This volume examines in-depth the many facets of language and identity in the complex linguistic landscape of Ireland. The role of the heritage language Irish is scrutinized as are the manifold varieties of English spoken in regions of the island determined by both geography and social contexts. Language as a vehicle of national and cultural identity is center-stage as is the representation of identity in various media types and text genres. In addition, the volume examines the self-image of the Irish as reflected in various self-portrayals and references, e.g. in humorous texts. Identity as an aspect of both public and private life in contemporary Ireland, and its role in the gender interface, is examined closely in several chapters. This collection is aimed at both scholars and students interested in langage and identity in the milti-layered situation of Ireland, both historically and at present. By addressing general issues surrounding the dynamic and vibrant research area of identity it reaches out to readers beyond Ireland who are concerned with the pivotal role this factor plays in present-day societies.

Edmund Burke was an orator, writer, British statesman, and opponent of the revolution in France. This collection of essays focuses on Burke's complex relationship to his native Ireland. It brings together 13 authors, all established experts and young scholars, from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines.

Though Ireland is a relatively small island on the northeastern fringe of the Atlantic, 70 million people worldwide--including some 45 million in the United States--claim it as their ancestral home. In this wide-ranging, ambitious book, Cian T. McMahon explores the nineteenth-century roots of this transnational identity. Between 1840 and 1880, 4.5 million people left Ireland to start new lives abroad. Using primary sources from Ireland, Australia, and the United States, McMahon demonstrates how this exodus shaped a distinctive sense of nationalism. By doggedly remaining loyal to both their old and new homes, he argues, the Irish helped broaden the modern parameters of citizenship and identity. From insurrection in Ireland to exile in Australia to military service during the American Civil War, McMahon's narrative revolves around a group of rebels known as Young Ireland. They and their fellow Irish used weekly newspapers to construct and express an international identity tailored to the fluctuating world in which they found themselves. Understanding their experience sheds light on our contemporary debates over immigration, race, and globalization.

This book presents a series of essays that examine the ideological, personal, and political difficulties faced by the group variously termed the Anglo-Irish, the Protestant Ascendancy, or the English in Ireland, a group that existed in a world of contested ideological, political, and cultural identities. At the root of this conflicted sense of self was an acute awareness among the Anglo-Irish of their liminal position as colonial dominators in Ireland who were viewed as other both by the Catholic natives of Ireland and by their English kinsmen. The work in this volume is highly interdisciplinary, bringing to bear examination of issues that are historical, literary, economic, and sociological. Contributors investigate how individuals experienced the ambiguities and conflicts of identity formation in a colonial society, how writers fought the economic and ideological superiority of the English, how the cooption of Gaelic history and culture was a political strategy for the Anglo-Irish, and how literary texts contributed to the emergence of national consciousness. In seeking to understand and trace the complex process of identity formation in early modern Ireland the essays in this volume attest to its tenuous, dynamic, and necessarily incomplete nature. David A. Valone is an Assistant Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. Jill Marie Bradbury is an Assistant Professor of English at Gallaudet University.

Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.

Presents the experiences of two burgeoning cities and the Irish people that helped to establish what it is 'to be Irish' within them