Language legislation in Ireland and the United Kingdom: Exploring the gaps between theory and practice

The central objective in this thesis is to explore the gaps between the normative justifications advanced for language rights and language legislative protection and the effective realisation of those rights and legislative provisions in practice. This objective is achieved by examining the scope and application of language rights and legislative provisions within language legislation in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Drawing on Canadian jurisprudence advocating for language rights to be recognised as “purposeful”, the thesis considers the extent to which Ireland and the United Kingdom have limited the acceptance of positive obligations as they relate to the provision of language services in the public sphere. In arguing that language rights are distinct in nature, the thesis suggests that in order for language rights to be effectively realised, an approach to language rights and language legislation more generally must be underpinned by a substantive vision of equality, otherwise language rights and legislative provisions merely amount to symbolic recognition and vacuous rhetoric as opposed to being substantive and enabling rights and provisions. Having said that, the thesis also recognises and elucidates the practical difficulties that arise in the realisation of language rights and language legislative provisions and in doing so seeks to stimulate further dialogue about the nature and limits of language rights and language legislation.

Learning from minority: Exploring Irish Protestant experience

This paper, based on a narrative research inquiry, presents and explores a number of stories relating to the experience and identity of members of the small Irish Protestant minority. Drawing on these stories it uses Foucault’s conceptualisation of power and discourse to consider community, social withdrawal, and two different but linked expressions of silence as acts of resistance. These were simultaneously utilised to preserve a culture and ethos diametrically opposed to the religious and political hegemony of the Irish Catholic state and to combat the threat of extinction. The article concludes that an exploration of Ireland’s traditional religious minority not only raises awareness concerning a specific group’s experience but extends an understanding of the issues with which minorities (in more general terms) may have to cope in order to survive.