Converging and diverging stances on target revival varieties in collateral languages: the ideologies of linguistic variation in Irish and Manx Gaelic

ABSTRACT

Language revival often retains founding overt beliefs rooted in an ideological commitment to a specific language because of its role as the authentic, legitimate cultural vehicle of a distinct people. Revival is thus the reinstatement of cultural distinctiveness based on traditional language. Revivalists have afforded traditional language varieties prestige status based on perceived ethnolinguistic authenticity. However, after a century of language revivalism, some minoritised languages have regained some of their vitality through ‘new speakers’ who have no direct relationship with the traditional language. The ways that new speakers and ‘learners’ of displaced languages negotiate linguistic authenticity and ethno-cultural legitimacy in late modernity provide challenges to established perceptions about language revitalisation and regeneration of traditional speech communities and the belief in the prestige of ‘native’ speech as the target variety. This discussion draws on interviews with speakers of Irish and Manx Gaelic to analyse both their overt and more hidden beliefs about the utility and legitimacy of traditional and revival speech. It will argue that ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ speakers do not live parallel sociolinguistic realities in which they are sociolinguistically isolated from one another, but that contemporary speakers contest the prestige of both traditional and innovative varieties in a multifaceted fashion.

KEYWORDS:

• Language ideology
• language revival
• folk linguistics
• Irish
• Manx Gaelic

Acknowledgements

Research leading to this article has benefited from ongoing discussions on the ‘new speaker’ theme as part of the EU COST Action IS1306 network entitled ‘New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Noel Ó Murchadha is assistant Professor in Language Education at Trinity College Dublin. He has previously worked at University College Dublin and University of Toronto. Noel holds a B.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of Limerick.

Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin is established Professor of Modern Irish at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Before joining NUIG he worked for over twenty years in Irish Language and Literature at the University of Limerick and before that, he taught and studied the languages and sociolinguistics of Irish and the other Celtic languages at the universities of Rennes, Utrecht and Ulster.

ORCID

Noel Ó Murchadha http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2130-6282

Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5532-2435

Notes

1 The term post-Gaeltacht denotes all of the areas in Ireland that were historically Irish speaking, but where the link with the traditional vernacular has been completely broken due to an historical language shift from Irish to English. The post-Gaeltacht stands in contrast to areas officially recognised by the State as Gaeltacht areas. Historically, new speakers of Irish have tended to align themselves with a particular local dialect as a target variety (and many still do). However, it is generally accepted that the position of Gaeltacht speech as a model for linguistic practice for new speakers is being eroded as Irish language networks and communities of practice proliferate beyond the Gaeltacht. Post-Gaeltacht speech therefore refers to new speaker practices that are not modelled primarily on the linguistic practices of the Gaeltacht.

2 Interviews were conducted and survey data were gathered primarily in Irish and Manx and the texts are presented here in the original and a translation to English provided. Where a participant used only English, the texts are presented accordingly.