Language Policy and Language Ideology

The Spring 2010 seminar will begin Friday, February 5th in 424 Flanner Hall at 3:00PM with a lecture by John C. Walsh, Language Policy and Language Ideology: from the Official Languages Act to Ireland’s Twenty-Year Strategy for the Irish Language. Dr. Walsh is a Lecturer in the Department of Irish, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the National University of Ireland, Galway . His Ph.D., awarded by Dublin CityUniversity, examined the influence of the Irish language on Ireland’s socio-economic development. Walsh also holds a Masters in International Relations (Law, Politics, Economics) from Dublin City University and a B.A. in Irish and Welsh from University College Dublin. Before joining NUI Galway, he spent almost a decade as a journalist with Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, and with the Irish language television station, TG4. His research interests are language policy, language legislation, the interface between language and socio-economic development and minority language media. A book based on his Ph.D. research, The Irish Language and Ireland’s Socioeconomic Development: Contexts and Contests, will be published by Peter Lang in 2010. He jointly edited a volume marking the tenth anniversary of TG4, TG4@10: Deich mBliana de TG4 (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2008) and his book Díchoimisiúnú Teanga: Coimisiún na Gaeltachta 1926 (Cois Life, 2002) dealt with the Irish state’s first commission on the Gaeltacht. In 2009, John Walsh was appointed Fulbright Irish Language Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Next week, History Ph.D. candidate Melinda Grimsley-Smith will give talk entitled Cure, Care, and Custody: Irish Lunatic Asylums in the Nineteenth Century at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner Hall.

For the final lecture of 2009, Matt Campbell will deliver "The Origin of the 'The Origins of the Harp': Moore, Maclise and the New Mythology" at 3:00PM in 424 Flanner on Friday, December 4th. Dr. Campbell is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Sheffield and Patrick B. O'Donnell Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame. The lecture will be followed by the launch of “Tinkers”: Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller (Oxford UP) by Mary Burke, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and former Keough-Naughton/National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar.