Numerical Strength and Positive Attitudes

The main points outlined above introduce the idea of ‘new speakerness’ and provide an explanation as to who new speakers are, especially in the context of a minority language undergoing language shift towards a dominant ‘neighbour’. The previous chapters showed that traditional native speakers of Irish are now a minority, which means that L2 speakers (which include new speakers) have become numerically superior. Against this background, O’Rourke and Walsh (2015: 64) make the following point: ‘Given that most frequent speakers of Irish outside the

54 Linguistic essentialism refers to the ‘idea of language as fixed and bounded, as a code rather than as a practice and as naturally given or taken for granted’ (O’Rourke and Walsh 2015: 66).

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education system are not based in the Gaeltacht and therefore unlikely to be traditional native speakers, new speakers can be seen to play an important role in the future of the language’. This is exemplified by the high numbers of Irish speakers in the Dublin area, which was illustrated in Section 4.2. Against this backdrop, the (potential) role of new speakers in the maintenance of Irish becomes clearer:

statistical data presented in this dissertation show that the growing number of L2 speakers would so far appear to be the greatest success of current Irish language policy, and it could even be argued that these individuals are essentially keeping the language alive at a national level. After all, despite the crisis in the Gaeltacht, census results do reveal considerable numbers of people with an ability to speak Irish, and L2 speakers make up the overwhelming majority of this category.

In this context, new speakers contribute to the maintenance of the minority language in question by consciously functioning as activists and as ‘agents of social change’ (McLeod and O’Rourke 2015: 169). But what exactly pushes people to become new speakers of a language that even natives are abandoning? Reporting about her study on Corsican language classes, Jaffe (2015: 32–33) for instance writes that non-Corsicans indicated the importance of the language for the participation in the local networks as a motivation to become new speakers, while themes such as identity and heritage were recurrent among Corsicans who decided to take part in immersion classes. As for Irish, O’Rourke and Walsh (2015: 74) also found that motivations can be related to the will to reaffirm an Irish identity. Having an inspirational Irish teacher was also found to contribute to the choice to commit to learning the language (Walsh and O’Rourke 2017, para. 12). Moreover, new speakers’ commitment to maintaining a threatened language can occasionally be related to their perception of native speakers, who they may see as unwilling to invest as much in the revival (McLeod and O’Rourke 2015: 169). This may be true in some cases, since Gaeltacht speakers have been observed to have contrasting attitudes in terms of intergenerational transmission: they are favourably disposed towards it but do not consistently teach the language to their children (Ó hIfearnáin 2013: 356).

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One final aspect that is worth mentioning regarding the potential of new speakers is linked to the acquisition of Irish by immigrants. Although it undoubtedly enhances the linguistic complexity of the country as a consequence of globalisation, the ethnocultural diversity of contemporary Ireland detailed in Section 4.1 should not be overlooked in a ‘new speakerness’ framework. Indeed, children with an immigration background and immigrant new speakers at large might also provide an opportunity for the growth of the Irish-speaker base. McCubbin (2010) has reported promising findings in this regard, having explored the integration of Irish-speaking immigrants. The speakers he considered were not born or raised in Ireland, did not immigrate to the country before the age of eighteen and often did not have any family connection to the language, but used it daily after having learnt it as a second or subsequent language. His research shows that the acquisition of Irish helps such immigrants to better integrate, partake, and be accepted in Irish-speaking communities, both in the Gaeltacht and outside of it, so much so that they frequently claim to possess a Gaelic identity (McCubbin 2010: 462–466). The potential of immigrants is also recognised in the 20-Year Strategy (Government of Ireland 2010: 16): ‘Newly-arrived immigrant children in Ireland will also be afforded the opportunity to participate in all Irish language activities and specific attention will be paid to their language learning needs’. In sum, globalisation certainly poses difficulties with regard to the preservation of Irish, but in a ‘new speakerness’ context it also opens up new possibilities.

This may lead to the conclusion that new speakers can be important agents of language maintenance: first of all because they are committed to the cause in the sense that they display essential positive attitudes, and secondly because they are – at least in the case of Irish – numerically superior to native speakers. As I stated In Section 5.2.2, pupils enrolled in Gaelscoileanna can in some cases have higher levels of ability in Irish compared to their peers in the Gaeltacht, which represents a further important argument in favour of ‘new speakerness’, since there is evidence that the learning of Irish as an L2 can produce competent speakers. It should, however, be mentioned that in the past only around 3% of second language learners of Irish were reported to have ‘native speaker ability’ in the language (Committee

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on Irish Language Attitudes Research 1975, Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin 1984, 1994 cited in O’Rourke 2011: 330). This is in line with more general findings from the field of linguistics, according to which only roughly 5% of second language learners attain a level of competence that can be considered equivalent to that of native speakers (Péterváry et al. 2014: 247). I should also add that data from 2013 indicate that only 15% of adults in the Republic of Ireland tried to learn or improve their Irish (Darmody and Daly 2015: xi), which suggests that there is a considerable gap between actual new speakers and simple learners (as defined in Section 6.1). It is indeed possible to assume that the latter are the majority, also in the light of census data presented earlier. These potential shortcomings of new speakers ought to be kept in mind in the context of language maintenance in particular.