27.342, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Doyle (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-342. Tue Jan 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.342, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Doyle (2015)

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Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 11:14:59
From: Andrew Carnie [carnie at email.arizona.edu]
Subject: A History of the Irish Language

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3031.html

AUTHOR: Aidan  Doyle
TITLE: A History of the Irish Language
SUBTITLE: From the Norman Invasion to Independence
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Andrew Carnie, University of Arizona

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This volume is an important contribution to not only the history of the Irish
language, but of Ireland itself. It provides, for the first time in English, a
comprehensive look at the links between language, culture, politics and
religion in Ireland for the last 800 years. The book is written for a
non-specialist audience, and would be particularly appropriate for the lay
reader or undergraduate with an interest in better understanding how the
dominant language of a country and people can descend to being a severely
endangered language. 

Doyle limits the time frame for this history from roughly 1200 -- the start of
the Norman Invasion -- to 1922 – the founding of the Irish Free State. The
history of the Irish language, of course extends beyond these dates, but the
choice here makes sense. In effect it sets the bounds of the history to the
versions of the language commonly called “Modern Irish” (including Early
Modern Irish (EMI) and Late Modern Irish (LMI). Older forms of the language
are briefly discussed in the second chapter. The reason Doyle selects 1922 as
the end date for his work has to do with the fact that it was around that time
Irish became a language largely dominated by second language speakers, and in
effect has changed or is in the process of changing because of that. 

The book is composed of 9 chapters, most of which (except for the last three)
are divided into two parts: a social history of the country and the language
followed by a description of the critical linguistic trends of the period.
Each chapter ends in a helpful further reading section and the book concludes
with a glossary of technical terms for the non-linguist. 

Chapter 1 sets the scene laying out some critical assumptions about history
and defines such notions as standard languages, dialects, inter-language and
bilingualism. 

Chapter 2, The Anglo-Normans and their Heritage (1200-1500), starts with the
Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. This marks the first time that some form of
English is introduced to the island, so marks an important turning point in
the history of the language. Also important is the introduction of new legal
and social systems, which disrupt the native traditions. Doyle covers the
eventual Gaelicization of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, but observes that
despite this switch of languages, English did have an effect on the shape and
form of the language largely through borrowing. Perhaps the most interesting
part of this chapter is the lengthy discussion of how we can make deductions
about the form of the spoken language based on grammatical tracts that were
written for poets. These track “correct” and “incorrect” usages, where the
“incorrect” uses likely reflected the vernacular. I found this a fascinating
use of prescriptive formulations to infer something about the actual state of
the language. 

In Chapter 3, The Tudors (1500-1600), Doyle looks at the impact that the
renaissance and early reformation had on the use and form of the language. The
renaissance brought education and a broader international perspective to the
elites of the island. Henry VIII’s new Anglican church also became the
official religion – although it failed to take root outside of the cities and
towns. No religious education in either religion was conducted in Irish. It
was also in this period that widespread settlement of the island began as a
means of controlling rebellion. All of these factors impacted the status of
Irish. The cities and towns became majority English-speaking and there were
large swathes of the country that became bilingual. The status of Irish
declined significantly. This is reflected in much wider spread code-switching
and diglossia in the language.

Under the Stuarts and subsequently Cromwell’s Commonwealth (Chapter 4), things
for Irish got worse.  The country saw a significant shift in land ownership
from the gaelicized Anglo-Normans to new protestant elites imported into the
country. English was widely viewed as the vehicle for opportunity. The effect
on the structure of the language was also significant. It’s at this time we
see the switch to Late Modern Irish

Doyle next turns, in Chapter 5, to the widely held idea that Ireland between
1700 and 1800 was effectively a bicultural country. This idea was first
presented by Daniel Corkery in his 1924 book “The Hidden Ireland.” The basic
premise is that there was an extreme kind of diglossia at work in the country
at this time. There were two language communities that lived side by side but
had little contact with each other. On the other hand, this is also the
beginning of a period of romanticization of the Celts, increased literacy
among Irish speakers and very rudimentary attempts to document the language
through dictionaries and grammars. 

A New Language for a New Nation, Chapter 6, examines the important role that
growing anti-British sentiment and Irish Nationalism had on the status of the
language. The Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell, advocated for a nativist
politics and link between nationalism and native traditions. However, this
nationalism did not necessarily translate into real advances for the Irish
language. The bulk of the republican agenda was advanced through the medium of
English. English was also the sole medium of education in the early 19th
century. Evangelical bible societies of all the different religious groups
promoted their religions through English. One also can’t forget that this was
the period of the Potato Famine, which resulted in widespread emigration of
Irish speakers. Even among native Irish speakers there were largely positive
attitudes towards English, representing economic opportunity and negative
attitudes towards their own language. The few attempts to document and
revitalize the language during this time were largely academic and didn’t have
roots in the native speaker communities. During the period described in this
chapter, the status of Irish moved from being a primarily rural but widely
spoken language to a language only spoken in the outlying areas of the
country. The section of this chapter on the structure of the language focuses
on orthographic reform, borrowing and the initial creation of neologisms for
technology and science.

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on the revival movement from 1870-1922. Unlike other
chapters these are not divided into history and structure sections. Chapter 7
is largely a historical review. Chapter 8 is about language structure and the
modernization of the language during the period under consideration. 

In Chapter 7, we learn about the Society for the Preservation of the Irish
Language – an organization that was largely led by academics and was viewed
skeptically by native speakers and second language learners – and its
descendant, the Gaelic League, which was much more practical, but was tied at
a deep intellectual level to developing a sense of Irishness that fed into
republican nationalist politics, often to its detriment. This includes a
discussion of some of the leading personalities in the movement including
Douglas Hyde, Padraig Pearse and others. The successes of these movements, in
particular the Gaelic League, included the sanctioning of education in Irish
at all levels, the creation of Irish language cultural and sporting events,
the publishing of newspapers and teaching aids and the establishment of the
Gaelteacht regions for protecting the language. The challenges facing the
league were however, also big. For example, the movement was largely lead by
non-native speakers and many of the things they achieved were more symbolic
than practical.

In Chapter 8 we learn more about the efforts discussed at the end of Chapter
6, for example, spelling and typographical reform, the creation of new
vocabulary and the persistent effect of English on the grammar and lexicon.
The challenges and failure in establishing a single national standard and new
literary forms are also addressed. 

Chapter 9 provides a frank evaluation of the state of Irish in 1922 and
includes some interesting insights into what has happened since that date. For
example, there was hope at the time of independence that Irish would in fact
become the spoken language of the country again. In fact, the exact opposite
has occurred: the few places where Irish was the dominant language in 1922 are
now at best described as bilingual and are probably English dominant,
especially among younger people. So over a 100 years of earnest revitalization
efforts largely failed in their goals. On the other hand, it is still worth
celebrating the successes of those efforts, such as documentation and the
establishment of a robust community of second language speakers. The new Irish
spoken by that L2 community is still evolving, so the story of Irish clearly
isn’t over yet. 

EVALUATION

It is important to be clear about the audience for this book. It is not aimed
at linguistic professionals. Its readership is most likely to be students of
the Irish language or history. It is determinedly accessible for
non-linguists. It has a chatty style and it avoids as much technical jargon as
possible. This is not a scholarly monograph in the traditional sense. It has a
loose citation style, largely avoiding inline citations or footnotes and
instead puts citation at the end in the “further reading section”. I think the
author’s goal here is laudable and he is successful in writing a contentful
history of the language in a way that won’t be intimidating to
non-specialists. 

The flip side of this, of course is that specialists like the readers of the
LINGUIST List are likely to be frustrated by the lack of rigor and detail that
they may be otherwise accustomed to. One particularly striking example is the
fact that Doyle provides some pronunciation guides for the language in
English-style pronunciation forms. For example the sound [i] is rendered as
“/ee/”. This is accessible, but imprecise. It’s made slightly worse by the
fact that he puts these transcriptions between IPA style slash marks. As a
linguist I was perpetually thrown off by this but I suppose Doyle’s intended
audience would not be. 

As linguists, we should also not expect this book to provide a very detailed
philological analysis of the history of sound change and grammatical change in
the language. It doesn’t come close to providing that. In fact, that’s largely
absent from the book. For discussion of these matters one is forced to turn to
other scholarly work, such as McCone et al (1994)’s Stáir na Gaeilge. Again,
this is probably a wise decision on Doyle’s part given the audience for the
book, but linguists interested in the topic should not expect detailed
grammatical analyses. 

To most people, including probably all scholars from Ireland, the fact that a
book on the history of Irish should be hibernocentric and tied mostly to the
use of the language on the island of Ireland itself shouldn’t be much a
surprise. I am, however, a scholar whose work straddles the Irish Sea. I work
on both Irish and Scottish Gaelic. I was a little frustrated with the early
chapters, in particular, in that they didn’t pursue in a little more depth the
use of Irish outside of Ireland itself. Early Modern Irish was a regional
language. It was also the spoken and literary language of the Kingdoms of
Scotland and the Isle of Man during the early periods described by this book –
times at which Ireland itself was under assault by external forces. It is easy
to be limited by one's modern conceptions of nationhood. But in medieval
Ireland, Scotland and Man, there was a much more fluid cultural and economic
relationship among these now distinct nations with now distinct versions of
Gaelic. Doyle briefly touches on these connections and relationships, but not
in a serious way.  Of course, this critique does not apply to later chapters,
where the notion of Irish identity was more clearly defined by the geographic
boundaries of the island itself. 

My critiques here are perhaps all unfair to Doyle’s fine work. Although
trained as a professional linguist, Doyle is not writing for us. He’s writing
for non-linguists and primarily for people who are interested in the history
of Irish in the context of the Irish nation-state. In this he is clearly
successful. The book is beautifully produced and is an easy and engaging read.
It also makes available to non-Irish speakers a fair amount of material that
was previously available only in Irish. Within that context, this is a book
that needed to be written and is an important contribution to not only the
history of the Irish language, but of Ireland itself.

REFERENCES

Corkery, Daniel (1924). The Hidden Ireland. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. 

McCone, Kim (1994). Stáir na Gaeilge. Maigh Nuad: Coláiste Phádraig.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Andrew Carnie is Professor of Linguistics and Dean of the Graduate College at
the University of Arizona. His research is primarily on the syntax and
phonology of the Modern Celtic languages.





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