Irish-language policy in a multiethnic state: competing discourses on ethnocultural membership and language ownership

This paper examines how competing discourses about the ownership of the Irish language in an increasingly multiethnic Ireland and the extent to which it is associated with a sense of ‘Irishness’ influence the formulation of recent Irish-language policy at institutional and national levels. As part of a broader study on the language ideology and practice of Irish-speaking immigrants to Ireland, a critical analysis of their discourse in relation to questions of language ownership and ethnocultural self-identification was performed. A similar analysis of the public discourse was conducted by examining public statements, policy documents, letters to the editor and newspaper articles from the English-language media that addressed questions of language, immigration and identity. The informants' discourse reveals a social-constructionist ideology about the ownership of Irish and the permeability of the Irish-speaking ethnoculture that challenges the ethnically essentialist character of the public's discourse on such matters. It is this dominant public discourse, however, that informs language policy to the exclusion of more social-constructionist perspectives.