Abstract
Ireland is a bilingual state with Irish and English as official languages. The regular census shows that a substantial part of the population, almost 13%, speak a language other than Irish and English at home, however (Census 2016: 54). Recent studies have started to address the question in how far these languages are also used in the public sphere in Ireland, but often rely entirely on research in the city centre of Dublin (e.g. Kallen 2010; McMonagle 2017). To add to this perspective, this talk investigates which languages are used in the linguistic landscape of shopping areas in south Dublin that cater primarily to local residents (see also Schulte 2016). The linguistic landscaping data is supplemented by interviews with residents. In addition to that, it is compared with the results of a linguistic ethnography of L2 speakers of Irish English who live in the Dublin metropolitan area. In spite of the wide-spread use of immigrant languages in the home, English dominates the linguistic landscape of Dublin, especially on commercial and private signage, while Irish is used in addition to English on official signs. Languages other than that are only marginally used. This dominance of English can also be ascertained through the ethnography that was carried out.
References
Census 2016. 2017. Summary Results – Part 1. Central Statistics Office, Ireland. <https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart1/Census2016SummaryPart1.pdf> last accessed 19 Nov 2020.
Kallen, Jeffrey L. 2010. Changing landscapes: Language, space and policy in the Dublin linguistic landscape. In Adam Jaworski & Crispin Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space. London: Continuum, 41-58.
McMonagle, Sarah. 2017. Dublin. Linguistic habitus and hierarchies in the (new) mutlilingual city. In Hagen Peukert & Ingrid Gogolin (eds.), Dynamics of linguistic diversity. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 235-258.
Schulte, Marion. 2016. Language contact and language politics in Ireland: Linguistic landscapes in south Dublin. 10Plus1: Living Linguistics 2: 118-130. <http://10plus1journal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/10plus1_Issue-2_Journal-Article_Schulte_Linguistic-Landscapes-in-South-Dublin_118-130.pdf> last accessed 19 Nov 2020.