Is there an educational advantage to speaking Irish? An investigation of the relationship between education and ability to speak Irish
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Iarfhlaith Watson
Abstract
In this article new findings are outlined that show a relationship between ability to speak Irish and level of education. The authors' statistical analysis of International Social Survey Programme data from a survey in 2003 on national identity reveals that Irish speakers have been more likely than non Irish speakers to attend university (or equivalent). This likelihood is strongest amongst people who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, and more particularly amongst women rather than men of this age group. This is not the case amongst the youngest age group, perhaps because of developments in the education system and in the economy. The findings are placed in the context of the political use made of both the Irish language and the education system in Ireland historically and more recently. The effect on the Irish language of changes in education, as well as the role of the Irish language as cultural capital and symbolic capital are discussed.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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Articles in the same Issue
- Multilingualism: the case for a new research focus
- Language politics and policy in the United States: implications for the immigration debate
- Polish Canadians and Polish immigrants in Canada: self-identity and language attitude
- Languages in the Canton of Grisons
- Campus English: lexical variations in Cameroon
- Codeswitching and ethnicity: grammatical types of codeswitching in the Afrikaans speech community
- Book reviews
- Is there an educational advantage to speaking Irish? An investigation of the relationship between education and ability to speak Irish
