Minority Language Advertising: A Profile of Two Irish-language Newspapers

Abstract

This paper investigates the Irish-language adscape through an analysis of the profile of two Irish-language newspapers, Foinse, published in the Republic of Ireland, and Lá, published in Northern Ireland. The advertising in both papers is analysed in terms of products and services advertised, advertisers represented and language used. Our results indicate that Irish-language advertising in these papers tends to be confined to traditional domains, and to be used by advertisers who are complying with language planning directives. Beyond this, advertising in Irish is used to identify with certain communities, and its use by private sector advertisers, in a context in which there is a weak communicative motivation for doing so, tends to be mainly symbolic. Our small study shows that the respective advertising profiles of these newspapers do little to challenge common sense assumptions about the language, its role and its status in the respective sociolinguistic environments of both publications.

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