ABSTRACT
The publication of Reg Hindley’s book, The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary (1990), sounded the death-knell for one of the central tenets of cultural policy in Ireland over the last hundred years. Supported by official statistics, census reports and survey material, Hindley suggests that the Irish language no longer has a role in the ‘modern’ world, that it is doomed to extinction within another generation in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) regions situated along the western coast of Ireland (Figure 9.1). Contemporary tourist imagery suggests that these same regions are ripe for cultural tourism where ‘empty space’—accompanied by narratives of ‘empty time’—provide a landscape of consumption for the overseas visitor. The people of these regions are designated as Other-presenting an authentic, primitive escape from modernity for the cultural traveller (O’Connor 1993).
