A Critical Discourse Analysis of Scholarly Representations of Irish-medium Education

Abstract

Irish-medium education (IME) has been a feature of the educational landscape in the North of Ireland since 1971 yet its policy commitments have been delayed and often denied. In this article we use qualitative research synthesis to systematically identify peer-reviewed research in order to explore how IME is represented through both ‘little d’ discourse and ‘big D’ Discourse analysis in scholarly discourse. After applying exclusion and inclusion criteria 31 articles were analysed across three databases with results identifying 16 articles which included clear definitions of IME and 15 which did not. Our analysis found that scholarship that included clear definitions of IME tended to fall into two categories of IME as bilingual education or as a grassroots endeavour existing within a difficult political and educational climate. Moreover, we found that IME is mostly ignored in scholarship on the education system in the North of Ireland. Such omissions demonstrate the relationship between colonial ideologies and trajectories of scholarly investigation, highlighting the need for further research clarifying the social and educational features of IME.