This article examines how power and solidarity in family relations are negotiated along linguistic lines, and in particular, the role of a third language in this negotiation process. It takes as its case study a transnational family in Ireland who practise a strongly pro-Polish FLP and where the parents are seen as authorities in Polish and their…

With specific reference to the teaching of Irish and English in Ireland, I am concerned in this paper with the experiences of language dispossession and language pedagogy. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's key concepts of "hospitality" and "monolingualism," I argue that in Ireland the first of these experiences cannot be separated…

In Ireland primary RE is a fractured, contested, complex and changing territory devoid of a common language and characterised by a proliferation of syllabi and curricula generated for increasingly diverse school types. For centuries the dynamic decolonising process has led to a questioning of former orthodoxies and an attempted de-linking of the…

In this paper, educational language policy is explored through the lens of linguistic neo-colonialism in Ireland in the case of learners of English as an Additional Language. The perspective of Ireland as a decolonized nation may have an impact on current language policy. Arguments for an additive approach to language and identity, language…

Issues related to supporting the language of schooling have become important social and educational policy concerns in Ireland. This article reports on a three-year investigation of the micro-climate of English language support provision in 70 post-primary schools since 2007 and highlights potential points of leverage in the educational system for…