A topical and authoritative investigation of the Irish language and identity in Northern Ireland. The phrase 'our own language' has come to symbolize the importance of the Irish language to Irish identity for many Nationalists in Northern Ireland. However, different interests compete to have their version of the meaning and importance of the Irish language accepted. This book investigates the role of the Irish language movement in the social construction of competing versions of Irish political and cultural identity in Northern Ireland, arguing that for some Nationalists, the Irish language has become an alternative point of political access and expression.

This book tells the dramatic and often surprising story of the learning of the Irish language by Irish Republican prisoners held in the infamous H-block cells during the bloody political conflict in Northern Ireland. Using research methods and techniques, the author closely analyses the emergence of the Irish language amongst republican prisoners and ex prisoners in Northern Ireland from the 1970s up until the present. This pioneering study shows how the language was used exclusively in parts of the prison, despite the efforts of the prison authorities to suppress the language, and the dramatic impact this had on Irish society. Drawing on interviews with the prisoners, and various other materials, Mac Giolla Chriost shows how these developments gave rise to the popular coinage of the term ‘Jailtacht’, a deformation of ‘Gaeltacht’ - the official Irish-speaking districts of the Republic of Ireland, to describe this unique linguistic phenomenon.

The expression our own language illustrates the significance of the Irish language for many among the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. They regard the neglect of the language by unionist administrations since the 1920s as another part of the attempted anglicisation of Ireland, and part of the justification for their continued opposition to the union. As a result, Irish has come to be seen as a symbol of resistance, anti-Britishness, liberation and nationalism.

National symbols have long been highly contentious in Ireland, and they remain so today. While there have been a number of studies which have examined the role of symbols in the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland, as yet there has been no detailed study of debates about national symbols in twentieth-century Ireland. This book fills that gap, outlining the historical background to the continuing controversy about national symbols in Ireland and shedding new light on the deep political divisions which have marked Irish society throughout this century. Our Own Devices focuses on the crucial period from 1922 to 1939 which saw the creation and consolidation of new governments in the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. It also examines in detail the selection of official symbols of state by governments in both parts of Ireland, and public responses to those symbols. Having discussed the conflicts over symbols which took place in the early decades of the two states, the book concludes by bringing the story up-to-date and relating earlier controversies about national symbols to current debates about the role of symbols in conflict and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. This study is a pioneering work in this relatively new area of Irish history, and is based on extensive original research, using many sources which have not previously been cited in published works.

This book offers a uniquely comprehensive account of the conflict in Northern Ireland, providing a rigorous analysis of its dynamics and present structure and proposing a new approach to its resolution. It deals with historical process, communal relations, ideology, politics, economics and culture and with the wider British, Irish and international contexts. It reveals at once the enormous complexity of the conflict and shows how it is generated by a particular system of relationships which can be precisely and clearly described. The book proposes an emancipatory approach to the resolution of the conflict, conceived as the dismantling of this system of relationships. Although radical, this approach is already implicit in the converging understandings of the British and Irish governments of the causes of conflict. The authors argue that only much more determined pursuit of an emancipatory approach will allow an agreed political settlement to emerge.

Using research methods and techniques, the author closely analyses the emergence of the Irish language amongst republican prisoners and ex prisoners in Northern Ireland from the 1970’s up until the present. This pioneering study shows how the language was used exclusively in parts of the prison, despite the efforts of the prison authorities to suppress the language, and the dramatic impact this had on Irish society. Drawing on interviews with the prisoners, and various other materials, Mac Giolla Chriost shows how these developments gave rise to the popular coinage of the term ‘Jailtacht’, a deformation of ‘Gaeltacht’ - the official Irish-speaking district of the Republic of Ireland, to describe this unique linguistic phenomenon.