The rising cost of living, postmaterialism, and the fate of linguistic minorities: some comments based on Irish and other Celtic contexts

Community involvement is widely understood to be an essential component for ensuring the success of language revitalization efforts. It is also, however, very often the case that linguistic minorities do relatively little to address language shift in their communities, even when evidence for this shift is obvious and their languages are not of low prestige. Drawing on a political science concept known as “postmaterialism”, which contends that only once fundamental needs of survival have been met will people focus their energies on issues of self-expression or actualization, I argue that language revitalization should be understood in such terms. I present interview data gathered as part of research into the effects of austerity on Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) communities which suggests that language shift was not a major priority in light of cuts to essential community services. I also describe how data generated during the COVID-19 lockdowns demonstrate that giving people more free time and income support could be key to creating more “new speakers” of threatened languages, as well as stabilizing L1 linguistic minority communities.