An Irish language ‘elite’ may be good news

THE IRISH language is an article of faith in political discourse and, like all articles of faith, it is a target for cheap assaults from pundits seeking media attention. Year-in and year-out one or other self-styled renegade commentators will pop-up and demand that Irish is dropped from the Leaving Cert or the gaeltachtaí chopped. Nothing ever happens, of course, and it’s not going to. But that just leaves us with the unsatisfactory status quo where Irish has official status but remains mostly unused.

It really is time for a change from the tired old arguments.

A recent academic paper, Language and Occupational Status: Linguistic Elitism in the Irish Labour Market, points to some interesting avenues for ending the language’s divorce from everyday life.

Published in the journal Economic and Social Review, the paper found a “structural advantage of Irish-speaking, relative to non-speaking, workers” in Ireland’s labor market, and compared use of Irish to historical examples of linguistic elitism in Tsarist Russia and in Vietnam, where the elite spoke French. (1)

The study’s findings are worth thinking about in detail. There are plenty of examples of class division in language – French was also the language of the court in pre-democratic Britain and the legacy of this has echos to this very day. English, a Germanic language, uses Latinate and Romance words in formal speech and Germanic ‘low’ words in everyday speech.

So, Irish is now, apparently, a cultural signifier for a rising ruling elite in Ireland. As the study points out, few of these people actually speak the language even though they can. But what does this really mean?

There is no doubt that gaelscoileanna are popular with the middle class principally because their small class sizes amount to the provision of a private-quality education at the taxpayers’ expense. On the other hand, gaelscoileanna are common in working class areas and what parent doesn’t want their child to have the best education possible?

The study bears out the anecdotal evidence that the historical association of Irish with poverty is less of an issue than ever before, giving statistical weight to this change.

Rather than fearing a new ruling elite of palm-greasing as gaeilge, perhaps a better response would be to actually take the language seriously – and, at the same time, with levity.

The only viable strategy for the survival of the Irish language is to make it a language that people want to speak. Unfortunately, this is precisely what heavy-handed state measures are by their very nature incapable of doing. The development of the gaeltachtaí, paradoxically, ensured the language’s survival but also condemned it to the status of a fringe language forever to be associated with rural life. Of course, this wouldn’t have mattered if the language had been taught in an attractive way.

The discovery of an Irish speaking elite is slightly sinister sounding but it’s not really surprising. Colm Ó Broin, the editor of bilingual news website InsideIreland.ie (2) dismisses the idea of a linguistic elite: “I wouldn’t say it’s an elite thing. The report doesn’t recognise cause and effect. It would be more accurate to say that Irish is spoken by people who have had a better education. You would find the same thing among listeners to classical music or people who know Shakespeare Sonnets.” (3)

Indeed, there is no conspiracy. However, Ó Broin’s dismissal does not fully address the question of social networks. This need not be the sinister conspiracy that some will be tempted to claim. The fact is that we all have social networks and it is natural for people to take advantage of connections – it only becomes a problem when it crosses the line into nepotism. Nepotism certainly exists in Ireland but to place the blame for it at the door of the Irish language would be fanciful, farcical even. Eliminating Irish from the school curriculum, as some want to, will do nothing to eliminate social and economic disadvantage. Irish speaking among the elite is a symptom of a dysfunctional education system that codifies social disadvantage, not a result of the language being a private argot.

In fact, read correctly the report indicates a positive future for the language: learning it has clear social and economic benefits, precisely the opposite of what its detractors have been claiming for decades.

As a living language, Irish is arguably stronger in the North than in any area of the South other than the gaeltachtaí. Clearly the development of Irish was initially a highly politically charged move, a cultural signifier of republicanism. The unofficial gaeltacht on the Shaw’s Road in west Belfast was motivated by republicanism and as a response to open hostility from the unionist establishment. However, even then contradictions abounded: high-profile unionists including the Ulster Unionist Party’s Chris McGimpsey and leader of the loyalist UVF Gusty Spence are both Irish speakers. (4) (5)

In recent years the language has become much more widespread and its use significantly less political in use. In short, the middle class has deemed it acceptable. Sinn Féin’s demands for an Irish Langauge Act in the North have, so far, fallen on monoglot ears but the language is already beginning to shed its political baggage – and is all the stronger for it. Politicisation parented Irish in the North, nursing it through very tough times, but the cutting of the umbilical cord is likely to set it free.

(1) See: Language and Occupational Status: Linguistic Elitism in the Irish Labour Market[PDF]
(2) See: insideireland.ie
(3) Is once-maligned Irish language the marker of a new Ireland elite?, Jason Walsh, CS Monitor, January 26, 2010
(4) Protestant Learners of Irish in Northern Ireland, Gordon McCoy, in The Irish Language in Northern Ireland, Ultach Trust, 1997
(5) See: Progressive Unionist Party conference speech 2008