As a scholar and teacher of Irish language and literature, Brian Ó Conchubhair’s research interests include literary criticism, cultural nationalism, language revitalization, and the politics of language. He’s studied these questions in his home country of Ireland and around the world. He directed Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures from 2013 to 2020.
Ó Conchubhair is a faculty fellow of the Institute for Social Concerns and teaches in the Moreau College Initiative at Westville Correctional Facility, which is part of the Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison based at the institute.
How do you see your research advancing the common good?
My research focuses on minority languages. I look at controversies, the rights and the dignities of the speaker of minoritized languages, and how to empower people within the context of language and culture. And I look at how to explain to a broader audience the challenges of being multilingual, of speaking a minoritized language, and how that’s connected to power structures and people’s sense of place and sense of worth.
Language is never neutral, it’s never nonpolitical. There’s a choice to be made about which language is spoken, which is translated, which language occupies the public space. That’s always in my mind when I’m addressing linguistic challenges and inequalities.
How can Ireland’s history and language and culture inform our understanding of justice and the common good?
We understand power dynamics very well in Ireland, having been on the wrong side for a long, long time. In the past hundred years, as an independent state, we’ve seen ourselves as being a leading voice for developing nations within our role in the United Nations, within the European Union. We see ourselves in Ireland as being aligned with, and have great empathy for, places that have been invaded, occupied, or colonized.
What research are you working on currently?
I’m currently working with two undergraduate students on the politics of language in Northern Ireland. There were certain promises made as part of the Belfast peace agreement 20 years ago, but some of them were fudged and some of them have been renegotiated. The question is: What are the rights of a linguistic minority, and how much is the other group willing to concede?
Earlier this fall we ran a seminar in Killarney where we brought in representatives to discuss if there is to be a united Ireland — if the north and the south are to be reunified — what would be the constitutional protections for Irish speakers, for Scots speakers; would every subject be taught in the schools — teasing out all these issues. It was a “what if” event.
