Derrida and the school: language loss and language learning in Ireland

With specific reference to the teaching of Irish and English in Ireland, I am concerned in this paper with the experiences of language dispossession and language pedagogy. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s key concepts of ‘hospitality’ and ‘monolingualism’, I argue that in Ireland the first of these experiences cannot be separated from the second. Taking into consideration its colonial past as well as the changing linguistic profile of its present, Ireland is at once ‘host’ and ‘hostage’ to the English language and this deconstructing identity has important ramifications for the country’s systematic teaching of English as well as Irish. The primary philosophical text guiding my discussion is Derrida’s ‘Monolingualism of the Other’.