Language ideologies in a minority context: An experimental study of teachers? responses to variation in Irish

Abstract

Ideologies on linguistic variation among teachers of the Irish language are the focus of this article. Participants completed an experiment in which they responded to speech samples representing traditional dialectal varieties in the Irish-speaking communities (the Gaeltacht) and a sample representing the Irish of new speakers outside the Gaeltacht (the post-Gaeltacht). When participants directly rate the speech varieties, the traditional Gaeltacht samples are rated significantly more positively than the post-Gaeltacht sample. However, the post-Gaeltacht new speaker variety is on top for standardness. When participants rate the speakers’ characteristics, a more levelled, destandardised value system is also evident. The results are related to the official regimentation of Irish today, where authority is increasingly nebulous and negotiable. The results illustrate how teacher ideologies can develop in late modernity, whether in a minority context, in a context where authority is based on authenticity and a dialect ideology is established, or where language transmission occurs largely through education and substantial numbers of new speakers use the language.