Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

The Irish language – its prestige and the attitude of its speakers
that “some knowledge” would be understood differently by each respondent, and the results
show that all speaking, reading, writing and comprehension skills were less than half of this
fi gure (167,490 people appear to have some knowledge whereas 75,125 people claim to have
all the four skills in the Irish language), as a proportion of the respondents claimed to be able
either only to understand Irish or to speak Irish or both understand and speak it while being
unable to read or write it (Northern Ireland Census 2001).
4. Irish LPLP and public attitude
The defi nition of ‘attitude’ given by Sarnoff identifi es attitude with “a disposition to react
favorably or unfavorably to a class of objects”. “Attitudes, so defi ned, are seen to be cognitive
(entail beliefs about the world), affective (involve feelings towards an object), and behavioral
(encourage or promote certain actions)” (Ó’Riagain 1997: 168).
Regarding the “ethnolinguistic vitality perspective”, “that language has a key role in defi ning
or symbolizing community or regional identity and membership” (ibid: 168), out of 48 people
in Cork 26 say that Irish is a part of their identity, and 11 say that English is, or is also a part of
their identity. Asking them if they see Irish as a language of the old people, only 4 of them agree
with that statement, it is only seen by one person as a language of the farmer, but 23 of 48
respondents believe that Irish is the language of people who are aware of being Irish. Comparing
these fi ndings with the results of the Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research (CILAR)
which carried out an extended survey in the years 1973, 1983 and 1993, the following can be
seen: Whereas in 1973 64 % of people agreed with the sentence “Ireland would not really be
Ireland without Irish-speaking people”, in 1993 only 60 % agreed with that. In contrast to 1973
(58%) in 1993 12 % less people agree with the statement “To really understand Irish culture, one
must know Irish.” But 5% more people agree that “Without Irish, Ireland would certainly lose its
identity as a separate culture” (Northern Ireland Census 2001). Although there seems to be a
decline between the perceptions of the strong link between Ireland with Irish speaking people,
it has to be mentioned, that more than half of the respondents see a strong link between
these two. The link between understanding Irish culture and knowing the language is seen as
less strong. On the other hand, the supposition that the loss of the Irish language causes the
loss of identity as a separate culture is increasing (O’ Riagain 1997: 168). Does that lead to the
assumption that knowing the language is not so essential, but losing it is perceived as a big loss?
That would result in a dilemma. Quoting O’Riagain: “Although CILAR (1975) appears to have
established a relationship between the Irish language and ethnic identifi cation, this fi nding is
not without problems. It does not appear from its own analysis that this particular dimension
of language attitudes is closely linked to actual behavior supportive of Irish. Language attitudes
in Ireland […] do not appear to exert any independent effect on the individual’s own language
behavior” (ibid: 175).
The results of my survey regarding behavioral attitudes refl ect that 36 people out of 48
do care if Irish becomes extinct and only 4 explicitly mention that they don’t care. But then,
only 28 respondents think they can do something to protect the Irish language. Interestingly
however, 31 don’t agree with the statement that “Nobody can do anything to protect the Irish
language.” Once again this refl ects that although these respondents don’t want to loose the
language and believe that they can do something to protect it, they more strongly believe
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