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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 28:1 (2018) ► pp.94–118

Confirming two cultures

Negotiation of negative evaluation in the narratives of adult learners of Irish in post-conflict Northern Ireland

 | Ulster University
The learning journey of adult learners of Irish in post-conflict Northern Ireland can contain contentious elements, particularly related to (perceived) politicisation of the language during and following the conflict. Coates and Thornborrow (2005) suggest that stories involve striking a balance between deviation from norms and presenting oneself as “culture confirming”, so an apt way to explore these learners’ experiences is to elicit and analyse their narratives. A majority of the narratives contain one or more “opponents”, in the Greimasian sense, that detrimentally affected the learner’s engagement with the Irish language and would therefore invite negative evaluation. The learners, however, use a unique range of devices to mitigate, background, abstract or make implicit their evaluation. This enables them to simultaneously mark and move on from the challenge, maintain or restore equilibrium, and confirm two cultures: their traditional culture and a new post-conflict cultural formation.
Keywords: identity, narrative, negotiation, evaluation, mitigation, Irish, culture, conflict, post-conflict, Northern Ireland
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Background
    • Rationale
      • Why narrative analysis for this topic?
  • Review of literature in the field
    • Language and identity
    • Narrative analysis and contested identities
  • Method
    • Data collection
    • Theoretical approach to the analysis
  • Findings
    • The data
    • Outline of devices found in the data
    • Analysis of individual narratives
  • Discussion
    • Patterns relating to community background
      • Opponents
      • Helpers
      • Overlapping cultural confirmations
    • Patterns relating to age
    • Developing the notion of “complement story”
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 27 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17043.irw
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