Overview of issues around language education, identity, oppression and migration in diverse and changing European society. Specific reference is made to Ireland and the case of the Irish language. Language as a mark of power and acces to resources - or otherwise.

1. Language and Intercultural
Education
Dr. Alan Bruce
Mayte Martin
ULS Dublin
ICT 4LL Conference
Florence, Italy
13 November 2014.

2. overview
• Connection between language learning, intercultural
education and lifelong learning
• Languages in historic and social space
• Conceptual space vs. economic and political
advantage
• Language: culture, conquest, assimilation

3. Languages and social power

4. Language and status
• Alienating and degrading some social groups
• Power and domination of ‘superior’ language
• Tool of domination and repression
• Subtle, unconscious and insidious use of language
to act as badge of superiority/inferiority
• Awareness of what language represents
• Looking at the Irish language

5. Language and culture
• Socio-cultural knowledge
• Intercultural education and social cohesion
• From mobility to globalized markets
• Survival in the migratory world
• Asserting identity – and rights

6. Mobility in Europe?

7. Impact of migration
• Numerous languages spoken by new clients
overwhelm services.
• Lack of linguistic access can be discriminatory
• Cultural competence in a changing Ireland
• Training, awareness and integration – the Irish
journey

8. contested identity
• Contested space – uncertain identity
• Inclusion in what?
• From ‘non-national’ to citizen
• Legacies of inferiority – the colonial impact
• Uncertain welcome – crisis
• Frame of mind regarding reception of the Other
• Reality of two pre-existing languages

9. Irish linguistic map

10. Tracing irish
• Ancient Celtic language
• Rich bardic tradition, poetry and literary heritage
• Dispossessed Gaelic aristocracy in 17th century
• Replaced as language of Church and governance
• Criminalization and mark of discrimination
• Impact of Great Famine 1846-49

11. Policy in crisis: the 19th Century
National School system (1831)
Resistance and segregation
Identity and revolution
The tidal wave of emigration
Partition and religion

12. Understanding the colony
• Contradiction and ambivalence: ownership and
identity
• Albert Memmi – colonizer and colonized
• Guilt, humiliation and long memory
• Derivative imitation and conflict
the slights, the wrongs,
the long indignities
the stubborn core within each heart defies
John Hewitt

13. The murder machine
• Intersection with official schooling system
• Learning by rote and memorization
• Terminal examinations, equity and academic
streaming
• Vocational Education Act (1943)
• Towards a new vision: language, ICT and primary
reform
• Inward migration and emancipatory learning

14. Diversity imperatives
• Radical re-structuring of world economy
• Interconnected information/communication
• Differential access to resources
• Professional competence
• Dealing with transformational change
• Ensuring recognition and respect

15. opportunities
• Agreed definition of multicultural
• Adjustment and accommodation
• Melting pot or mosaic
• Separate development
• Beliefs, values and practices
• Symbols, language and behaviour

16. Challenges
• Mutual interaction or structured exclusion?
• Community values or communal rituals?
• Linkage to realities or past models?
• Shared memories or shared hatreds?

17. Interculturalism
• Interaction
• Empathy
• Communication
• Knowledge
• Removal of prejudice
• Linked themes: gender, power, violence, values

18. Thank you
Alan Bruce
abruce@ulsystems.com
Mayte Martín
maytecalvo@gmail.com
ULS: DUBLIN – HELSINKI – AMSTERDAM - CHICAGO
www.ulsystems.com