Language Policy and Social Reproduction Ireland 1893-1993 [Hardcover]

During the nineteenth century, Irish-speaking communities declined almost to the point of extinction. But in 1922 the new Irish state launched a broad strategy to re-establish Irish as a national language. This book looks at that policy and its impact over the last seventy years. P??draig ?? Riag??in focuses not only on the evolvingstructureof bilingualism in Ireland but also on theprocessof bilingual reproduction. His analysis is based on a series of language surveys conducted between 1973 and 1993.

This is an interesting, challenging contribution to studies of language policy and language planning in general, as well as to our understanding of Irish-English bilingualism in Ireland....The book thus contributes to the development of hypotheses about the fate of linguistic minorities in the modern world...This is a first glimmer of the rethinking that needs to be done. --American Journal of Sociology