Contesting language ideologies in the linguistic landscape of an Irish tourist town

Abstract

This article explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of a tourist town named Dingle located in the Southwest of Ireland. Building on recent theorizing in LL studies, where a discourse-analytical approach to LL data is promoted, the study uncovers a number of contesting language ideologies that circulate in the LL of Dingle. The contest involves two key actors, namely the State and the local community, who promote a number of discourse frames that show contesting language ideologies. On the one hand the State promotes an Andersonesque (Anderson, 1983) modernist ideology of ‘one Nation one language’, where Dingle is a key space where such an ideology can be safeguarded. While, on the other hand, local people promote a postmodernist ideology of multilingualism, in which the value of the Irish language is part of a wider bi/multilingual repertoire. This suggests that the LL can be viewed as a dynamic space that is significant in indexing and performing language ideologies that are continually being contested and renegotiated.

Keywords

Linguistic landscape discursive frames mobility Irish tourist domain

Introduction

The contemporary linguistic landscape (LL) of Dingle, a small town on the Southwestern seaboard of Ireland, reflects many of the contesting language ideologies that circulate in Irish society. Dingle’s LL provides an interesting site to investigate these issues for two main reasons.

Firstly, Dingle falls within the remit of the Gaeltacht, meaning it is one of the seven officially designated Irish-speaking areas predominately scattered along the Western seaboard. Secondly, Dingle is one of Ireland’s most popular tourist destinations from both a national and an international perspective.¹ The tensions evident in the LL of Dingle illuminate many of the underlying contestations regarding the Irish language that exist within Irish society at large. The present paper provides a snapshot of these contestations by focusing on three separate discourses present in the LL of what has been classified as Dingle’s tourist trajectory. In so doing the data points to the significance of LL data in uncovering the various frames (cf. Coupland & Garrett, 2010) that circulate in given locations as a means of unravelling various language ideologies. The focus on the tourist trajectory has the potential to reveal how the Irish language, together with other semiotic modes of Irishness, including the colour green, the use of culturally salient symbols such as the shamrock, etc., are represented in different types of signage and how this impacts on the reading of space and place. Key to such an approach is the understanding of language as a mobile resource and more particularly how an increased mobility brought about by the processes of globalization impact on the ‘value’ of languages such as Irish in many different ways within the local community of Dingle. From this perspective, the present study is in line with Heller (2007, p. 2) who argues: ‘(…) language as a set of resources which circulate in unequal ways in social networks and discursive spaces and whose meaning and value are socially constructed within the constraints of social organizational processes, under specific historical conditions’. From this point of view, through its analysis of the contesting language ideologies, the article aims at understanding the ‘value’ ascribed to the Irish language by the local community and to demonstrate how the State is at odds with the lived local experience of the Irish language.

The paper begins by providing a brief history of the Irish language and contextualizing Dingle as the study’s site. An account of how this paper adds to current trends in advancing LL studies follows, where the focus is on proposing a model for the analysis of language ideologies using LL data. Next, an account of the methodological approach undertaken to conduct the study is presented, together with an analysis of the corpus of LL data collected within the context of the Northern and Peripheral Multilingualism projects.² In the final section, the discussion reveals the complex nature of the LL and how it functions as an important site in which to view conflicting ideologies that circulate in Dingle regarding the value and function of the Irish language.

The Irish language in Dingle

The Irish language is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, with English recognized as the second official language. The Irish language is an important marker of identity, yet after more than 80 years of status and acquisition planning, there are no monolingual Irish speakers, there are limited significant levels of intergenerational transmission, both within and outside of the Gaeltacht, and the use of the language in contemporary Irish society remains low (cf. Mac Giolla Chríost, 2006). As many recent accounts of the Irish language situation have outlined, State-led macro-level language-planning initiatives have not succeeded in making Irish a language of everyday use in Irish society at large (cf. Mac Giolla Chríost, 2006; Moriarty, 2009, 2011). Results of the 2006 Census show that even though 41.9 per cent of the population reported an ability to speak Irish, only 29.3 per cent used Irish on a daily basis. If one examines these figures further, they show that the actual daily use of the language outside of the educational system is limited to just 4.4 per cent. Daily use of the language within the Irish language stronghold of the Gaeltacht is also low, with only 24.5 per cent of the Gaeltacht population using Irish on a daily basis (Walsh, 2011, p. 22). As such, as Walsh (2011) argues, active use of the language is limited to a small percentage of the Gaeltacht population. One of the more concerning trends within the Gaeltacht is the declining use of the language by young people. The results of the Comprehensive linguistic study of the use of Irish in the Gaeltacht (Ó Giollagáin, Mac Donncha, Ní Chualáin, Ní Shéaghdha, & O’Brien, 2007) state that Irish will cease to be a community language within the Gaeltacht within 20–25 years if the current rate of language shift among young adults continues. Similarly, Ó Rian (2009, p. 43) argues:

The continuing decrease in the use of Irish by young people in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking regions), due to the unrelenting pressure of English, is a matter for deep concern, as is the failure of the authorities over many years to appreciate that language use, and not just language learning, needs to be planned.

Overall, attempts by the State to revitalize the Irish language have not led to an increase in the use of the language and the ideals put forward by the State are often at odds with the lived reality of the Irish language (cf. Moriarty, 2012). The LL of Dingle offers an ideal site in which to investigate these tensions.

Dingle, on the Southwestern seaboard of Ireland, is the principal town of the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht. Dingle represents a peripheral minority language community given its geographic location on the edge of Europe and its distance from the large urban centres within Ireland. Yet, Dingle is an important centre for the surrounding community (cf. Kelly-Holmes, Pietikäinen, & Moriarty, 2011). Although Dingle is the largest of the Gaeltacht towns, its relationship with the Irish language is far from straight forward. In the previously mentioned study of the use of Irish in the Gaeltacht areas by Ó Giollagáin et al. (2007), a system for categorising the Gaeltacht areas was developed. Through their analysis they found that three distinct types of language community exist within the statutory limits of the Gaeltacht as currently defined. These include: category A Gaeltact, where over 67 per cent of the population use Irish on a daily basis; category B Gaeltacht, where between 44 and 66 per cent use Irish on a daily basis; and category C Gaeltacht, where less than 44 per cent use the language on a daily basis. Dingle falls into the latter category and it can be argued that if one removes school-going children and more elderly members of the population the figures quoted in the report would be considerably lower, pointing to a weak communal use of the language in Dingle.

Dingle is a particularly interesting site in which to examine language ideological contests for two main reasons. Firstly, given the fact that Dingle is a key tourism destination in Ireland, the Irish language performs a key indexical function pointing to Dingle as an authentic Irish town where tourists can come to experience the ‘Other’. From this perspective the present study is linked with other work that examines how minority language resources get (re)valued in tourist settings (cf. Heller, 2003; McLaughlin, 2010; Pujolar, 2006). Secondly, an interesting debate took place from 2005 to 2011 regarding the name of the town. The debate brought many of tensions between the State and local communities to the fore and there was much evidence of this language ideological debate in the LL of Dingle.

Linguistic landscape and minority language communities

Following Landry and Bourhis’ (1997) seminal study, LL has expanded as field of study and the manipulation of the LL has been studied by scholars such as Backhaus (2007) and Shohamy and Gorter (2009), as well as many more. Traditional approaches to LL studies have largely focused on issues of counting languages in order to uncover the hierarchy of linguistic resources in multilingual settings, where scholars have examined issues such as the global spread of English and the differences in language use in public and private signage (cf. Backhaus, 2007; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009), as well as other topics. To date the majority of LL research has been conducted in large urban centres such as Jerusalem, Tokyo, Vienna and Washington. Minority language communities have received some attention in LL studies; however, much of the work on minority languages has focused on language relations in urban settings as well as the LL’s relationship to language policy. For example, Cenoz and Gorter (2006) have examined the presence of Friesian and Basque in the respective cities of Ljouwert-Leeuwarden and Donostia-San Sebastian, and Puzey (2008) compared and contrasted road signs in three separate communities involving four languages varieties, namely Sami and Kven in Norway, Gaelic in Scotland and Italian dialects in the North of Italy. The aim of the study is to add to this area of LL research, while also expanding the traditional reach of such studies to include a minority language community that represents a geographically peripheral area. To date possibilities afforded by the linguistic peculiarities of peripheral locations, where often the relationship between majority and minority languages are more flexible and fluid, have been largely ignored, with some notable exceptions including the following: Coupland and Garrett’s (2010) work on Welsh in the LL of Patagonia; Pietikäinen, Lane, Salo, & Lahiala-Kankainen’s (2011) work on the LL of seven Arctic villages; and Gorter, Marten, & van Mensel’s (2012) edited volume focusing on minority language LLs. By expanding the view of such landscapes as objective physical environments, the present study will include a more qualitative account where the LL is understood as a symbolic and informational site, where the value of linguistic and semiotic resources are constantly being (re)negotiated. The current study presents this advancement in LL studies from two main perspectives. Firstly, it points to the LL as a space where language ideologies are made visible and uncovered by adopting a discourse-analytical approach to LL data (cf. Hult, 2009; Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2011). Secondly, it examines the role of the LL as what Leeman and Modan (2010, p. 196) describe as ‘a vehicle for the spatialization of culture and commodification of space’. This is an approach that is important in an examination of tourist settings, as it highlights how the value of language(s) and other semiotic resources can get enhanced as part of the wider commodification of authenticity typical in this phase of globalization (cf. Heller, 2003)

More recently, a qualitative shift in LL studies has emerged which posits that the LL is a broader concept than the documentation of signs (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009, p. 4). One aspect of this qualitative turn has been the emergence of a discourse-analytical approach to LL. For example, Coupland and Garrett’s (2010) study of the presence of Welsh in the LL of Patagonia put forward the idea that LL research needs to move beyond the descriptive and distributional approaches to consider the nuances of the given context, where local historical and symbolic processes are at play. Similarly, Stroud and Mpendukana (2009, 2010) adopt a multimodal discourse approach to what they call a material ethnography of the LL of a South African township. Such studies show that LL research needs to move beyond the descriptive and distributional approaches favoured in earlier work and to consider the nuances of the given context, where local historical and symbolic processes are at play. Such an approach provides a rationale for the study of aspects of language ideologies. Herein language ideologies are understood as: ‘the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests’ (Irvine, 1989, p. 255). Given the fact that language ideologies are neither stable nor static the LL becomes a site in which to map ideological changes over time. Similarly, Kallen (2009), building on Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) discourse-analytic perspective on language displays in public spaces, argues that we need to be sensitive to the indexical functioning of public signage in order to understand the various levels of meaning taken from it.

The LL can therefore be understood as a collection of semiotic properties that index and perform a localized action. Thus, the present research is in line with that of Jaworski and Thurlow (2010), who privilege the term semiotic landscape over LL, arguing that language combines with other semiotic modes to create meaning in the landscape, where semiotic modes include language, colour, font, etc. In the context of tourism spaces, semiotic modes often include culturally salient symbols, icons and images, such as the shamrock, the colour green and a pint of Guinness, in the touristic LL of Ireland. The LL can also be described as an ideologically charged construction of space and place where various linguistic and other semiotic resources may carry differing degrees of indexical value. As Leeman and Modan (2010, p. 196) argue: ‘Language is a visual index of ethnicity that, when linked to various products, places and experiences contributes to the commodification of culture typical of the symbolic economy’. The use of such resources in this way has been mobilized by the processes of globalization and the realization that resources such as languages can be commodified for touristic and other commercial processes (cf. Heller, 2003). Before offering an account of how these issues play out in the context of Dingle, an account of the methodological approach taken to this study is provided.

The study: Data and methodology

The corpus of photos presented here falls under the remit of the Northern Multilingualism and Peripheral Multilingualism projects and forms part of a larger study that examines the relationship between tourism and minority languages in peripheral contexts, including Dingle and Inari in Finnish Samiland. The study involved a multi-sited ethnography (Heller, 2002) that enabled us to explore the linguistic practices and ideologies of those involved in the tourism industry in these sites. In Dingle the data collected included the following: ethnographic field notes; interviews with key actors and tourists; marketing material such as websites and brochures; as well as LL data. With respect to the LL data, the study focused on widening the scope of enquiry of such data and to this end included both static and non-static signs as sources of LL data. The static signs are in line with Backhaus’ (2007, p. 55) definition of LL data as: ‘any piece of written text within a spatially definable frame’, including shop signs, road signs, etc. The inclusion of non-static or mobile texts is in response to Sebba’s (2010) call for the inclusion of mobile texts, such as signs on moving vehicles, in LL studies. Such signs, albeit transient in nature, are an important element of what the public is exposed to. In the context of Dingle the non-static data includes signs on vans, flags attached to cars, stickers, etc., which were key components in the visual representation of the contestation between the State and the local community with regard to the Dingle naming debate.

The collection of the LL data in Dingle involved a two-stage approach. Stage one involved the mapping of the tourist trajectory, which involved identifying the most frequent route taken by tourists through Dingle town. This was achieved through observation of tourist activity over a period of three days. It was noted that tourists generally stay on the main streets and rarely branch off into smaller side-streets. Stage two involved the photographing of LL elements in the street, the shop windows, etc. The data were then coded in terms of town, site, language(s) displayed and their order, genre, type of producer (public, organization or private) and the visuality(s) displayed.

As was previously mentioned, the present study combines two recent discourse approaches to the analysis of LL data. These include Backhaus’ (2007) application of Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) discourses in place and the discursive frame analytical approach put forward by Coupland and Garrett (2010). Scollon and Scollon (2003) identify four types of discourses that may be applied to the study of the LL. These are regulatory discourses, infrastructural discourses, commercial discourses and transgressive discourses. Regulatory and infrastructural discourses, which are combined as one discourse type in the context of the present study, refer to signs produced by official bodies, such as traffic signs, public notices, and so on. Such signs feature strongly in the LL of Dingle and are largely bilingual English and Irish. Commercial discourses are signs on business and shops. These signs are significant in the study of the LL because it is largely shaped by commercial considerations. In addition, given the importance of tourism to the local economy, the use of the Irish language together with other semiotic tropes of Irishness, such as the colour green, etc., can be expected to feature strongly in the LL of Dingle. Transgressive discourses are signs that intentionally or accidently violate the expected semiotics of a place. Backhaus (2007) describes graffiti as a prominent instance of this type of discourse. In the context of Dingle’s LL, the presence of such signs reflects local reaction to the controversy surrounding the Dingle naming debate in the form of graffiti as well as in stickers, banners and flags (cf. Moriarty, 2012). The discursive-frame approach was pioneered by Coupland and Garrett (2010). They argue that in applying a frame approach (to be understood from a Goffman perspective) to the discourses present in the LL allows for a more qualitative interpretation of the data. Such an approach moves away from focusing on the counting of semiotic resources and focuses on answering questions such as

…what cultural and symbolic values are being activated, intentionally or otherwise, for whom, and how, through which particular indexical displays of language and symbols, in what particular contexts and in what semiotic relationships. (Coupland & Garrett, 2010, p. 14)

In applying a combination of these analytical frameworks the present study allows for an analysis of how the value of Irish and other semiotic resources gets altered in particular processes of mobility and flow. More specifically, it shows how the differing ideologies that surround the value of the Irish language are presented for touristic consumption, negotiated by the local people and contested by the both the state and the local community. In this manner the present study aims to uncover the particular ways in which different consumers of Dingle’s LL are called into being as they walk through the tourist trajectory.

Discursive frames in the linguistic landscape of Dingle

Public space has been identified by Shohamy and Waksman (2009), as well as others, as a space where varying language ideologies can be uncovered. In the LL of Dingle differing ideologies regarding the Irish language are circulating that show competing value systems at play. In the typical tourist trajectory of Dingle, tourists encounter signs that highlight these tensions and the aim here is to investigate these competing discursive frames in order to analyse how the LL simultaneously entextualizes dominant ideologies while purposing new ideological positions surrounding the Irish language. Drawing on the methodological approach that combines Coupland and Garrett’s (2010) frame approach and Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) approach to discourse in place, the focus is on three particular ideological frames evident in three separate discourse frames. The first discursive frame reflects the State’s ideological position towards the Irish language and is evident in the regulatory/infrastructure frame. The second, which is evident in the commercial discourse frame, signals the ideology ascribed to the Irish language by the local community. The third frame examines conflicting State and local language ideologies evident in transgressive discourses.

State ideology-regulatory discourses

It can be argued that the Irish State adopts a language ideology that links the Irish language to aspects of Irish identity. The Irish language is an important marker of ethnic identity and hence important in marking the Republic of Ireland as different to Great Britain, for example. From this perspective, it can be argued that the State remains bound up in the modernist ideology of ‘one nation, one language’ put forward by Anderson (1983), where the notion of Nation was based on the concept of one distinct common language. Yet, for many years the State has been playing lip service to the Irish language in terms of its approach to Irish language planning and policy. In so doing it has conferred a Disneyesque status on the Gaeltacht communities of which Dingle is a part. Regulatory and infrastructure discourses are just one example of how the Irish State pays lip service to the Irish language both within and outside the Gaeltacht boundaries. In official signage all over Ireland place names have to appear bilingually. Figure 1 presents a typical directional road sign present in the LL of Dingle. An ideological frame that privileges English is evident in such signs. While the Irish name does appear first an italic script is used, while the English equivalent appears in larger bold print and in block capitals, thus indicating the higher functional value ascribed to the English language.

Figure 1.

Official directional sign.

Local ideology in the commercial discourse frame

The tourism industry of Dingle grew out of a need for an alternative economic development strategy for the area. Given its peripheral location, the townspeople have limited access to employment outside of traditional industries such as fishing and agriculture. It can be argued that without the thriving tourism industry many locals would be forced to leave the area. Thus the marketing of nostalgia is among the strategies for survival practiced by those who are trying to maintain the town’s thriving tourist industry, which simultaneously serves to preserve Gaeltacht culture. As Selwyn (1996) argues, Dingle like many other peripheral regions is essentially a mythical place dependent on its continued marginalization in order to sustain the myth of ’traditional’ (cf. Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2011). This desire to maintain the traditional appeal of Dingle has led to the commodification of a rustic capital, of which the Irish language forms part, in order to monopolize on the global tourists’ quest to experience authenticity (cf. Heller, 2003). Many minority language contexts are involved in similar process of commodification, processes that are enabled by the globalized new economy. For example, Heller (2003) in her work on Francophone Canada outlines how tourism has led to the commodification of language and identity. In contexts such as Canada and Ireland, minority languages and other symbolic and semiotic resources become highly marketable commodities. While the use of Irish in popular tourist destinations in Ireland may not be new, the understanding of how the language can be manipulated as a resource to authenticate the given destination is new. Kallen (2009), in his study of the use of Irish in four tourist locations, two in the Republic and two in the North, found a direct link to high incidences of Irish language use with tourism footfall. In the context of Dingle, this is manifest through the various ways local tourism providers draw on the Irish language and other semiotic resources to index Dingle as an authentic tourist location.

The analysis of signs that fall into the commercial discourse frame reveals two key ideologies the locals ascribe to the Irish language. Monolingual Irish signs are only present in commercial frames meant principally for local consumption, for example butchers, pharmacies and supermarkets. These signs typically do not contain other semiotic features to mark them as distinctively Irish. For example, the font is Romanized script and the signs rarely contain symbols of cultural significance. However, this is contrasted greatly by commercial frames aimed at tourists. These signs are typically bilingual Irish and English and make use of many other semiotic modes in marking the premises as a place where aspects of authentic Irishness can be consumed. The key commercial entities that make use of such signage include pubs, restaurants and craft and souvenir shops. Figure 2 illustrates an example of such signage.

Figure 2.

Local ideology in commercial signs.

The signs presented in Figure 2 are from the Drocihead Beag pub, a popular pub for both national and international tourists as well as for local people. The signs appear side by side at the entrance to the pub. The first sign uses the Irish language, traditional Celtic font and the colour green, while the second offers a direct English translation of what the first signs says but uses Celticized script. It can be argued that the use of Irish linguistic and semiotic resources function as symbolic indexes for the display of otherness. A sense of authenticity is achieved in a very tourist friendly manner and as such these signs are indicative of what Kallen describes as ‘safe exoticism’ (Kallen, 2009, p. 279).

Arguably, the use of the Irish language by the local community in these different commercial discourse frames is indicative of the value placed on the Irish language by the local community. It is an important resource in the daily routine of the townspeople, yet in terms of tourism, the language takes on a tokenistic role. The lack of monolingual Irish signs aimed at tourists further underscores the reality that for local commercial operators the Irish language is an important resource in marking the commercial entity as authentically Irish where tourists can consume the ‘real thing’. Yet it needs to come in the company of the English language and semiotic tropes of Irishness, such as font and colour, in order to achieve the right balance between the foreign and the familiar in an effort to entice tourists. The use of the Irish language is necessary in order to reinforce the peripheral nature of Dingle, but the English translation is needed to mediate and produce a type of value that is based on difference.

Conflicting State and local ideologies: transgressive discourses

A key example of the contestation between the State and local ideologies surrounding the Irish language is linked to the Dingle naming debate that was on-going from 2005 to 2011. The debate came about due to the Placenames Order (2004), a subsection of the 2003 Official Languages Act, which highlighted the government’s intention to change the official signs for all place names in Gaeltacht areas from bilingual Irish–English to monolingual Irish. The effect of the Order was that name ‘Dingle’ was to be officially abolished and would be officially referred to and signposted solely as ‘An Daingean’. The Order took effect in 2005 and led to serious controversy in Dingle. Locals opposed the name change for two main reasons. Firstly, the local community felt the change from Dingle to An Daingean would severely damage the Dingle tourism brand, which would have a severe impact on the local economy. Locals argued that tourists would not find their way to Dingle if the name was to change to An Daingean in all official road signs and maps. At the core of this argument was the fact that the tourist would be confuse An Daingean with Daingean, a town in the midland county of Offaly. Secondly, An Daingean was not seen by the local community as the preferred translation for the name of the town. They argued that the correct Irish language name for the town is in fact Daingean Uí Chuis. A language ideological debate ensued between State and the local community and a campaign began to have the name changed to the locally preferred name of Dingle/Daingean Uí Chuis.

The Dingle naming debate is an example of a specific instance of language regulation that is at odds with the lived experience of the locals (cf. Moriarty, 2012). Through the Official Languages Act the government were trying to rationalize dominant ideologies about Irish language practices and ideologies. The State was attempting to manipulate language choice and use in Dingle by demarcating a boundary. The debate galvanizes a discursive attempt to manage the Irish language and presents a clash between modernist and postmodernist ideologies, whereby the State is attempting to keep the Irish language to promote a nationalist-type discourse of ‘one nation–one language’ and locals are more interested in promoting a postmodernist multilingual norm. As Lanza and Woldermarian (2009, p. 140) argue: ‘What is particularly interesting is the ideology of the people in light of official language policy, how they position themselves to this policy and to multilingualism through their contribution to the LL’.

In much of the media coverage of the opposition put forward by the local community locals were framed as deviant. It can be argued that the government was involved in a type of queering of the local desire to keep the name of the town. The queering is framed around their abnormal and deviant approach to the discourse of language rights, where the State assumed that changing the name of the town to the monolingual Irish version was something a speaker of a minority language would want. Through the discourses of deviance put forward by the State it can be argued that they are attempting to erase the agency of the local actors. However, the State underestimated the power of a name in mobilizing local action. After all, as Dal Negro (2009, p. 208) argues, ‘Probably nothing is more symbolic for a community than its own name’. It would seem that the locals felt that by accepting the monolingual naming of the town, the multilingual reality of the town would get erased together with the right of the social actors to name where they live and the aforementioned campaign ensued.

In the eyes of the State, Dingle is a geographic space key to the maintenance of the Irish language and through the naming debate it attempted to normalize this ideology and confer a Disneyesque-type status on Dingle. However, in the LL of Dingle’s tourist trajectory, there is much evidence of the local reaction to the naming debate. These include fixed signs, such as posters, stickers, etc., and mobile signs, such as flags and banners, attached to cars. Perhaps the strongest visual maker of resistance by the local community to the State’s attempt to change the name of the town is the Dingle Wall, illustrated in Figure 3 above (cf. Moriarty, 2012).

Figure 3.

The Dingle Wall.

The Dingle Wall is the front of a vividly green painted building on the Main Street. The Wall became a space where key local actors in the language debate that ensued posted communications, letters of support and newspaper clippings, as well as the stickers and posters that had been created to campaign against the name change. As such the combination of signs present on the Wall makes it a nexus point where the local social actors combine as a force capable of resisting the attempt by the government to regulate their space. The Wall is a clear example of a transgressive discourse. It is a visible act of identity in that it expresses resistance to hegemonic ideologies. It is an example of how locals diverge from official language norms and have clear agreed-upon local norms. As Pavlenko (2009) argues, a shift imposed from above cannot proceed without tensions and such tensions manifest themselves in transgressive signs. The Wall is transgressive in that it goes against the aims of the State but also transgressive because the locals are going against the larger discourse of language rights. Locals can be situated in the ideological frame of resistance (cf. Pennycook, 2009). It is clear that Dingle is a culturally sensitive space where the local social actors feel the need to defend their lived experience against the State’s attempt to imprint its ideology on the local space. The Wall was not the only transgressive discourse evident in the LL. Other examples include the graffiti and flags illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Examples of other transgressive linguistic landscape tropes.

The three discourse frames discussed reveal the complex nature of Dingle’s LL. The complexity stems from the reality that the LL has to be relevant for locals and tourists alike. Dingle locals see the language as an important resource in everyday activities, yet they also want to capitalize on the language as part of the Dingle brand. The language has to be present as a means of authenticating Dingle, but its presence cannot threaten tourists by not allowing them to understand and/or communicate. The discourses present also suggest that the official signs reflect an aspirational political ideology of monolingualism which is at odds with the reality of lived experience in Dingle. The data reveal a discrepancy between the choices made by State agencies and the actual language practices of the local community.

Dingle’s LL sends a clear ideological message as to the value of the Irish language and it seems to be a means through which the local community projects the lived experience of the Irish language. The data highlights the conflictual potential of ideological frames. The Irish language is simultaneously mobile and immobile in the eyes of the local community of Dingle. It is mobile in the sense that it can be and is used to commodify and authenticate Dingle as a space where real Irishness can be consumed. However, this is achieved only through the use of the language together with other semiotic tropes of Irishness. It is immobile in the sense that the Irish language as a resource of its own is not seen as useful for tourism and has a very limited use for locals.

Discussion

The LL provides a prism to the political ecology of those who influence and are influenced by it (Shohamy & Waksman, 2009). Dingle’s LL is almost certainly configured with not only the local population in mind but also with tourists in mind given the high number of tourists who visit the town annually. Place is visually consumed by tourists, which means that the LL is a key component in the touristic experience. As Kallen (2009) argues, tourists experience signs in the LL on the three levels of addressee, audience and eavesdropper, and it is the sum of these discourses that leaves a lasting impression on the tourist. Through an examination the tourist route through Dingle, the trajectory of local linguistic resources and consequences for language ideologies has been revealed. The analysis brings to light a set of conflicting ideologies that are constantly being contested and negotiated by both the State and members of the local community. Those involved in the tourist industry in Dingle contribute to the symbolic construction of Dingle as an authentic tourist space. As the data has shown, this is manifest in a number of different ways through the combination of certain indexes that promote a space as genuinely Irish. The data points to a number of resources that are key traditionalizing resources in the LL of tourist settings. These include language, font, colour and cultural tropes, such as traditional food, drinks and musical instruments.

Minority languages, and particularly languages such as Irish, which are largely present in peripheral communities, are bound up with issues of economy (Heller, 2003; Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2011). The language is a useful resource in promoting Dingle as the exotic ‘other’ and it gets commodified as a product that is for sale through various means, such as language classes, souvenirs, postcards, etc. The language appears only marginally as an everyday resource in the LL of Dingle. However, perhaps this is a more realistic account of the present situation of the Irish language. The reality is that there are no monolingual speakers and the language exists as part of a multilingual speech community. On the other hand, the presence of Irish in the commercial domain has to be seen as a positive development in Irish language maintenance. For many years the language was a stigmatized resource often labelled as backward and outdated. Perhaps this new found use for the language as a legitimate resource used for fuelling a local economy will boost the language and lead to the use of the language in domains from which it has been largely absent. And while this may be at odds with the State’s idea of how Irish-language revitalization and maintenance should play itself out, it is no less worthy and speakers of the language will see an economic value attached to the language.

In conclusion, this study shows that the LL is not an ordered space and it is in fact much more dynamic than initial studies into LL proposed. Moreover, the data points to the LL as a space for indexing and performing language ideologies, as a fluid space that is socially constructed and constantly being contested and renegotiated. Therefore, the study offers a snapshot in time and points to the temporary nature of the LL. Thus, it is important to monitor the same space over a period of time. In so doing one can detect changes in ideological stances, as well as the formation of a new pattern of meaning.

Footnotes

Funding

This article was produced in the context of the 3M Identities in Motion research network funded by Nordforsk (2008–2011).

Notes

Author biography

Máiréad Moriarty lectures in Linguistics at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Her research interests revolve around the broad theme of multilingualism. She is particularly interested in the nature of the relationship between minority language and aspects of the media, linguistic landscapes and popular culture. She is a member of the Peripheral Multilingualism project which is funded by the Finnish Academy (2011–2014) and under the direction of Prof. Sari Pietikäinen of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

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