Researchers of minority language media are increasingly interested in the role of internet-based communication in language usage, maintenance, and revitalisation. This study explores the use of hashtags signifying the Welsh/Cymraeg, Frisian/Frysk, and Irish/Gaeilge languages on Twitter. Acknowledging the challenges of interpreting social media…

This paper examines how competing discourses about the ownership of the Irish language in an increasingly multiethnic Ireland and the extent to which it is associated with a sense of "Irishness" influence the formulation of recent Irish-language policy at institutional and national levels. As part of a broader study on the language…

Discusses strategies of social mobility involving education, occupational or residential change, and migration as well as the implications for language behavior of these strategies. The article assesses current theories of language maintenance and shift, drawing on network concepts and referring to change in an Irish-speaking community in…

Argues that there is no pressure to make Irish an official language in Northern Ireland because the sociolinguistic preconditions for bilingualism do not exist. The article demonstrates that those Irish who do not speak or learn Irish have no less a sense of having an Irish identity than do fluent speakers or those learning Irish. (26 references)…