Irish Speakers and their Experience of Emigration to North America
Irish Speakers and their Experience of Emigration to North America

Summary/Abstract: In historical work on emigration from Ireland to the New World, it has become widely accepted that Irish speakers were more passive and fatalistic than English speakers, and that they felt that emigration was a form of exile. This article challenges this assumption. In the first part, it is shown that the linguistic argument for this claim lacks both theoretical and empirical foundations. The evidence for Irish, it is shown, does not indicate any passivity on the part of its speakers. In the second part of the article, accounts of life in America by Irish speakers are drawn upon. On the whole, these suggest that Irish speakers, like English speakers, had a wide range of experiences in their new environment. However, they fail to show that language played a significant role in any feelings of alienation among emigrants.

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