O'Mahony, Aoife (2025) What can a decolonial and legal perspective tell us about Northern Irish children's access to the Irish language. Bachelor thesis, Global Responsibility & Leadership (GRL).
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Abstract
This paper examines what a decolonial and legal perspective can tell us about the access children in Northern Ireland have to the Irish language. It analyses the non-hegemonic settler colonial context of Northern Ireland and the subsequent importance of Irish language survival and maintenance. It then looks at three primary legal instruments that provide children in Northern Ireland with rights to the Irish language, and obligations for the Northern Irish government. It examines four key examples of the kind of access to the Irish language that children in Northern Ireland are experiencing: education access, bilingual signage, funding for Irish-language arts, and community-based initiatives like in Gaeltacht regions. It then provides an overview of some recommendations to the government in Northern Ireland based on these four examples, which are developed with a decolonial and legal perspective. It argues that a lack of access to the Irish language is both perpetuating settler colonial assimilation and preventing children from accessing their legal rights to the Irish language. It further argues that the government has an obligation to provide language access and can do this through improved education access and funding, efforts to increase bilingual signage, funding the arts, and providing assistance for community-based initiatives.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Name supervisor: | McKeown, M.C. |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Jun 2025 08:51 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Jun 2025 08:51 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/607 |
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