Irish Language Revival Policies in Education: Immersion education and adult education as a link to intergenerational language transmission

Abstract

Minority language revitalization efforts are usually centred around the implementation of educational efforts in order to generate new speakers. Fishman’s research on RLS shows that an overreliance on education as the key factor in RLS efforts is dangerous as it does not guarantee the intergenerational transmission of the language. This study aims to highlight two alternative educational strategies that could help with securing intergenerational language transmission: immersion education and the education and advising of parents and adults. Building on existing work on RLS efforts in Ireland, the main question in this thesis is: based on the example of Modern Irish in the Republic of Ireland, how can RLS efforts in education help minoritized language communities achieve intergenerational language transmission? This shall be done through a qualitative analysis of data gathered from governmental reports and academic studies of the position of the Irish language in schools and society, as well as the educational strategies and goals of language support efforts. The data gathered from these reports and studies with best practices from the theorists will be analysed in order to see if they coincide. What can be concluded is that immersion education and adult education have potential in securing intergenerational language transmission, but they have to be implemented on a large enough scale in order to be fully effective. Moreover, they are just a small fragment of a larger set of initiatives in RLS policy making and the education system should not be the only responsible actor in the revival of Irish.