The bilingual mind: thinking,feeling and speaking in two languages

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.     

Language as Whose Resource?: When Global Economics Usurp the Local Equity Potentials of Dual Language Education

Utah’s public schools are home to an increasing number of K/1–6 dual language (DL) programs established through a state-centralized model that has sparked interest domestically and internationally. We theorize three potential constituencies of DL—maintenance, heritage, and world language—then use critical discourse analysis to examine how equitably multiple official state promotional materials discursively portray these constituencies and their interests as well as what other discourses most strongly emerge. We found Utah’s state DL discourses were targeted primarily toward a White, world language constituency, and we found that the explicit privileging of economic considerations discursively erased equity and local language concerns associated with maintenance and non-White heritage constituencies. We argue that this discursive misdirection represents a narrow application of the language-as-resource policy orientation. We conclude with implications for favoring a version of globalized language education that promotes local diversity and equitable access to opportunities.     

Mismatches in Language Policy and Practice in Education: The Case of Gaelscoileanna in the Republic of Ireland

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between national language policy and practice in Irish-medium schools,which are known in Irish Gaelic as Gaelscoileanna. The paper provides an overview of the state's language policy since 1922to promote Irish by using the schools as the primary vehicle for policy implementation. Based on a recent study, the paper describes various changes in the Gaelscoileanna movement over time, including the students' linguistic profile, pupil to teacher ratio, available teaching aids and textbooks in Irish, and teachers' belief regarding the potential impact of the schools on language revival efforts. Findings from the study reveal a mismatch between national language policy and educational supports necessary for schools to most effectively implement their curriculum. They also reveal teachers' skepticism that schools can impact on Irish revival. This finding is relevant given the current directions being taken in Irish language policy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Fabula and Culture: Case Study of Toni Morrison's Jazz

This article addresses the issue as to whether the advance of English in higher education in continental Europe represents a threat to other languages. In the context of moves by the European Union to create a single European ‘education and research area’, in which the integration of higher education through the Bologna process plays a key role, international commodification pressures challenge the status of education as a public good. The study looks at a variety of key aspects of this situation, including the role of university evaluation and planning for internationalisation. It analyses both discourses promoting English, and language policy statements from several countries aiming at a balance between English and other languages. It also deals with the issue of diglossic domain loss as a result of the forces propelling English forward and dispossessing other languages. It concludes that fluidity in European language policies and the many obstacles to coordinated Europe-wide policy formation confirm the need for language policies to be formulated explicitly rather than being left to market pressures, national and international.     

A study of language choices in the linguistic landscape of Macao’s heritage and gaming tourism

Language choices in the economic field of late capitalist societies are shaped by a combination of local, national, and global forces as well as historical, political, and economic factors. This study conducts an analysis of language choices in the linguistic landscape of Macao’s heritage tourism (i.e. signposts of tourist attractions) and gaming tourism (i.e. casino promotional brochures). The findings show similarities and differences in the two sectors in terms of language choices and some tensions emerging behind such language choices in constructing Macao with different voices. Unlike previous studies which find the commodification of one national or ethnic language for profit, the case of Macao illustrates the commodification of multilingualism for profit. Despite the similarities and differences, language choices in both signposts and brochures feature reductive translingualism under the neoliberal ideology which values the instrumental function of language for profit-making purposes.     

语言、诗学与国族建构——惠特曼与叶芝的国族意识之比较

爱尔兰诗人叶芝与美国诗人惠特曼都在自己的诗学中建构一种国族意识。叶芝是爱尔兰民族诗人的领军人物,而惠特曼是为美利坚民族歌唱的诗人,从两者诗歌中可以发现,他们诗学中的民族意识和国族建构极具研究意义。本文以诗学建构与国族建构之间的关系为切入点,分析他们诗歌内容中国族意识的共同与差异,以及他们对待民族传统的态度、建构国族意识过程中的努力,进而总结他们的国族意识之异同。     

Bloom’s CV: Mimesis,Intertextuality and the Overdetermination of Character in Ulysses

“Bloom’s CV” analyses James Joyce’s representation of Bloom’s early career as a commercial traveller in Ulysses. Reading Bloom’s various jobs—from cattle sales to insurance—in their historical context, the article presents a clearer understanding of Joyce’s mimesis, and shows that he presents a strikingly realistic career path for a second-generation Hungarian-Jewish immigrant in 1904 Ireland. While the recent historicist turn in Joyce studies has tended to suppress the text’s other narrative dimensions, the article proceeds to identify unsettling intertextual connections to anti-Semitic discourses that were contemporary in the Irish nationalist press. Explaining these connections as part of Joyce’s broader reimagining of Odysseus as a Semitic traveller, the article positions Joyce’s overdetermined characterisation of Bloom as a crucial transitional moment between the naturalistic aesthetic the author inherited and developed in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and his complete transcendence of the realist mode in Finnegans Wake.     

The Conundrums of Language Policy and Politics in South Africa and Zimbabwe

This article reflects on and reinterprets South Africa's documented human rights-inspired language policy and Zimbabwe's assimilation–tolerance approach to language use. The overall intention is to expose and discuss the intolerant, undemocratic and homogenizing ideologies underpinning language policy in the two neighbouring southern African countries. The article spotlights the ceremonial ‘official language’ status of South Africa's nine African languages and the ‘national language’ status of the Ndebele language in Zimbabwe. It is argued that contrary to rosy policy enunciations, actual patterns of language use and discursive practices of ruling political elites confer higher functional status to English and Afrikaans in South Africa and English and Shona in Zimbabwe. Therefore, as well as being firmly located and resident in political statements of the ruling elites, language policy ideologies are also hidden in the fissures and faultlines of official documents. The article concludes that the documented language policies of South Africa and Zimbabwe epitomize lofty ideals that are not consonant with actual patterns of language use mediated and legitimized by hegemonic discourses of ruling politicians.     

Spaces for learning: policy and practice for indigenous languages in a remote context

abstract

Bilingual and Indigenous language and culture programmes have run in remote Australian schools with significant and continuing local support. Developments such as the new national Indigenous languages curriculum offer a further opportunity to broaden and sustain Indigenous language teaching and learning activities in these schools. However, over the last two decades, increasing government attention to poor outcomes on national standardised literacy and numeracy assessments has markedly restricted the scope for Indigenous languages. This paper draws on a model of ideological and implementational spaces to discuss competing discourses in top-down and bottom-up policy. Data from an ethnographic study on education stakeholders in remote locations in Australia's Northern Territory revealed incongruities between local discourses that emphasise bi- and multilingualism, local identity and knowledge and community language maintenance and institutional discourses, which foreground a uniform model of education, with English literacy the dominant measure of educational success. The study also revealed that principals, teachers, and community members in some schools work together to develop vibrant, though often fragile, programmes. In addition to this, community members outside school systems are increasingly finding and taking up the spaces that allow innovative Indigenous language and cultural teaching and learning.     

Lost in TransNation: The Limits to Constitutive Nationalism in the Fenian Movement

Applying a constitutive rhetorical framework to public speeches and letters circulated transnationally from 1859–1866 by the leadership of the revolutionary Irish nationalist Fenian movement, this essay argues that constitutive rhetorical theory’s assumed ideological effects must be modified to account for the transnational rhetorical practices of movements like the Fenians. The essay first traces how Fenian identification practices seek to fix the entire diaspora as the “Irish people” and Ireland as the true homeland. It then examines how the movement transcodes its constitutive rhetoric to better fit the separate national constraints operating in the United States and Ireland, and how these strategies hamper the organization’s ability to sustain the unity required for success. While the constituted Irish Revolutionary remained in each national context, their strategies for fulfilling the constitutive narrative had splintered, helping to doom the cause. The Fenian case demonstrates the need to render constitutive rhetorical theory in more dialogic terms, especially for transnational audiences.     

The professional status of conference interpreters in the Republic of Ireland: An exploratory study

ABSTRACT

Although the country has a long history of language contact, conference interpreting in the Republic of Ireland is a relatively new field of activity and has largely evolved in response to the recognition of Irish as the 23rd official language of the European Union in 2007. Building on previous studies undertaken in other EU translation and interpreting markets, it was decided to evaluate the professional status of conference interpreters in the Republic of Ireland through applying a professionalization model. The research findings were based on a series of six interviews with qualified conference interpreters active on the Irish market. Through the analysis of practitioners’ views regarding professional identity, recognition, and the unique role of the Irish language, an exploratory overview of the domestic conference interpreting profession was provided.     

Learning to Teach English Language Learners: A Study of Elementary School Teachers’ Sense‐Making in an ELL Endorsement Program

Using Jarvis's ( 2009 ) framework of adult learning, this study examines how in‐service elementary school teachers make sense of instruction that is responsive to multilingual learners. Case studies of two teachers reveal their nuanced attempts to improve practice during a 1‐year, graduate‐level, add‐on certification program for teaching English language learners (ELLs). Findings show that different critical learning experiences afforded the two teachers opportunities to interrupt their assumptions and subsequently refine their instruction as they resolved to support ELLs. This study sheds light on teachers’ ongoing sense‐making throughout a yearlong ELL endorsement program. Implications for teacher education and professional development research are discussed.     

Language policy,in-migration and discursive debates in Wales

Drawing on theory from critical language policy literature, this article explores the impact of discourses on in-migration on Welsh language policy. By focussing on discursive debates surrounding the subject of in-migration, the article analyses how a range of actors produce and reproduce discourses on in-migration in Wales and how these discursive struggles impact on policy. It argues that, while certain actors have been able to construct a powerful discourse on in-migration through language debates, others have failed to make their voices heard and their views on the subject have been silenced. This unequal access to the production of discourse is not incidental; it is indicative of wider power structures at play within bilingual or multilingual language communities. Therefore, while the study focusses on Wales, the article highlights a theme that is relevant to all minoritized language groups, that of the interrelationship between policy, politics and power. It also stresses the importance of adopting an approach to language policy that takes into account both structure and agency alike, and confirms that language groups should not be conceptualised by number of speakers using categories such as ‘dominant’, ‘subordinate’, ‘majority’ and ‘minority’, but rather by issues of power and status.     

Humans in the Food Economy: The Famine,Biopower, and Beckett’s Imagination of Post-colonial State in Watt

Focusing on food and foodways in Beckett’s Watt, this essay attempts to show how they illuminate the ways in which he imagines the post-colonial state of Ireland in the aftermath of the Famine. This catastrophe led the British government to adopt colonial “biopower” as its major form of governance and to set a biopolitical system in Ireland, a system Beckett perceives as lingering in spite of the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. In Watt, Beckett’s scepticism of this political entity is effectively captured in his depiction of how Mr. Knott’s leftovers are disposed of. The food disposal creates and perpetuates the biopolitical system around Mr. Knott’s residence and exposes how humans function as no more than appendages to this system. For Beckett, human freedom has yet to arrive.     

Linguistic imperialism: still a valid construct in relation to language policy for Irish Sign Language

Linguistic imperialism—a term used to conceptualize the dominance of one language over others—has been debated in language policy for more than two decades. Spolsky (Language policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), for example, has questioned whether the spread of English was a result of language planning, or was incidental to colonialism and globalization. Phillipson (Lang Policy 6(3):377–383, 2007) contests this view, arguing that linguistic imperialism is not based on ‘conspiracy’, and is underpinned by evidence of explicit or implicit language policy that aims to intentionally advantage some languages at the expense of others. This paper analyses Irish Sign Language policy, or lack thereof, in terms of linguistic imperialism. It does this by presenting evidence within a conceptual framework of linguistic imperialism to explore how discrimination and inequality occurs in relation to Irish Sign Language users in Ireland. The findings highlight many policies and practices that fit the linguistic imperialism paradigm including linguicism, audism, and the denial of linguistic rights. The paper, therefore, challenges some views in language policy that linguistic imperialism lacks credibility by highlighting a current case of minority language (ISL) users under imperialistic-like control of policy geared towards a dominant language (English).     

On virtual epidemics and the mediatization of public health

This article uses Wittgenstein’s notion of language games and my approach to communicability in ethnographically exploring cultural models of “communication,” “media,” and “the public” advanced by public health officials and the centrality of mediatization to their institutional practices. I focus on extensive efforts by officials in a California county to disseminate information on West Nile Virus—which has sickened few local residents and killed none—precisely because it highlights substantial gaps between official attempts to regiment the metapragmatics of mediatization and the pragmatic features of news coverage. The conclusion points to analytical problems raised by the complex ways that semiotic mediation and commodification intersect in mediatization.     

叶芝诗歌中文学与历史的对话——以《1916年复活节》为例

叶芝在其现实主义诗作中烙上了时代的印记,诗人用诗的形式表达了对于历史事件的深刻思考,从而使文学和历史在诗作中形成了一种对话。本文在新历史主义理论框架下以《1916年复活节》一诗为例剖析叶芝诗歌中所体现出来的文学与历史的对话。通过对诗歌文本的分析,笔者指出,一方面,该作品作为诗歌的文本具有历史性;另一方面,被文本化的历史也具有文本性,二者之间形成对话。同时作为对话一方的文学文本内部蕴含颠覆性元素,鼓舞爱尔兰民众反抗英国殖民统治,试图推翻现有的权力结构,取得民族独立,并让爱尔兰文学从英国文学中脱离出来。但是,这种颠覆性元素终将被含纳,因为叶芝认识到,独立后的爱尔兰文学不得不继续依靠英语进行创作,依然存在于英国的权力结构之下,并未真正独立,因而是一种“可怕的美”。     

Polyphony,Provincialism, Nostalgia and Involution in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart (2012)

This paper analyses the narrative and thematic structure of Donal Ryan’s debut novel, The Spinning Heart (2012), which offers a snapshot of rural Ireland after the Celtic Tiger period and questions its benefits, the modernisation of Ireland and the response of Irish people faced with critical times. It draws on three theoretical frameworks for the analysis of Ryan’s narrative structure, thematic content and style: first, a variation of Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia at social and stylistic levels; second, the conceptions of the parochial and the provincial in post-Celtic Tiger rural Ireland; third, the concept of nostalgia. The analysis concludes that the proliferation of voices and the use of monologues show Ryan’s need to portray disaffection and regret when a silent dialogising discourse reigns. Ryan’s novel denounces the loss of collectivity in rural communities to a more individualistic society. It proposes a parochialism that is universal albeit rooted in the local.     

English as a Transcultural Language in Swedish Policy and Practice

The globalization of English in Sweden is examined as it takes shape in educational policy and practice. Following in the tradition of a “new wave” of language policy and planning research that emphasizes connections between policy and how it is interpreted by local stakeholders, this investigation focuses on textual data from Swedish national curricular documents and observational data of preservice English language educators during teacher training. Discourse analysis was conducted in order to illuminate underlying policy discourses, on the one hand, and facilitate tracing intertextual connections to the voices of educators, on the other hand. Drawing upon current perspectives on linguistic globalization, major discursive tensions engendered in the processes of transculturation through which English as a global language is locally situated in Sweden are brought to light. The study illustrates how educational language policy serves as a discursive space for ongoing negotiation about the status of English in Sweden.     

Positions and stances in the hierarchization of Breton speakerhood

ABSTRACT

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as ‘traditional’, ‘new’, ‘learner’, ‘néo-bretonnant’, ‘brittophone’, etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be counter-productive towards projects which aim at producing multilingual citizens in Brittany at the present time. This article examines how stances of different speakers towards other speakers of Breton can involve jostling for positions of power within the Breton-speaking community and how attempts at creating elites and counter-elites seem to be a defining feature of contemporary revitalisation efforts in Brittany. This characterisation may, however, miss a ‘third space’ which some social actors may seek to engage with. These discourses are examined in this article through a critical sociolinguistic exploration of how (elite) multilingualism is constructed, maintained and contested by different actors in the Breton language community.