A Tolerable Decline forle chic Gaelique

56 July-August 

A Tolerable

Decline for le

chic Gaelique

Protecting  declining minoriy nd is lnguge requires

coheren effors by he communiy in collborion wih

ofﬁcil bodies, bu secorl powerbrokers re promoing

only individulised pricipion

By Conchúr Ó Giollgin

nd Brin Ó Curnin

OPINION

July-August  57

The logic of this

abandonment has led

to the State’s current

priority of supporting

post-vernacular Irish – a

framework for teaching

and learning Irish, as a

second language, without

a community actually

speaking Irish

T IS encourging when minority-

language speakers achieve cultural

acclaim. Applauding the international

success of Kneecap and revelling in

the global proﬁle of Cillian Murphy’s

expression of gratitude in Irish: “Go raibh

míle maith agaibh” for his Oscars triumph

are natural instincts, especially among

those who value cultural diversity. These

successes have been acknowledged

recently in the Guardian (‘“It gives me

freedom”: from the Oscars to the Baftas to

Sundance – why Irish Gaelic is everywhere’).

In a similar celebratory tone, the French

channel Arte recently declared ‘le Gaelique

so chic’.

However, the oft-celebrated cultural

appeal and symbolic successes, of Irish

stand in stark contrast to the societal reality

of the language for minority-language

communities. This chasm is emblematic of

the contemporary minority societal

condition, even for those rare linguistic

minorities, such as the Gaeltacht, that have

beneﬁted from state support and ocial

promotion.

Similarly, the annual celebration of

Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish-language Week)

demonstrates the ongoing symbolic

cultural appeal of Irish, but it also serves to

highlight the gulf between genuine public

support for the language on the one hand,

and much of the rhetorical bluster about it

on the other.

There are now just over 20,000 daily

speakers of Irish in the Gaeltacht (ocially

designated Irish-speaking districts), many

of whom have often little choice but to

speak English.

Many also speak codemixed Irish – Irish

mixed with English – as do most second-

language speakers outside the Gaeltacht.

For learners of Irish, codemixing can act as

a bridge in the learning process towards

greater ﬂuency in Irish. But in endangered

languages, like Gaeltacht Irish, codemixing

is often a signiﬁcant feature of the trajectory

of decline in speakers’ communicative

ability, as well as in their stylistic

competence, and often accompanies the

societal shift to the majority language, in

our case English.

In order to survive, the Gaeltacht would

need a huge revival effort; instead,

normalising a tolerable decline in the

Gaeltacht has been the main objective and

‘achievement’ of the State’s language

policy in recent years.

The abandonment of the national Gaelic

revival by the Irish State in the 1970s has

morphed into a general Irish-language

policy of neglectful disengagement, and

most importantly disengagement from

Gaeltacht issues.

Though generally not stated publicly, this

amounts to an ocial acceptance of decline

and the Irish State deprecating the

Gaeltacht as a political ‘lost cause’.

The logic of this process of abandonment

has led to the State’s current priority of

supporting post-vernacular Irish – a

framework for teaching and learning Irish,

as a second language, as opposed to

focusing on whether a community actually

speaks Irish.

This amounts to attempting to build a

staircase without building an upper ﬂoor.

But even this post-vernacular provision is

being curtailed, resulting in a steep fall in

learning achievements; the staircase to

nowhere is itself also collapsing. For the

State, Irish is now conﬁned practically to

heritage-signalling.

A vital demographic statistic regarding

the social sustainability of a language is the

number of vernacular day-to-day speakers

(outside of education). In the island of

Ireland, there were 20,261 daily Gaeltacht

speakers of Irish recorded in the last census

and in Scotland recent research estimates

a corresponding ﬁgure of 11,000 for the

Gàidhealtachd. This amounts to a total of

circa 31,000 vernacular Irish and Gaelic

speakers in Ireland and Scotland,

representing a historical steep decline in

these demographics, a decline which was

predicted unless serious policy changes

were implemented on the ground by both

State actors and local communities.

In arriving at this situation, all the

credible democratic processes that

contributed to Irish-language policy have

been abandoned.

Neither the State nor public organisations

are deemed accountable for their

acquiescence in the decline of the

Gaeltacht. In fact, the very institutions

established to protect and promote Irish are

perversely undermining concrete steps to

protect the Gaeltacht. They are co-operating

with second-language prioritisation and

capitalising on their State-sponsored

sectoral monopoly.

The necessary democratic approach to

language policy has been sidelined by the

concerted efforts of politicians, State

executives and officials, arts/media

management, language-promotion bodies

and academics, operating within what

could be termed an Ideological-Institutional

Complex.

In contrast to the trajectory of decline of

the language community, the members of

this Complex have maintained their relative

privilege and their inﬂuence over ocial

priorities. The current situation can partly

be explained by the eorts of this Complex

to create a standardised citizen for the

consumption of its ideas and perspectives

on Irish as a heritage and civic symbol,

rather than a lived culture. The widespread

acceptance of the Complex’s message

helps maintain existing dynamics of power

and inﬂuence, even when ocial policy is

implicated in the erasure of Irish as a

community language. Co-operating in the

neglect of the Gaeltacht and opting for the

second-language preference is rewarded by

access to State resources.

The deliberate policy of political and

social subterfuge is part of the overall

approach of hiding reality from the public.

The most egregious instance is the Irish

State’s failure to evaluate actions and

monitor results in practically everything to

do with Irish as a ﬁrst language. The policy

amounts to spending and consuming public

money and considerable amounts of human

resources, in education particularly,

without accountability for social outcomes.

In short, bang for buck is not a requirement

when it comes to the State’s investment in

Irish, when the main point of the investment

is window dressing or to be seen to be

doing something.

The prioritisation of institutional interests

over societal concerns has been reinforced

by censorious and dismissive attitudes

fostered by some academics in Irish and

Celtic departments in universities.

Since 2007, a lot of sophisticated

research has pinpointed the acquisitional,

58 July-August 

The most egregious

subterfuge is the Irish

State’s failure to evaluate

actions and monitor

results for its policy of Irish

as a ﬁrst language

Irish speakers aged three years and over in the Gaeltacht areas

by frequency of speaking Irish, 2022

nSpeaks Irish daily within the

education system only

n Speaks Irish daily

n Speaks Irish weekly

n Speaks Irish less often

nNever speaks Irish outside

the education system only

n Not stated

linguistic and sociolinguistic crisis in the

Gaeltacht. In general, Irish departments

have discounted, or simply ignored, the

implications of this research and have

failed to provide cogent analyses of it. This

has resulted in a form of academic apartheid

which is hardly a solid basis for sound

education or open and liberal dialogue.

Instead, some academics have produced

a type of pseudo-discourse which is of little

social relevance: a ‘post-structuralist’ view

of minority culture limited to the

individualised take-up of minority-language

opportunities provided by civic promotion.

Here lies the crux of the problem –

protecting a declining minority requires

coherent collective eorts by the community

in collaboration with ocial bodies, but in

Ireland sectoral powerbrokers are only

willing to sanction individualised

participation.

The implications of this view are that

remaining Gaels (people whose primary

language is Irish) are faced with a very

dicult choice. The easier option is to

partake in any available opportunities

arising from State expenditure on Irish. The

more dicult option is to resist both the

decline in the Gaeltacht and the ocial

eorts to suppress the fallout from that

decline.

In a sense, everybody has been put in an

invidious position by the State’s strategic

duplicity in prioritising its post-vernacular

policy. In other words, get on the post-

Gaeltacht bandwagon of illusionary

language promotion or get thrown under

the wheels!

The line of least resistance formulated by

State ocials means that majority English

speakers can remain in their comfort zone

of retaining Irish as a cultural symbol and

letting the Gaeltacht die through a form of

bureaucratic palliative care. This satisﬁes

the need for symbolic Irish by retaining the

chimera of the geographic status of a

notional Gaeltacht. By serving its majority

constituency, the State is acting in

accordance with realpolitik. It is a case of

majoritarianism resulting in an anti-

democratic dynamic for the minority who

speak Irish as their ﬁrst language. The Irish

State has thereby constructed a

sociopolitical cul de sac for the remaining

Gaels.

The only way to avoid this, and to promote

genuine revival is for all concerned to end

the ‘codology’ and face up to reality within

a democratic framework of sociologically

informed policy formulation and

implementation. Emphasising the

symbolism of Irish to the neglect of its lived

reality merely creates a pointless illusion

for its speakers and learners.

Given that Irish has been the subject of

over a hundred years of comparatively

generous language planning and policy,

the irresponsible evasiveness about the

demise of the Gaeltacht would be a source

of disillusionment for other linguistic

minorities throughout the world. Recent

developments in Wales indicate that real-

world Welsh language strategies can only

be meaningful with a clear focus on the

vernacular communities. The examples of

decline in Ireland and Scotland have had a

sobering eect on Welsh policy.

Implementing the following overarching

democratising recommendations would

help invigorate the process and allow for

agency in the ﬁrst-language community:

•

Redeﬁne the Gaeltacht as communities

of active Irish speakers rather than

administrative districts;

•

Reconstitute Údarás na Gaeltachta

(Gaeltacht Development Authority) as a

State body that primarily serves the

community development needs of the

Irish-speaking communities;

•

Form an advisory group to examine the

sociological evidence to reform State

systems in the Gaeltacht;

•

Devise feasible approaches to counteract

the social challenges faced by Gaeltacht

Irish speakers;

• Establish a working group, comprised of

civil servants and politicians, to oversee

the democratisation and reformulation of

the Irish-language public policy

framework;

• Redistribute ﬁnancial resources to focus

on prioritising ﬁrst-language outcomes;

•

Re-engage with first-language

perspectives to reinforce productive

cooperation to the mutual beneﬁt of both

ﬁrst and second-language communities;

•

Establish a research and advisory agency

to sustain Irish-speaking communities.

Its remit should include demolinguistic

research and the monitoring of policy

outcomes.

Protecting and promoting Irish first

requires the protection and promotion of

the community of Irish speakers in the

Gaeltacht.

Conchúr Ó Giollagáin is the Gaelic Research

Professor in the University of the Highlands

and Islands, Scotland, and a Visiting

Professor in Ulster University.

Brian Ó Curnáin is an Associate Professor in

the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.