Linguistic imperialism—a term used to conceptualize the dominance of onelanguage over others—has been debated in language policy for more thantwo decades. Spolsky (2004), for example, has questioned whether thespread of English was a result of language planning, or was incidental tocolonialism and globalization. Phillipson (2007) contests this view, arguingthat linguistic imperialism is not based on ‘conspiracy’, and is underpinned byevidence of explicit or implicit language policy that aims to intentionallyadvantage some languages at the expense of others. This paper aims to testcriteria of linguistic imperialism by exploring the treatment of Irish SignLanguage (ISL) in language policy, or lack thereof. It does this by exploringevidence within a conceptual framework of linguistic imperialism to explorehow discrimination and inequality occurs in relation to Irish Sign Languageusers in Ireland. The findings highlight many policies and practices that fit thelinguistic imperialism paradigm. The paper, therefore, challenges some viewsin language policy that linguistic imperialism lacks credibility (see Spolsky2004; Ferguson 2006) by highlighting a current case of a minority language(ISL) under imperialistic-like control of a dominant language (English).
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