Language educators’ regard for variation in late modernity: Perceptions of linguistic variation in minority contexts

Abstract

This article investigates language educators’ regard for linguistic variation in a minority language context. It argues that teachers function as language norm authorities who may influence the linguistic practices and ideologies of students, and that this role takes on added significance in minority language contexts where access to the target language may be limited. Data are presented from a study on the linguistic ideologies of Irish language educators – ‘new speakers’ who acquired the language mainly thorough the education system. Participants’ ideologies on variation in modern spoken Irish were explored using semi‐structured interviews incorporating a speaker evaluation design. Although participants valorise traditional dialectal varieties of Irish, in line with established hierarchies, ideological frameworks are contested so that new ways of using Irish are beginning to gain overt acceptance. The results reveal the manner in which hierarchies of language variation in the Irish language are in flux in our contemporary late‐modern period.

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

“…While Nic Eoin (1996) felt obliged to defend Raidió na Life's linguistic standards in the face of criticism from a listener, there was no evidence from our discussion with volunteers that listeners to their programmes were dissatisfied with the standard of Irish. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that broadcasters and listeners of Raidió na Life find the translanguaging practices of the station 'valuable' and that the volunteers' defence of linguistic variation is in keeping with emerging new norms of acceptability in the community, as discussed by Ó Murchadha and Flynn (2018).…”

“…It seems that circumstances have led to an uneasy peace between grammatical correctness and social reality, but tensions over prescriptivism are always present in legacy media even in the less formal community sector of which Raidió na Life is a member. The fact that the manager accepts the existence of variation, albeit reluctantly, is evidence of shifting ideologies about hierarchies of language variation in Irish, a feature of the flux of minority languages in late modernity (Ó Murchadha and Flynn 2018). Although the levels of acceptance of post-traditional Irish differ between management and volunteers, there is no evidence that this caused any difficulties for the volunteers interviewed in their relationship with management, or indeed prevented any one of them from participating in the station.…”

“…This concept has been proposed 'as a way to capture the fluid language practices of bilinguals without giving up the social construction of language and bilingualism under which speakers operate' (García and Wei 2014, 5). In their research on the language ideologies of 'new speakers' who become Irish language educators, Ó Murchadha and Flynn show how hierarchies of language variation in Irish are in flux in this period, allowing varieties of Irish seen previously as less prestigious to gain more overt acceptance (Ó Murchadha and Flynn 2018). Writing in 1996 in defence of the linguistic standards (she deliberately used the plural form) on Raidió na Life, Nic Eoin identified three categories of Irish speakers among broadcasters: (1) approximately 20 percent with a Gaeltacht background (2) approximately 50 percent who were either raised with Irish outside the Gaeltacht or attended Gaelscoileanna and (3) approximately 30 percent who attained a high level of Irish in the mainstream English-medium education system.…”

Language teaching and learning in Ireland: 2012–2021

“…Two papers by Ó Murchadha and Flynn (2018a, 2018b) investigate the attitudes of pre-service language educators towards linguistic variation in Irish using qualitative methods. They argue that teachers function as language norm authorities who may influence the linguistic practices and ideologies of students, and that this role takes on added significance in minority language contexts where access to the target language may be limited.…”

Minority language maintenance and the production‐prescription interface: Number agreement in New York Yiddish

“…While standardization can contribute to the vitality of endangered and minority languages, recent scholarship has shown how it can also reproduce or amplify ideological conflicts between authoritative (prescriptive) and authentic (vernacular) language practices. Such conflicting positions have been documented in the language attitudes of Irish instructors and students (Ó Murchadha & Flynn, 2018; Petit Cahill, 2020) and in the “double standards” that affect perceptions of new speakers of Basque (Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, 2021, p. 550).…”