Irish Sign Language: Ireland’s Third Language

Abstract

Irish Sign Language (ISL) is the third official language of the Republic of Ireland and was formally recognized in 2017. In Ireland, there are about 5,000 users of ISL, including deaf, hard-of-hearing people, and their family and friends. This chapter elaborates on the history of ISL, its typological affiliation, and some structural features, as well as contact with one of the surrounding spoken languages, i.e. Irish English (IrE), and lack thereof with the other ambient spoken language, i.e. Irish. In doing so, the chapter discusses salient language contact phenomena, such as mouthings, and touches upon language attitudes and ideologies towards ISL and related modes of communication. Ultimately, the chapter presents a portrait of language variation and change of ISL in its sociocultural context.