Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan: Gender and the Irish language in the linguistic landscape of Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum

Abstract

In a 2018 referendum, the Irish public voted to lift the Irish state's near-total constitutional ban on abortion, bucking a recent global trend towards restrictions on reproductive rights. While abortion rights have long been a major concern of Irish feminists, appeals to national identity have often been viewed with suspicion by the women's rights movement in Ireland due to the historic role of national identity construction in perpetuating gender-based inequalities. This article explores the way(s) in which discourses of Irish identity and gender were mediated by the use of Irish in the linguistic landscape (LL) at the time of the vote. Proposing a modified version of Du Bois’ (2007) stance triangle, I argue that signs use Irish as both a means of stancetaking and as an object of stance in itself, thus effectively taking a stance on both the referendum and on Irish national identity, indexed by the language. (Stancetaking, Irish (language), national identity, gender, abortion, Eighth Amendment)

A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies

“…She found that students, somewhat more than staff, were engaged in the production of gender-inclusive texts. Another aspect was the focus of the study by Strange (2022), who analyzed issues of gender, national identity and the use of the Irish language during the abortion referendum.…”

A corpus-based comparison of linguistic markers of stance and genre in the academic writing of novice and advanced engineering learners

“…A vital imperative of an effective academic report is the need for students to formulate and present their position or stance towards the topic of scholarly voices within the field. Numerous scholars have identified stance as playing a pivotal role in academic writing research, particularly in linguistics-based studies (Hunston and Thompson, 2001;Hyland, 2005bHyland, , 2012Silver, 2003;Afzaal et al, 2021Afzaal et al, , 2022Strange, 2023;Keisling, 2011;Lu, 2023;Alghazo et al, 2023). In light of this context, the current study undertakes a comparative analysis of stance markers employed by L2 engineering students and native engineering students with the aim of investigating genre-specific lexical stance patterns utilized by academic writers.…”