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Language, Identity and Liberation in Contemporary Irish LiteratureA “Habitable Grief”?: The Legacy of Cultural and Political Strife in Ireland’s Contentious Language Systems

Language, Identity and Liberation in Contemporary Irish Literature: A “Habitable Grief”?: The... [Since the Statutes of Kilkenny in the fourteenth century, language systems in Ireland have been inextricably linked to cultural and political affiliations. Throughout the nineteenth century as nationalism grew worldwide, linguistic and religious association came to manifest itself on national lines, developing into a Unionist and Nationalist divide, which has haunted the region for generations. The 1801 Act of Union that officially joined Ireland with England, Wales and Scotland under the British Crown, led to an association of eighteenth-century Enlightenment English with the colonial state, a language system believed to be associated with order, reason and power. In the early decades of the century, pockets of rural peasantry pushed to the West of Ireland by Cromwell centuries before, continued to speak Ireland’s mother tongue. But by the century’s end, only 13 percent of the population spoke Irish (Filppula 1999, 9). While the language continued to serve as a nostalgic symbol of Irish cultural purity it was rendered virtually useless in the wake of British imperialism, a tongue affiliated with poverty, ignorance and desolation.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Language, Identity and Liberation in Contemporary Irish LiteratureA “Habitable Grief”?: The Legacy of Cultural and Political Strife in Ireland’s Contentious Language Systems

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2009
ISBN
978-1-349-31489-8
Pages
1 –23
DOI
10.1057/9780230275089_1
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Since the Statutes of Kilkenny in the fourteenth century, language systems in Ireland have been inextricably linked to cultural and political affiliations. Throughout the nineteenth century as nationalism grew worldwide, linguistic and religious association came to manifest itself on national lines, developing into a Unionist and Nationalist divide, which has haunted the region for generations. The 1801 Act of Union that officially joined Ireland with England, Wales and Scotland under the British Crown, led to an association of eighteenth-century Enlightenment English with the colonial state, a language system believed to be associated with order, reason and power. In the early decades of the century, pockets of rural peasantry pushed to the West of Ireland by Cromwell centuries before, continued to speak Ireland’s mother tongue. But by the century’s end, only 13 percent of the population spoke Irish (Filppula 1999, 9). While the language continued to serve as a nostalgic symbol of Irish cultural purity it was rendered virtually useless in the wake of British imperialism, a tongue affiliated with poverty, ignorance and desolation.]

Published: Oct 9, 2015

Keywords: Language System; Linguistic System; Irish Culture; Contact Language; Irish Language

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