts, notwithstanding the emergence of a sizeable population of ‘new speakers’ of the language outside these districts.

The “new” and “traditional” speaker dichotomy: bridging the gap

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (231) ◽  
pp. 107-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hornsby
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Revitalization ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Structures

Abstract This article analyzes the tensions and dynamics which exist between “new” speakers and other speakers, such as traditional or native speakers of minority languages (MLs), in an attempt to discover just how much of a barrier to communication are the (perceived) differences which are purported to exist between them. The dynamics between “new” and native speakers seem to be complex and nuanced, and “(in)authenticity” can be indexed through accent, the lexicon and grammatical structures, both by local users and more widely by researchers and other interested third parties, reflecting a wide range of ideo-logical stances. Using a critical sociolinguistic framework, these differences are examined from the perspective of the power differentials among and between various ML speakers/users in two situations of language endangerment, Breton and Yiddish. The reproduction of “symbolic violence”, as described by Bourdieu (1991), which results from such differentials can hinder language revitalization projects and can run counter to the interests of the language community in question. Both settings appear to share a commonality of experience that is wider than just the two language communities under scrutiny here and possible ways of reconciling such differences are examined toward the end of the article.

scholarly journals Cultural models of linguistic standardization

Diacronia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Geeraerts
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
The Way

In line with well-known trends in cultural theory (see Burke et al., 2000), Cognitive Linguistics has stressed the idea that we think about social reality in terms of models – ‘cultural models’ or ‘folk theories’: from Holland & Quinn (1987) over Lakoff (1996) and Palmer (1996) to Dirven et al. (2001a, 2001b), Cognitive linguists have demonstrated how the technical apparatus of Cognitive Linguistics can be used to analyze how our conception of social reality is shaped by underlying patterns of thought. But if language is a social and cultural reality, what are the models that shape our conception of language? Specifically, what are the models that shape our thinking about language as a social phenomenon? What are the paradigms that we use to think about language, not primarily in terms of linguistic structure (as in Reddy 1979), but in terms of linguistic variation: models about the way in which language varieties are distributed over a language community and about the way in which such distribution should be evaluated? In this paper, I will argue that two basic models may be identified: a rationalist and a romantic one. I will chart the ways in which they interact, describe how they are transformed in the course of time, and explore how the models can be used in the analysis of actual linguistic variation.

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