Adult Minority Language Learning

Motivation, Identity and Target Variety

Colin J. Flynn

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781788927055
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica per adulti

This book examines the role of affective variables in the process of learning a minority language. It presents a comprehensive account of how adult learners' attitude, motivation and identity are related to their awareness of, and commitment to, different dialects and varieties as target speech models. These issues are examined in the context of Irish, a minority language which does not have a standard spoken variety and where the vast majority of learners have no regular contact with native speakers. Using a mixed methods research approach, this study explores the relationships that exist between, on the one hand, learners' attitudes towards the three main traditional dialects of Irish and non-traditional second language varieties, and on the other, their motivation and self-concept as second language learners.

1The Irish Language and Adult Learners of Irish

Introduction

This chapter has two broad aims: (a) to introduce linguistic, social and educational issues relevant to the context of this study, and (b) to situate this study in the broader second language acquisition (SLA) and social psychological research literatures. It starts by outlining the social, historical and linguistic background to this study. A brief discussion of the history of the Irish language, including an overview of the decline of the language and subsequent revival movements, introduces some of the factors determining its present position. This is followed by a discussion of the spoken varieties of the language vis-à-vis the written standard in Irish language teaching and learning. We then look at the specific context of Irish language learning among adult populations and consider the issue of target varieties for these learners. The chapter concludes by briefly locating the current study empirically and theoretically within the relevant research literatures as a prelude to the fuller discussion in Chapters 2 and 3.

The Irish Language: Linguistic, Social and Educational Context

Irish is currently a minority language which is spoken as a first language (L1) by a relatively small number of people. There are, however, a large number of second language (L2) speakers of Irish who learned the language initially in the education system. Some of these speakers/learners choose to continue learning the language as adults by attending evening classes. While most Irish speakers are native to Ireland, there is a growing number of L2 learners from other backgrounds, in Ireland and abroad, who started learning the language as adults. Nevertheless, teachers of adults often relay anecdotal evidence that Irish is considered by many to be a difficult language to learn. In particular, it is claimed that learners struggle with the various regional varieties of Irish (i.e. dialects). One of the very few studies which has focused on adult learners found that learners attributed difficulties to ‘personal factors’ rather than language-related issues (Devitt et al., 1983). It is interesting, however, that the same report also identified ‘interference from past experiences’ as being the most common non-course-related reason for difficulty reported by learners (1983: 77). While the authors do not provide further explanation of what these ‘interferences’ were, one possibility is that they had been exposed to a different variety of the language prior to starting on the course reported in that study, e.g. at school, and found the language it contained to be sufficiently different as to cause them difficulty. The discussion will return to this point again below when the place of language varieties in Irish language teaching is considered. First, however, let us look briefly at the current position of Irish and the circumstances which lead to the existence of it in modern form.

The Irish language

The Irish language has been spoken on the island of Ireland since the early centuries of the Christian era, with a written tradition which dates from the 5th century (Ó Riagáin, 2007). The historical development of the language can be divided into four periods: Old Irish (500–900), Middle Irish (900–1200), Early Modern Irish (1200–1600) and Modern Irish (1600–present). Space does not allow for a detailed discussion here of the social, political and linguistic changes that took place in Ireland over the 15 centuries since the language was brought to Ireland by the Goidels. It will suffice to say that the current state of the language is weak. Optimistic estimates of the present number of native speakers (L1) of the language range from 60,000 to 100,000 (e.g. Ó Dochartaigh, 2006; Singleton, 2007). The majority of these L1 speakers live in the Gaeltachtaí (the traditional Irish-speaking areas located mainly in the west of the country) in counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork, Waterford and Meath, while smaller numbers are dispersed throughout the rest of the country. These regions are visible on the map in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Map of Ireland showing Gaeltacht regions

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gaeltachtai_le_hainmneacha2.svg#file)

By the start of the 17th century, Irish had already begun to lose ground rapidly to English as the medium of spoken communication in many places throughout the country (Ó Riagáin, 2007). By the end of the 19th century, with the recession of Irish as spoken language to isolated pockets in the West, three distinct dialect groups had emerged: Munster (south), Connacht (west) and Ulster (north). In the province of Leinster (east), however, Irish had by this time ‘ceased to be the language of common intercourse’ (Ó Cuív, 1951: 24), and its quick decline in this region thereafter resulted in almost no Irish-speaking community there by the 20th century.

What is now known as Munster Irish refers to the variety spoken as a community vernacular primarily in West Kerry, but also in smaller pockets of Cork and Waterford. Connacht Irish is confined to parts of West Galway and Mayo. Ulster Irish is spoken in the remaining Gaeltacht areas in County Donegal. The latter is often referred to as Donegal Irish since the Ulster Gaeltacht is confined to that county. Each of these dialect areas shows a certain amount of internal variation in terms of their phonological systems and lexicons, but in general they are homogenous enough to be considered the same variety (Ó Siadhail, 1989).

The surviving regional varieties of modern Irish differ to greater or lesser degrees at morpho-syntactic, lexical and phonological levels, although it has been claimed that phonology is where the greatest divergence is found (Ó Dochartaigh, 1992). Word stress patterns are generally considered to be important distinguishing phonological features of individual varieties. In this regard, the language can be divided into northern and southern varieties. In the northern half of the country varieties demonstrate a pattern of initial stress, while in the south stress is shifted to long vowels in non-initial syllables (Ó Siadhail, 1989). In terms of syntax, the southern varieties are considered to be more conservative, especially in their use of synthetic verb endings (e.g. bhíos = I was). In the north, the norm in this regard is to use analytic forms (e.g. bhí mé = I was). In terms of phonology, however, the situation is reversed; northern varieties, particularly those of Donegal, show the most conservative phonological system and southern ones show the greatest divergence from Classical Irish (Ó Dochartaigh, 1992).

The recent history of the Irish language is one of general decline in the traditional heartland, i.e. An Ghaeltacht, but one that shows encouraging signs for the country as a whole. Census data for the Irish language in Table 1.1 demonstrate this. The figures show that since Irish independence (1922) the percentage of Irish speakers in areas designated as Gaeltachtaí has steadily declined. By comparison, the percentage of Irish speakers in the population as a whole has steadily increased. It is noteworthy, however, that in recent years percentages have declined in both contexts.

Table 1.1 Census data showing the number of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht vs the Republic of Ireland as a whole
Census year*	Irish speakers as percentage of total Gaeltacht population	Irish speakers as percentage of total population in what is now the Republic of Ireland
1911†	79%	17.6%
1926	89%	18.3%
1936	83%	23.7%
1946	76%	21.2%
1961‡	81%	27.2%
1971	79%	28.3%
1981	73%	31.6%
1991	65%	32.5%
2002	73%	42.8%
2006	70.8%	41.9%
2011	68.5%	40.6%
2016	66.3%	39.8%
*Figures from 1911–2002 have been adapted from Ó hÉallaithe (2004) and augmented by figures from subsequent censuses published by the Central Statistics Office of Ireland (www.cso.ie) in 2006, 2011 and 2016. †Figure is for areas subsequently designated as fíor-Ghaeltachtaí, where 80%+ of the population were Irish speakers in 1926 and does not include areas designated as Breac-Ghaeltachtaí, where 25–79% of the population were Irish speakers (Ó hÉallaithe, 2004). ‡These figures are for the new reduced Gaeltacht according to the Government’s re-drawn of the boundaries in 1956. (See Ó hÉallaithe, 2004; and also Hindley, 1991; Ó Giollagáin, 2016 for discussions.)

The sociolinguistic context of Irish is, of course, more complicated than the neat set of figures in Table 1.1 would suggest. Firstly, socioeconomic and educational factors, for example, consistently impact on the demographics of the rural Gaeltacht areas. There is always the potential for younger Irish speakers to relocate to other parts of the country (as well as abroad) for work or higher education (see e.g. Ó Riagáin, 1997). At the same time, however, there is in-migration into Gaeltacht areas by non-Irish speakers and/or inactive speakers (Ó Giollagáin & Mac Donnacha, 2008). Second, census data are a blunt instrument for measuring the status of a language, especially a minority language, since they do not provide much insight into the actual proficiency level of recorded Irish speakers. Indeed, we know that proficiency levels are not uniform among either Gaeltacht speakers or speakers located elsewhere in the country (see e.g. Harris et al., 2006; Murtagh & van der Slik, 2004; Ó Giollagáin & Mac Donnacha, 2008). Thirdly, the notion of an Irish language community is complicated by the above, as well as other issues (Nic Eoin, 2011). Both census data and scholarly research have demonstrated that large numbers of Irish speakers are located in cities and towns, as well as in the Gaeltacht (Central Statistics Office, 2017b). Questions remain, however, about the extent to which speakers in the former context are part of a speech community (Ó Giollagáin & Péterváry, 2016), and whether learners outside the Gaeltacht see themselves playing any particular role in the language revitalization process (Flynn, 2019).

Irish language learning: Dialects and standard

While Irish is still a community language in Gaeltacht regions throughout the country, these traditional Irish-speaking communities have been in decline for a great many years (e.g. Denvir, 1999; Fennell, 1981; Hindley, 1990). However, constitutional recognition of Irish as the first official language of the State has meant that interest in maintaining and restoring the language inside and outside its traditional heartlands has remained constant since the time of independence. The responsibility for the restoration of the language outside the Gaeltacht has, for the most part, been borne by the educational system (Ó Laoire, 2005). With very few exceptions, all children who go through the mainstream educational system in Ireland study the Irish language for up to 14 years. For the vast majority of these children, however, Irish is learned as L2 and recent census data have again confirmed that the language is not used very often by these learners outside of the educational context. The latest figures reveal that only 1.7% of the population aged 3 years and over speak Irish daily outside the educational system, while 2.5% speak it weekly and 13.2% speak it less often (Central Statistics Office, 2017a).

The position of dialects in the teaching and learning of Irish is rather complex. The traditional regional varieties of the language mentioned in the previous section represent the main spoken varieties which have survived into the 21st century. It was also noted that each of the three main varieties is in fact made up of a number of sub-varieties, which in some contexts may be considered relatively different from one another (see e.g. Ó Siadhail, 1989). While this variation has its roots in natural developments in the language over a period of centuries, the rapid language shift which took place in Ireland during the 18th and 19th centuries isolated communities of speakers from one another, geographically and socially, and served to accelerate its course (Ó Dochartaigh, 1992). Furthermore, these changes also coincided with the final collapse of the bardic tradition and with it the use of a standard written language by educated poets and scholars (O’Rahilly, 1932). The disappearance of the written bardic standard would eventually have implications for the written and spoken forms of the language thereafter.

The persistence of linguistic variation in Irish came about, ironically, as part of language revitalization efforts in the late 19th century. By the year 1851 only 23% of the population were recorded as Irish speakers in the census. In response to these low figures, the close of the 19th century saw the establishment ...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Irish Language and Adult Learners of Irish
• 2. The Native Speaker and Target Models in Second Language Acquisition
• 3. Attitude, Motivation and Identity in Second Language Learning
• 4. Research Methodology
• 5. Stage I: Irish Language Questionnaire for Adult Learners
• 6. Stage II: Speaker Evaluation Exercise
• 7. Stage III: Semi-structured Interviews
• 8. Discussion and Conclusions
• References
• Appendices
• Author Index
• Subject Index