Language and the State

This book originates from a pair of expert seminars given by scholars from Israel and Ireland before an invited audience of British academics. The seminars focused on questions of language shift, language maintenance and language loyalty in these two countries and looked to find similarities and differences which might contribute to an understanding of the processes involved. Bernard Spolsky compares the linguistic choices made by Hebrew speakers in Israel and Maori speakers in New Zealand, and explores the phenomenon of the shift to Hebrew amongst early settlers in Palestine. Muiris O Laoire draws out the parallels and contrasts between the situation of Irish and Hebrew at the turn of the century, and tries to account for the relative lack of success in intergenerational transmission. Both the papers and the debates which follow reveal how state language planning and the linguistic actions and decisions of the family network intermesh in complex ways. From the studies we see how similar policies may sometimes produce different outcomes, while different policies may result in similar conclusions. As a result, the ways in which language is transmitted across the generations remain difficult to predict accurately.