TITLE:
Mandate,
risk-taking and meaning-making: the spatial practices of new speakers of Irish
in the workplace
Spatial practices involve the making,
arrangement, and appropriation of spaces and their investment with activities
and meanings (Baynham and Simpson, 2010). This paper explores the practices of
new speakers of Irish mandated by the Official Languages Act, 2003 to
provide public services through Irish for their organisation. A Language
Support Network, facilitated by the researcher in the role of language advisor,
was established to explore language anxiety and support needs. A Participatory
Action Research methodology was used to bring about constructive change in
professional practices and attitudes. The conceptual framework merges the
theoretical lens of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991), and the Dialogue,
Tools and Context Model for advising in language learning (Mynard, 2012). Activities over three action research cycles
facilitated worker-learners, designated contacts for Irish-medium services on a
university campus, to move from a situation of individual uncertainty to one of
group confidence.
Various spaces of language
socialisation merit attention. Emotions around interactions at Seomra na Gaeilge, the Irish language
social space at the university, are explored initially. The social practices of
Network members during a three-day visit to Corca
Dhuibhne, an Irish-speaking
region, are then discussed. The distinctiveness of these transformative spaces
and how they gave rise to a range of experiences which fostered risk-taking and
meaning-making is probed. Spaces
of minority language use in the mandated context are conceptualised under two
headings, ‘space of surveillance’, initially, and then ‘safe space’ where an
oppositional culture to that of surveillance is created. The study concludes that an innovative
language support infrastructure and a focus on relational knowing led not only
to capacity building in the workplace but to the development of a new
connectedness among new speakers of Irish, and the association of the language
with the vibrant social fabric of the organisation itself.