The native-non-native dichotomy in minority language contexts

Comparisons between Irish and Galician*

Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo
Heriot-Watt University / Universidade de Vigo

In minority language contexts, the aim of language policy and planning initiatives is frequently to enhance their survival prospects by increasing individuals knowledge and use of such languages in a variety of social contexts. The success of such policies depends on a variety of factors. These include the ability of policy to encourage maintenance of the language amongst existing speakers (the so-called native speakers of the language) and its revival amongst individuals in the community who no longer speak it and who have become native speakers of another language, typically, the dominant language. However, the task of policy makers and language planners is often made more difficult by sociolinguistic, socio-economic, socio-geographical and ideological differences between native speakers and non-native newcomers to the language. Rather than forming a unified speech community, native and non-native speakers of the minority language very often see themselves as being socially and linguistically incompatible. The purpose of this article is to examine the native-non-native dichotomy in two minority language contexts: Irish in the Republic of Ireland and Galician in the Autonomous Community of Galicia. Keywords: native speakers, non-native speakers, minority languages, Irish language, Galician language

The concept of native speaker has frequently figured in linguistics and its related strands, including sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. Typical definitions of the concept have tended to draw on the assumed idea that native speakers seemingly innate proficiency in a language (Pennycook 1994) is a consequence of growing up speaking it in the home, having the language as their mother tongue, having acquired it from birth (Firth & Wagner 1997) and belonging to a speech community with a strong historical association with the language. Endowed with these qualities, native speakers have tended to be seen in opposition to second language
Language Problems & Language Planning 35:2 (2011), 139159. doi 10.1075/lplp.35.2.03oro issn 02722690 / e-issn 15699889 John Benjamins Publishing Company

140 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

speakers as the repository and guardians of the true or authentic language, the model setter or, in Chomskyan terms, the ideal speaker (Chomsky 1965). However, classifying speakers of a language within a native-non-native dichotomy has been shown to be problematic (see for example Davies 1991, 2003; Kachru 1990; Phillipson 1992; Rampton 1990; Singh 1998, 2006; Doerr 2009) and it is only from an abstract conception of language that a native speaker can be defined in unambiguous terms (Bloomfield 1933, Chomsky 1957). However, from a sociolinguistic perspective the concept is more difficult to define and a direct relationship between mother tongue, place of origin, knowledge of a language and native speaker cannot always be assumed. In fact, the term mother tongue is itself ambiguous (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson 1989, Pokorn 2005). As with attempts at defining a native speaker of a language, it is equally difficult to determine what the mother tongue of an individual really is, particularly in multilingual settings. Native speaker and mother tongue can therefore be regarded as concepts which in many ways reinforce a static picture of sociolinguistic reality. As such, they are concepts which are of somewhat limited utility in describing heteroglossic societies in which multiple linguistic codes and languages make up the linguistic repertoire of a population. What is perhaps more important is not that speakers are native or non-native per se but that as speakers they identify with a certain language or linguistic code and label it as their own (Rampton 1990, Singh 2006). The classification of the native speaker is thus constructed by speakers themselves and corresponds to a culturally, as opposed to naturally, constructed identity (Park 2007). Despite ambiguities and real truths about who can and cannot be defined as a native speaker, the term is nonetheless frequently used as a label to distinguish between different types of speakers. Adjectives such as authentic, pure and innate are often associated with the traits of native speakers, while non-native speakers use of language tends to be described as artificial, contaminated and acquired. Frequently, native speakers take on the role of what can be described in Bourdieus (1991) terms as the legitimate speaker. In other words, native speakers claim authority over what form of language and way of speaking is considered correct or appropriate. The basic premise, that a native speaker has more authority than the non-native speaker, has been looked at from different points of view. Frekkos study of adult learners of Catalan, for instance, challenges the notion that native speakers have more authority over the language than other kinds of speakers. She observes that social class was more important than first language in determining authority (Frekko 2009:161). In fact, students with the greatest ability to produce normative Catalan and to recite the grammatical and orthographic rules of normative Catalan were awarded most authority, independently of their real ability to speak or interact in Catalan.
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 141

The classic definition of the native speaker as user of the pure, authentic or legitimate form of language has received considerable attention in the area of second language acquisition, particularly the teaching and learning of English as a second language. There are now more non-native speakers than native speakers of English (Crystal 2003; Graddol 1999, 2006), either as second language learners or as a result of colonisation. In this new context, labelling the native speaker as the legitimate speaker has come under much scrutiny. The concept of World Englishes (Holborow 1999, Kachru 1990) reflects this new perspective and moves away from the more traditional understanding of native speaker as a user of British or American English in favour of non-native or new speakers of the language (see Phillipson 1992, Jenkins 2007). Table1 below shows the emerging changes in the linguistic prestige of native and non-native speakers of English. Linguistic prestige is understood here as the value given to a linguistic variety in line with the socioeconomic status of its speakers (see Woolard 1989), a value which tends to be associated with the standard language variety. Linguistic prestige can be distinguished from language prestige, which is the value given to languages as objects in terms of social mobility, usually linked to their inclusion in the education system and in accessing the labour market. In the case of minority languages, the link between knowledge of these languages and the processes of social mobility constitutes the main motivating force behind their production and reproduction (Williams 2006:134). While native speakers have traditionally been regarded as the arbiters of quality and authority and therefore the high prestige speakers, in the case of global Englishes a new context is emerging in which the former prestige of the native speaker is shifting and is at least partly being transferred to the non-native speaker. The appearance of the concept of global languages, such as English, has called into question the relevance of the native speaker, who is seen as an obstacle to the free development of the language. Graddol (2006:114) argues that in the new, rapidly emerging climate, native speakers may increasingly be identified as part of the problem rather than the source of a solution and native speaker accents may seem too remote from the people that learners expect to communicate with. This seems to suggest an underlying global-local tension at play. If non-native English speakers outnumber native speakers world-wide, the very concept reminds us that the statistics are global. Yet, issues of prestige and perceptions about the new Englishes which are emerging in different parts of the world are negotiated locally (see for example Pennycook 2007, 2010). Moreover, the notion of prestige is not uniform across all communities (Milroy 1991) and distinctions need to be made between overt and covert prestige. While certain linguistic codes may be more positively valued in terms of social status, others may have a hidden status linked to group solidarity or ethnic identity.
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

142 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

Table1. Linguistic prestige continuum in native-non-native dichotomy of a world language

World Language (e.g. English) Majority Native speaker Non-native speaker High Low Global High-low* Low-high*

* high-low represents a continuum from high to low prestige; low-high represents a continuum from low to high prestige

The non-native or new speaker in minority language contexts1

While interest in the native-non-native dichotomy of English has emerged as an important field of linguistic investigation, less attention has been given to exploring this dichotomy in minority language research. As Table2 shows, in contradistinction to the high prestige value traditionally associated with being a native speaker of a dominant world language such as English, the classic model of what it means to be a native speaker of a minority language has tended to be based on a low-prestige and stigmatised social identity, offering little incentive for native speakers to want to maintain the language or for newcomers to learn it. An exception to this model is Catalan, which despite being a minority language has traditionally enjoyed high social prestige (see Woolard 1989). Nevertheless, here also the authority of the native speaker is sometimes challenged. Frekko (2009:181) has shown that native speakers, particularly amongst the older generation, do not always have access to normative or standard Catalan and can often claim less authority over the language than new speakers.
Table2. Linguistic prestige continuum for native-non-native dichotomy of minority languages
Minority Language Classical model Native speaker Non-native speaker Low High Model postrevitalization Low High-low*

* high-low represents a continuum from high to low prestige.

While the aim of often well-intentioned language policies in minority language contexts is typically to create a unified speech community, frequently because of linguistic, sociolinguistic, socioeconomic, socio-geographical and ideological differences between native and non-native newcomers to the language these groups
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 143

perceive themselves as being socially and linguistically incompatible. Moreover, like the native-non-native dichotomy for English, in many minority language contexts the number of non-native speakers often surpasses the number of native speakers. As we will see in our discussion of Irish, this is already a reality. While this is not yet the case for Galician, sociolinguistic surveys point to a movement in that direction, particularly amongst the younger generation (IGE 2008, Ramallo 2010). The question of who becomes the legitimate speaker in these new sociolinguistic contexts becomes a pertinent question. Nevertheless, while language policies in many minority language contexts have succeeded in raising the status of the low-prestige language, these policies have not necessarily raised the status of the native speaker whose variety of language has undergone a re-stigmatisation in the light of a newly created standard form of language. Moreover, as Table2 shows, the socioeconomic position of the native speaker often remains unchanged, maintaining a subordinate and low prestige status in comparison with non-native speakers who tend to come from urban, middle-class sectors of the population. The prestige value of the minority language may have shifted upwards, but this prestige frequently tends to be in the direction of the non-native speaker, as opposed to the native speaker of the language. However, the linguistic prestige or status associated with the non-native speaker is often made unstable (as illustrated in the High-Low continuum in Table2) by a purist discourse which attempts to prioritize form above function; this discourse is frequently manifested when certain speakers ways of using language are corrected by others (Kurhila 2001, Domnguez-Seco 2003). This purist ideology minimizes the prestige value of non-native speakers of minority languages, above all amongst those speakers who do not have a high level of competence in the language (Robert 2009). In the remainder of this paper, we examine the nativenon-native dichotomy with reference to two such minority language cases: Irish in the Republic of Ireland and Galician in the Autonomous Community of Galicia in north-western Spain.

The native-non-native dichotomy in Irish and Galician

Native speakers of Irish and Galician have tended to be described as such by virtue of having gained proficiency in their respective languages in the home and of belonging to a community of speakers that is historically associated with these languages. The native speaker of Irish, or cainteoir dchais (meaning native speaker), came to be associated with a number of small, scattered and geographically isolated communities along the north-western, western and southern coastal areas of Ireland. These areas were also amongst the most economically deprived parts of
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

144 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

the country, suffering highest levels of poverty and emigration. Since the seventeenth century, English had come to be recognised as the language of prestige and social mobility and, with the exception of these peripheral areas, the majority of the population in Ireland had become monolingual speakers of English. According to the 1851 census, less than five percent of the population were returned as monolingual speakers of Irish. As in the Irish context, the native speaker of Galician, or falante tradicional, has tended to be linked to a certain geographical area, specifically rural Galicia or an aldea (village). While there is little formal data available on the number and socio-demographic distribution of Galician speakers at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, some information can be gleaned from the Mapa Sociolingstico de Galicia, which deduces from the reported accounts of the language spoken by respondents grandparents that in 1877, 88.5% of Galicians continued to be monolingual Galician speakers (Fernndez and Rodrguez Neira 1995:5253). Moreover, Spanish was spoken only in Galician cities and amongst sectors of the emerging petit bourgeoisie and intellectual middle classes. Up until 1900, over ninety percent of Galicians lived in rural areas, with less than ten percent concentrated in Galicias urban centres (Rei-Doval 2007). This divide can be taken to correspond loosely to the linguistic divide between Galician and Spanish speakers at the time. Although language shift away from Galician has been comparably slower than it was for Irish, at the end of the nineteenth century Galician, like Irish, was associated with a stigmatised social identity, offering little in the way of symbolic capital. Both languages underwent processes of linguistic revitalization through language policy and planning initiatives dating from the1920s in Ireland and the 1980s in Galicia (ORourke 2011). The maintenance of the Irish language in core areas continued to be a key priority for the newly-formed independent Irish government in the post-1922 period, who saw the importance of these communities as a repository of oral Irish, unbroken in tradition and rich in idiom (Dorian 1988). The scattered landmass of surviving Irish-speaking communities became collectively known as the Gaeltacht. The word Gaeltacht, meaning the Irish-speaking population in Ireland (and in Scotland, where it is written Gaidhealtachd) is an old word but was used to designate a specific geographical region in Ireland following the publication of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Preservation of the Gaeltacht, in January 1925 (Mac Giolla Chrost 2005, Walsh 2002). As out-migration and depopulation were key characteristics of Gaeltacht areas, curbing such trends through a regional development programme was seen as a key element in maintaining them as Irish-speaking ( Riagin 1997). However, alongside the policy of language maintenance in core Irish-speaking parts of the country, the Irish government adopted a second facet of language policy, which
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 145

was directed towards the revitalization of the language in areas where it had ceased to be spoken. One of the key agencies employed in the restoration of the language was the education system. The aim of this facet of the policy was to re-teach the language to what had become a predominantly English-speaking population ( Laoire 2008). Although in the Galician case, the process of language shift to the dominant language has been slower than it was for Irish, there has nonetheless been a growing tendency in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly amongst the younger generation, to switch to Spanish. At the beginning of the twentieth first century, Galicia continues to be predominantly rural, with 34 per cent of the population living in municipalities of less than 10,000 inhabitants and 65 per cent in municipalities of less than 50,000 (IGE 2008) but increased urbanization since the 1960s has led to an erosion of the Galician-speaking hinterland as a result of migration to Spanish-speaking urban centres as well as western European countries in search of work. These socioeconomic and socio-structural changes in Galicia coincided with the unfavourable socio-political conditions for the language during the Franco dictatorship (19391975) during which coercive measures were put in place, prohibiting the use of Galician (along with Catalan and Basque) in public domains (Freitas 2008). Formal attempts to address language issues in Galicia thus span a comparably shorter period than Irish (ORourke 2011) and did not begin to take shape until the 1980s, following Spains transition to democracy, in the context of a less centralized political system which granted autonomous status to the different regions of Spain, including Galicia. This allowed regional governments (the Autonomas) to develop their own language policies and thus led to Galician, Catalan and Euskera (Basque) gaining co-official status in the areas where they were spoken. Although the division between Galician-speaking rural areas and Spanishspeaking cities (mainly concentrated in Galicias coastal cities of Vigo, A Corua, Pontevedra and Ferrol) has not been given an official label (as is the case with Irish), there are frequent references to the idea of two Galicias (Rodrguez Gonzlez 1997:29), reflecting geographical differences in the regions sociolinguistic reality.2 As we have seen in the Irish context, at the end of nineteenth century the territorial area identified as Irish-speaking and later officially known as the Gaeltacht already constituted a small landmass compared with the predominantly Englishspeaking remainder of the country. However, when language policy in favour of the Galician language was initially instituted in the 1980s, Galician was still the numerically dominant language in the region. Unlike the two-pronged policy of maintenance and revitalization in the Irish context, a blanket policy approach, designed for the autonomous community as a whole, was adopted for Galician and largely ignored territorial differences in the distribution of Galician speakers
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

146 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

(Lorenzo Surez 2008:22). Language policy for Galician revolves around Normalizacin Lingstica (Language Normalisation), promoting the inclusion of Galician in domains from which it has come to be historically absent. As in the case of Irish in the post-1920s period, the model of sociolinguistic prestige which was constructed in Galicia from 1978 centred on the legitimisation of Galician as well as its inclusion in the education system, public sector employment and the media. The aim was to enhance the social value of the autochthonous language, encouraging its maintenance amongst existing native speakers and its revitalization amongst newcomers to the language. An area of strategic concern in language planning initiatives for Irish and Galician was the putting in place of the necessary infrastructure to ensure that the use of these languages throughout their respective populations became a reality. In the public sector, for instance, knowledge of Irish was made a compulsory requirement and competence in the language became part of the assessment for advancement within Civil Service positions ( Riain 1994). Policies and language planning measures, particularly during the early decades of the twentieth century, also changed what Riagin, following Bourdieu, refers to as the rules of the social mobility process in Ireland at the time, by awarding benefits to those with a proficiency in the language ( Riagin 1997:173). Similarly, in the case of Galician the process of decentralization which emerged as a result of the Spanish Constitution in 1978 contributed to the linguistic empowerment of the society. The Galician language began to be required in the public sector and over the past thirty years there has been marked increase in institutional support for the language, particularly through its legal recognition and its inclusion in the education system and in the media (Beswick 2007). As a result of these changes, the value of Irish and Galician has been enhanced, encouraging native speakers to maintain their respective languages and potential non-natives to want to learn and revitalize them. In making these changes, attempts were made to alter the negative social meanings that had historically come to be associated with these languages by converting economic and social penalties (Dorian 1981) into economic rewards. As well as the status-enhancing aspects of language policy for Irish and Galician, attention was also given to corpus planning in an attempt to modernise the languages and render them suitable for modern-day functions, including their use in literature, education and key formal domains. Both languages had previously enjoyed long literary histories dating from the seventh century in the case of Irish and the thirteenth century for Galician. Thus the basis of a literary and written language existed when revitalization movements for Irish and Galician emerged in the late nineteenth century. However, the last great periods in which they had appeared as written languages lay several centuries in the past. As Dorian (1994:484) emphasizes, in the case of Irish what had been a brilliant literary
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 147

language survived in the monuments that had been produced by its practitioners; but so far as the spoken language was concerned, what remained was rustic in character, surviving in daily use almost exclusively among a peasantry. A similar pattern can be identified in the case of Galician, where, although the language continued to be used by the majority of the population, this population was made up of rural peasants (Ramallo 2007). The issue of forming a standard language in the Ireland of the 1920s and in Galicia in the 1980s raised challenging questions for language planners in both contexts. When Irish was established as the first official language of the Irish state in 1937, there were three main dialects spoken, corresponding to varieties used in Ulster, Connacht and Munster. According to Baoill (1988:111), none of the dialects of Irish had any obvious superiority in prestige or numbers, although the fact that Irelands first Constitution was written in pure southern dialect may suggest the existence of certain hierarchies across the different varieties. Nevertheless, the southern dialect did not emerge as the single prestige form and instead a compromise was used when coming up with a standard (Tulloch 2006). Despite its internally homogenous appearance, different dialects and sociolects of Galician can be identified. Three main linguistic blocs eastern, central and western, each containing individual sub-varieties can be identified (Fernndez Rei 1990). Although the spoken forms of Galician are influenced by Spanish, showing the effects of a long period of language contact (Rojo 2004, Ramallo 2007), this also depends on geography. The Galician spoken in areas along the coast is often considered, in a sense, to be the purest and least influenced by Spanish. The standardisation process has, nonetheless, made explicit attempts at replacing existing Spanish-derived terminology with more Galicianized equivalents.

The changing profile of Irish and Galician speakers

Efforts to maintain the Gaeltacht as Irish-speaking have not met with full success and the number of Irish speakers in these areas has continued to fall. The decline in intergenerational transmission of the language had already begun in the seventeenth century and continued to advance throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There was a clear break in the historical link between the language and the community as the number of native Irish speakers shifting to English continued. The decreased use of the language in the community coincides with an ongoing decline in first-language speakers, as a growing number of second-language speakers of Irish acquire linguistic competence in the language through the education system and not the home. All indicators over the decades since the establishment of the independent state in 1922 have suggested an unrelenting pattern of
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

148 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

decline in native speakers. The findings of the most recent major sociolinguistic study on Irish in the Gaeltacht ( Giollagin, Mac Donnacha and others 2007) confirm this, painting a clear picture of decline in the use of Irish as a community language in these areas. The revitalization of Irish outside the core Irish-speaking parts of the country has, however, in many ways been more successful than the language maintenance policy. The numbers in the population claiming ability in the language have increased with every census. According to the 2006 census results, there are 1,656,790 Irish speakers in the Republic of Ireland and only 64,265 of these live in one of the officially designated Gaeltacht areas. There has thus been a gradual increase in the number of second-language speakers. They can be defined as non-native because their proficiency in the language has not resulted from being brought up with the language in the home or the community, but instead from having acquired it at school as an academic subject, or in a smaller, but nonetheless increasing, number of cases, from having attended immersion-type schooling. Similarly, Galicias blanket policy is not proving any more successful in maintaining core Galician-speaking areas and is not curbing the process of linguistic substitution that had already begun several centuries back. The result is that the number of native speakers continues to decline and Galician-speaking rural heartlands are shrinking through out-migration to Galicias cities (Ramallo 2007). Some twenty-five years of sociolinguistic studies on the language thus point to an uncertain future. The range of functional domains in which Galician is now used has been expanded. Ability to speak, read and write in the language amongst the entire population has increased significantly and language attitudes have seen a substantial improvement. However, the intergenerational transmission of the language has declined (IGE 2008). As with Irish, the decline in native speakers of the language has to a certain degree been counteracted by an increase in the number of non-native speakers of Galician, particularly amongst the younger generation, through their exposure to the language in the education system. Policy provisions in the area of education have supported a bilingual strategy aiming to establish a context in which, at the end of formal schooling, all Galicians are expected to have equal proficiency in both languages.3 However, the education system has tended to have a Castilianizing effect on so-called native speakers of Galician, from traditional Galicianspeaking rural communities, and an insufficiently Galicianizing effect on urban newcomers to the language, to bring about substantial increases in language use. Socioeconomic and socio-structural changes in Galicia have meant that, as in Ireland, there has been increased migration from rural to urban areas in search of work. Therefore, the traditionally Galician-speaking strongholds are being eroded. Although there continue to be more native speakers of Galician than newcomers
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 149

to the language, a different trend is emerging, amongst the younger generation particularly, in which there are more non-native than native speakers. Thus, as with Irish, a change in the profile of Galician speakers is emerging. As in the Irish context, in Galicia there has been an increase in the number of second-language speakers of Galician, especially amongst the younger age groups. In Galicia the numbers reporting Galician as the first language in which they learned to speak fell from 52% to 47% over the past five years. Monolingual speakers of Galician also fell by 30% over the same period. This decline has, however, been counteracted by an increase in the numbers reporting bilingualism in both Galician and Spanish (IGE 2008). As a result of language policies in education over the previous thirty years, practically all Galicians under the age of thirty-five, whose home language is not Galician, have acquired both oral and written competence in the language (Ramallo 2010). Language policies for Irish and Galician have thus shifted some of the ownership of these languages from the native to the non-native speaker. This shift in ownership opens up the question of who are now considered the legitimate speakers of these languages and of potential tensions between the two groups as they attempt to control the production and distribution of a new set of linguistic resources (Heller 1998, 2003; Heller and Martin-Jones 2001).

Social and economic divides

The link between education and the labour market and the influence of language policy in these areas contributed to changes in the socio-demographic profile of Irish and Galician speakers. Riagin (1997) suggests that, to reverse the process of language shift to English, the Irish State used its authority to change the structure of the language market prevailing in Ireland in order to enhance the symbolic, cultural and economic value attaching to competence to speak Irish. As a result of this policy, successive sociolinguistic surveys since 1975 have found that those with the highest level of ability in Irish and with most positive support for the language are amongst middle-class, educated and urban sectors of the population. Similarly, in the Galician context, although the governments provision for the language was designed for the whole population, Hoffmann (1996:104) notes that language planning initiatives in the area of education and certain sectors of the labour market would also seem to indicate a strong focus on young urban middleclass speakers. As with Irish, non-native speakers of Galician possess a high degree of cultural and social capital and are therefore notably different from native or traditional speakers. In both the Irish and Galician contexts the changing profile of their respective speakers has to varying degrees enhanced their social visibility.
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

150 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

What counts as the legitimate way of speaking?

In both Ireland and Galicia, native and non-native speakers have varying linguistic competence. Sociolinguistic surveys on the Irish language (see CILAR 1975; Riagin and Gliasin 1984, 1994; Mac Gril 2009) have shown that linguistic ability is not uniform across second-language learners, ranging from a capacity to speak a few words right up to what these surveys term native speaker ability, with only a very small percentage claiming the latter. Those who learn Irish as a second language align themselves with varying degrees of success to one of the regional dialects, but adopt a variety of the language that is generally closest to Standard Irish. As Dorian (1994:485) suggests, the standard tends to be seen as artificial, and to speakers of living Irish dialects Gaelige BL th (Dublin Irish) is often stilted and unnatural (Hindley 1990:60). The school-based knowledge on which non-natives tend to depend, leads to what native speakers sometimes label book-Irish, perceived as containing archaic vocabulary, phrases and neologisms. These perceptions are in some way indicative of what Kabel (2000) refers to as the sometimes uneasy relationship between the native and non-native Irish speaker and the non-acceptance of Gaeilge Bhaile tha Cliath. Therefore, native speakers do not necessarily accept learners as equals and insiders within their group. This may explain why non-native speakers who wish to continue using Irish past the secondary school level are expected to choose a dialect with which to affiliate rather than use the artificial norms of the standard. In other words, purism and authenticity are often valued over modernity in the case of Irish (Garland 2008:111). Thus, as Cotter (2001:303) notes, while Standard Irish is used and ratified by Irish societys institutions, the prestige targets for speakers remain the various dialects of the Gaeltacht. Nevertheless, in written domains of use, the standard would seem to be recognised as the prestige norm. hIfearnin (2008), for instance, notes that after having been adopted by the education system and by all state agencies, the standard took on its own dynamic to become the only acceptable form in most domains of written Irish usage. Somewhat similar observations can be made in the Galician context, where there are also tensions between the legitimacy attributed to the standard variety of Galician used by the non-native or new speakers and the traditional speech of rural native speakers. Sociolinguistic surveys on linguistic competence amongst second-language speakers of Galician show that a higher percentage report ability to speak the language irrespective of whether they are native speakers (IGE 2008). High levels of competence in the language across the population quite generally can in part be explained by the high degree of intelligibility between Galician and Spanish. Because the contact languages are very similar in syntax and lexicon, almost the entire population has passive competence in the minority language.
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 151

Nevertheless, as with the continuum of reported competence levels of Irish speakers, the typology of speakers of Galician is also very diverse. Although the category of native speaker is still legitimate, for the future of the language its relevance is somewhat limited, given the progressive decline in this category of speakers. Like non-native speakers of Irish, neofalantes (new speakers) of Galician tend to speak Standard Galician, having learned it through formal schooling as opposed to intergenerational transmission within the home and in the community in which they live. The more standard variety of language used by these speakers is often described as book-Galician and TV Galician (Iglesias and Ramallo 2003) and, according to Lpez Varccel (cited in del Valle 2000:122), has led to criticism of a language form which is frequently perceived as artificial, alien and full of errors. This standard form of Galician has also led to the stigmatisation of native speakers way of speaking, particularly amongst older and economically poorer speakers who tend to associate Standard Galician with a purer, more correct, more authentic and more exemplary way of speaking. This is apparent in what is referred to as castrapo (Castilian rag), a derogatory term often used by native speakers to describe their own way of speaking. These references to new speakers use of Galician reflect many of the stigmas associated with dialectal forms of Galician and prejudicial beliefs held particularly by older Galician speakers about traditional Galician. They also reinforce the perception that Standard Galician is the new prestige norm. These stigmas would nonetheless seem to be disappearing amongst younger native speakers of Galician, who no longer have prejudicial beliefs about the language as a result of the status-enhancing effects of its inclusion in the education system.

Differing ideologies
In ideological terms, non-native speakers of Irish and Galician are also very different from native speakers of these languages. Hindley (1990), for instance, talks about Irish language enthusiasts, whom he describes as almost invariably middle-class and usually urban-bred, and much disliked in the Gaeltacht for their insistence that preserving Irish comes before all other considerations, including attaining prosperity or participating in the full benefits of modern communications. The status of Irish as the official language of the Irish State, a state to which natives and non-natives belong, is used by non-natives to justify their claim to some ownership of the language. The important role given to Irish as a symbol of ethnic or group identity amongst the population is high amongst natives and nonnatives alike. According to national surveys, between half and two-thirds of the
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

152 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

population attach a strong ethnocultural value to the language ( Riagin 1997, 2007). Therefore, even those in the population with only a few words of Irish lay claim to some ownership of the language. Although in the past native speakers of Galician could be defined in Bouzadas (2003) terms as speakers by necessity, new speakers are now deciding to use Galician over Spanish and thus to take on a more dynamic role in the revitalization process (Fras-Conde 2006). For newcomers to Galician this choice is frequently seen to have ideological underpinnings that tend to be socially, politically and culturally loaded. Use of Galician, particularly amongst younger age groups in an urban context, is frequently seen as an ideological position with political connotations and associated with Galician nationalism. Speaking Galician in urban contexts thus becomes a form of marked or stigmatised behaviour, particularly in social contexts and amongst social groups where the language has been historically absent (ORourke 2006, 2011).This is despite the fact that Galician nationalism has been a much weaker political force in Galicia, in comparison to Basque and Catalan nationalism in Euskadi and Catalonia. It may therefore be the case that such perceptions are being developed outside these regions (in Castile, for instance), and attitudes in Madrid towards Spains other regional languages, Catalan and Euskera, are shaping the way people (including Galicians themselves) view the Galician language.

Concluding remarks
At first sight the Irish and Galician language pair would seem to represent very different language contact situations. The most obvious differences are (i) the structural distances between the languages in contact (Irish in contact with English and Galician in contact with Spanish), (ii) their socio-political status (Irish as the official language of the State and Galician as co-official within the Autonomous Community of Galicia) and (iii) their numerical strength: less than five percent of the population are active speakers of Irish compared to sixty percent in the case of Galician (for more detailed discussion see ORourke, 2011). Despite these differences, the survival prospects of both languages are threatened by the ongoing decline in intergenerational transmission in the home and as community languages. According to Fishman (1991), this family-home-neighbourhood-community nexus is key in the process of reversing language shift. This nexus is also of course closely linked to the native speaker, who, in line with the classic definition of the concept, is someone brought up speaking the language in the home and belonging to a speech community which has historical ties with the language. The question therefore is: Does the decline of the native speaker equate to the inevitable decline
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 153

of a language? Can minority languages such as Irish and Galician survive without native speakers? In order to answer these questions it is of course necessary, as we have argued here, to question the definition of native speaker itself, a concept which, as we have shown, has been widely contested in relation to lingua franca such as English. The validity of the concept can also be contested in minority language contexts such as Irish and Galician. Almost a century of language policy and planning measures for Irish have shown that efforts to maintain the Gaeltacht as Irish-speaking did not succeed and the number of Irish speakers within these communities has continued to be eroded. It thus follows that not all Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht can be classified as native speakers in the classic understanding of the term and a continuum of speakers exists. Giollagin (2002) suggests a typology of speaker types ranging from native speaker (defined as an individual from the Gaeltacht who has been brought up through the medium of Irish) to English speaker (defined as someone who cannot converse in Irish and is not actively learning the language). Between these two extremes he lists four other categories which he labels neo-native speaker, semi-active speaker, second-language speaker, and learner. The situation is complicated further by the increased number of second-language speakers of Irish who have gained competence in the language through the education system. It is thus likely that the term native Irish speaker or cainteoir dchais will become more ambiguous and that there will be much debate about labels such as native, non-native, learner, and so on. These ambiguities are already emerging among fluent Irish speakers whose parents are not native speakers of the language but who send their children to a Gaelscoil (Irish-medium school) in an urban context such as Dublin. How do we classify these speakers? Although native speakers of Galician, as understood in the classic definition of the term, continue to be in a majority, this trend is changing amongst the younger generation. Over the coming decades, the distinction between the falante tradicional (traditional speaker) and the neofalante (new speaker) is likely to become more blurred. While within the category of neofalantes there are several sub-categories (Fras Conde 2006), the generic label tends to be used to describe a certain group of Galician speakers who share a common set of socio-demographic, sociolinguistic and socio-political characteristics. New speakers tend to be found amongst younger age groups, and are often more middle-class and urban-based. They also tend to be highly aware of the potential threat to the survival of the Galician language and decisions to become Galician speakers are often politically motivated. Language policies aimed at increasing the communicative competence of the standard variety of minority languages through agents such as the education system or the media can, as we have seen in the Irish and Galician contexts, bring about changes in language attitudes and attract new speakers to these languages.
2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

154 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo

While it is unlikely that a language can survive without native speakers, in minority language contexts the generation of non-native speakers who can become new speakers of these languages can play an important role in the process of language revitalization. Such new speakers can re-initiate the process of intergenerational transmission in the home and community and thus have the potential to create new generations of native speakers. At the same time, however, the educated, urban and more middle-class profile of these new speakers and their use of the new prestige variety of the language often distance them from traditional native speakers both in the form of the language they use and the function they give to its use. In minority-language contexts, negative effects of interactions with native speakers on the part of non-native or new speakers can potentially reduce opportunities for speaking a minority language (see ORourke, forthcoming), hindering both efforts on the part of learners to become fluent speakers and their potential contribution to language revitalization (McEwan-Fujita 2010:29). There is therefore, as Newcombe (2007:114) suggests, a need to better understand the relationship between native and non-native speakers of minority languages and to find ways to enable these groups to work together more productively.

Notes
* This project was funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and we thank them for their generous support. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this work. 1. The terms non-native and new speaker are used here interchangeably. Both describe speakers who learned the language outside the home and who can to varying degrees become active speakers of the language. In the Galician context the linguistic similarities with its contact language, Spanish, means that all Galicians are receptively bilingual in both languages. It is not therefore difficult for a non-native speaker of Galician to become a new speaker of the language. By comparison, in the case of Irish, where the linguistic distance from its contact language, English, is much greater, opportunities for language use limit the potential to become an active speaker. 2. Apart from this rural and urban divide, the number of small- to medium-sized towns in Galicia has also grown over the course of the twentieth century. 3. Political changes in Galicia in 2009 brought an end to the socialist-nationalist coalition with the coming to power of a centre-right government. These political changes also brought with them changes in language policy and legislation in the area of education. These changes were the subject of significant political debate in Galicia. Although the presence of Galician in primary and secondary school education is equal to that of Spanish, in pre-school the language of the classroom is based on the childrens home language. This means that in urban contexts, where the majority of children are brought up speaking Spanish in the home, the presence of Galician for pre-school age groups is low or non-existent.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 155

References
Beswick, Jaine E. 2007. Regional Nationalism in Spain. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity. Bouzada-Fernndez, Xan M. 2003. Change of values and future of the Galician language. Estudios de Sociolingstica 3/2 & 4/1:321341. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press. Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research (CILAR). 1975. Report. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Cotter, Colleen. 2001. Continuity and vitality: Expanding domains through Irish-language radio. Leanne Hinton & Ken Hale, eds., The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Academic Press. 301311. Crystal, David. 2003. English as a Global Language. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. Davies, Alan. 1991. The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P. Davies, Alan. 2003. The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Del Valle, Jos. 2000. Monoglossic policies for a heteroglossic culture: Misinterpreted multilingualism in modern Galicia. Language and Communication 20:105132. Doerr, Neriko M. 2009. Investigating native speaker effects: Toward a new model of analyzing native speaker ideologies. Neriko M. Doerr, ed. The Native Speaker Concept: Ehtnographic Investigations of Native Speaker Effects. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1546. Domnguez-Seco, Luzia. 2003. Social prestige and linguistic identity. On the ideological conditions behind the standardisation of Galician. Estudios de Sociolingstica 3/2 & 4/1:207228. Dorian, Nancy C. 1981. Language Death. The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Dorian, Nancy C. 1988. The Celtic languages in the British Isles. Christina Bratt Paulston, ed. International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. New York, Westport CT & London: Greenwood Press. 109139. Dorian, Nancy C. 1994. Purism vs. compromise in language revitalization and language revival. Language in Society 23:479494. Fernndez, Mauro & Modesto Rodrguez Neira, coord. 1995. Usos lingisticos en Galicia. A Corua: Real Academia Galega. Fernndez Rei, Francisco. 1990. Dialectoloxa da lingua galega. Vigo: Xerais. Firth, Alan & Johannes Wagner. 1997. On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal 81/3:285300. Fishman, Joshua. 1991. Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Freitas, Pilar. 2008. A represin lingstica en Galicia no sculo XX. Vigo: Xerais. Frekko, Susan E. 2009. Social class, linguistic normativity and the authority of the native Catalan speaker in Barcelona. Neriko M. Doerr, ed. The Native Speaker Concept: Ehtnographic Investigations of Native Speaker Effects. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 161184. Fras-Conde, Xos. 2006. A normalizacin lingstica na Romania: a normalizacin da lingua e normalizacin dos falantes (o caso dos neofalantes). Ianua. Revista Philologica Romanica 6:4968.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

156 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo Garland, Jennifer N. 2008. The Minority Language and the Cosmopolitan Speaker: Ideologies of Irish Language Learners. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of California, Santa Barbara. Available on line at: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/Garland.pdf. Graddol, David. 1999. The decline of the native speaker. David Graddol & Ulrike Meinhof, eds. English in a Changing World. AILA Review 13:5768. Graddol, David. 2006. English Next. London: British Council. Heller, Monica. 1998. Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. London & New York: Longman. Heller, Monica. 2003. Crosswords: Language, Education and Ethnicity in French Ontario. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Heller, Monica & Marilyn Martin-Jones, eds. 2001. Voices of Authority. Education and Linguistic Difference. Westport, CT: Ablex. Hindley, Reg. 1990. The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary. London & New York: Routledge. Hoffmann, Carol. 1996. Language planning at the crossroads: The case of contemporary Spain. Carol Hoffmann, ed. Language, Culture and Communication. Clevedon, Philadelphia & Adelaide: Multilingual Matters. 93110. Holborow, Marnie. 1999. The Politics of English. London: Sage. Instituto Galego de Estatstica (IGE). 2008. Enquisa de Condicins de Vida das Familias. Santiago: Instituto Galego de Estatstica. Iglesias lvarez, Ana & Fernando Ramallo. 2003. Language as a diacritical in terms of cultural and resistance identities in Galicia. Estudios de sociolinguistica 3/2 & 4/1:255287. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford U. P. Kabel, Lars. 2000. Irish language enthusiasts and native speakers: An uneasy relationship. Gordon McCoy & Maolcholaim Scott, eds. Aithne na nGael Gaelic identities. Belfast: Ultach Trust. 133138. Kachru, Braj B. 1990. The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of Non-Native Englishes. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kurhila, Salla. 2001. Correction in talk between native and non-native speaker. Journal of Pragmatics 33/7:10831110. Lorenzo Surez, Anxo. 2008. A situacin lingstica do galego: unha lectura. Grial 179:1931. McEwan-Fujita, Emily. 2010. Ideology, affect, and socialization in language shift and revitalization: The experiences of adults learning Gaelic in the Western Isles of Scotland. Language in Society 39:2764. Mac Giolla Chrost, Diarmait. 2005. The Irish Language in Ireland: from Godel to Globalisation. London: Routledge. Mac Gril, Michel. 2009. The Irish Language and the Irish People. (Report on the Attitudes towards, Competence in and Use of the Irish Language in the Republic of Ireland in 2007-08). Maynooth: National University of Ireland Maynooth. Milroy, James. 1991. The interpretation of social constraints on variation in Belfast English. Jenny Cheshire, ed. English around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 7585. Newcombe, Lynda P. 2007. Social Context and Fluency in L2 Learners: The Case of Wales. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Baoill, Donall. 1988. The standardization of Irish. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 70:109126.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 157

Giollagin, Conchr. 2002. Scagadh ar rann cainteor comhaimseartha Gaeltachta: gnithe dantraipeolaiocht teangeolaochta phobal Rth Chairn. Irish Journal of Anthropology 6:2556. Giollagin, Conchr, Seosamh Mac Donnacha, Fiona N Chualin, Aoife N Shaghdha & Mary OBrien. 2007. Comprehensive Linguistic Study of the Use of Irish in the Gaeltacht: Principal Findings and Recommendations. Dublin: Stationery Office. hIfearnin, Tadhg. 2008. Endangering language vitality through institutional development. Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Lyn Fogle, Jia Jackie Lou & Barbara Soukup, eds. Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered Minority Languages and Language Varieties. Washington, DC: Georgetown U. P.113128. Laoire, Muiris. 2008. The language situation in Ireland. Robert B. Kaplan & Richard B. Baldauf, eds. Language Planning and Policy, Europe. Vol. 3. The Baltic States, Ireland and Italy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 193255. Riagin, Pdraig. 1997. Language Policy and Social Reproduction in Ireland 18931993. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Riagin, Pdraig. 2007. Relationships between attitudes to Irish and social class, religion and national identity in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10/4:125. Riagin, Pdraig & Michel Gliasin. 1984. The Irish Language in the Republic of Ireland 1983: Preliminary Report of a National Survey. Dublin: Institiid Teangeolaochta ireann. Riagin, Pdraig & Michel Gliasin. 1994. National Survey on Languages 1993: Preliminary Report. Research Report 18. Dublin: Institiid Teangeolaochta ireann. Riain, Sen. 1994. Pleanil Teanga in irinn 19191985. Baile tha Cliath: Bord na Gaeilge. ORourke, Bernadette. 2006. Language contact between Galician and Spanish: Conflict or harmony? Young peoples linguistic attitudes in contemporary Galicia. Clare Mar-Molinero & Miranda Stewart, eds. Globalization and Language in the Spanish-Speaking World. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 178196. ORourke, Bernadette, 2011. Galician and Irish in the European Context: Attitudes towards Weak and Strong Minority Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ORourke, Bernadette, forthcoming. Whose language is it? Struggles for language owerership in an Irish language classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education. Park, Jae-Eun. 2007. Co-construction of nonnative speaker identity in cross-cultural interaction. Applied Linguistics 28/3:339360. Rodrguez Gonzlez, Romn. 1997. La urbanizacin del espacio rural en Galicia. Barcelona: Oikos-tau. Pennycook, Alastair. 1994. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Harlow: Longman. Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London & New York: Routledge. Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as a Local Practice. London: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford U. P. Pokorn, Nike K. 2005. Challenging the Traditional Axioms. Translation into a Non-Mother Tongue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ramallo, Fernando. 2007. Sociolinguistics of Spanish in Galicia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 184:2136.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

158 Bernadette ORourke and Fernando Ramallo Ramallo, Fernando. 2010. Cara a unha tipoloxa dos falantes de galego. J. Rodrguez Rodrguez, Bieto Silva Valdivia & Isabel Vaquero Quintela, eds. Educacin e linguas en Galicia. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Servizo de Publicacins e Intercambio Cientfico. Rampton, Ben. 1990. Displacing the native speaker: Expertise, affiliation, and inheritance. ELT Journal 44/2:97101. Rei-Doval, Gabriel. 2007. A lingua galega na cidade do sculo XX. Vigo: Xerais. Robert, Ellen. 2009. Accommodating new speakers? An attitudinal investigation of L2 speakers of Welsh in south-east Wales. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 195:93 115. Rojo, Guillermo. 2004. El espaol en Galicia. Rafael Cano, ed. Historia de la lengua espaola. Barcelona: Ariel. 10871101. Singh, Rajendra, ed. 1998. The Native Speaker: Multilingual Perspectives. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Singh, Rajendra. 2006. Native speaker. Keith Brown, ed. Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. Second edition. London: Elsevier. 489492. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove & Robert Phillipson. 1989. Mother tongue: The theoretical and sociopolitical construction of a concept. Ulrich Ammon, ed. Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 450477. Tulloch, Shelley. 2006. Preserving dialects of an endangered language. Current Issues in Language Planning 7/2&3: 269286. Williams, Glyn. 2006. Sustaining Language Diversity in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Walsh, John. 2002. Dchoimisin Teanga: Coimisinna Gaeltachta 1926. Dublin: Cois Life. Woolard, K. A. 1989. Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia. Stanford: Stanford U. P.

Resumo A dicotoma entre falante nativo e neofalante en contextos de minorizacin lingstica: unha comparacin entre Irlanda e Galicia
En contextos de linguas minoritarias, o obxectivo das iniciativas de poltica e planificacin lingstica , a mido, mellorar as sas perspectivas de supervivencia, aumentando o seu coecemento e o seu uso entre a pobacin nunha variedade de contextos sociais. O xito destas polticas depende dunha variedade de factores, entre os que se inclen a capacidade da poltica para impulsar o mantemento da lingua entre os falantes tradicionais (os denominados falantes nativos) e a sa revitalizacin entre os individuos da comunidade que non a falan. Non obstante, a tarefa dos responsables de poltica e a planificacin lingstica atopa, con frecuencia, dificultades derivadas das diferenzas sociolingsticas, socio-econmicas, socio-xeogrficas e ideolxicas entre os falantes nativos e os neofalantes. En vez de formar unha comunidade de fala unificada, os falantes nativos e os neofalantes de linguas minoritarias moitas veces vense como social e lingisticamente incompatibles. O obxectivo deste artigo analizar a dicotoma entre falantes nativos e neofalantes en dous contextos de linguas minoritarias, irlands na Repblica de Irlanda e galego en Galicia.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

Native-non-native dichotomy in minority languages 159

Resumo La dikotomeco denaska-nedenaska en lingvomalplimultaj kuntekstoj: Komparoj inter la irlanda kaj la galega
En lingvomalplimultaj kuntekstoj, lingvopolitikaj kaj lingvoplanaj elpaoj ofte celas plicertigi la transvivoperspektivojn de la koncernaj lingvoj per pligrandigo de la scio kaj utiligo de tiuj lingvoj en variaj sociaj kuntekstoj. La sukceso de tiaj politikoj dependas de diversaj faktoroj. Inter ili trovias la kapablo de politikoformado stimuli konservadon de la lingvo inter ekzistantaj parolantoj (la tielnomataj denaskaj parolantoj de la lingvo) kaj ian revivigon inter tiuj, kiuj ne plu parolas in kaj fariis denaskaj parolantoj de alia lingvo, kutime la domina lingvo. Tamen, la tasko de politikofarantoj kaj lingvoplanistoj estas ofte komplikata de socilingvistikaj, ekonomikaj, socigeografiaj kaj ideologiaj diferencoj inter denaskaj parolantoj kaj nedenaskaj novuloj en la lingvo. Anstata formi unuigitan parolkomunumon, denaskaj kaj nedenaskaj parolantoj de la malplimulta lingvo ofte konsideras sin socie kaj lingve neakordigeblaj. La nuna artikolo celas ekzameni la dikotomon denaskan-nedenaskan en la kunteksto de du malplimultaj lingvoj: la irlanda en la Respubliko de Irlando kaj la galega en la Atonoma Komunumo Galegio.

Authors addresses
Bernadette ORourke Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK B.M.A.ORourke@hw.ac.uk Fernando Ramallo Facultade de Filoloxa e Traducin Departamento de Traducin e Lingstica Universidade de Vigo Praza das Cantigas, s/n 36310 Vigo (Galicia), Spain framallo@uvigo.es

About the authors

Bernadette ORourke is Lecturer in Spanish and General Linguistics in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Her work focuses on sociolinguistics, minority languages and multilingualism. She is author of Galician and Irish in the European Context (2011). Fernando Ramallo is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Vigo, Spain. His work focuses on sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and language diversity. He is the co-editor of the journal Sociolinguistic Studies.

2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved