Queer and linguistic identities among multilingual speakers of Irish

While there is a large body of research within Critical Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology on the linguistic identities of multilingual subjects (e.g. Kramsch, 2009; ORourke et al, 2015), Queer Linguistics is largely silent on this topic with the exception of recent contributions from Milani and Levon (2017), Cashman (2018) and Walsh (2019, in press). This is arguably linked to the dominance of Anglophone settings within Queer Linguistics and its lack of attention to languages other than English, particularly minoritised languages. This paper analyses the linguistic identities of a group of 15 multilingual speakers of Irish who identify as male and gay or queer. Multilingualism in this case is taken to mean an active command and use of more than one language; while all speakers are proficient in both Irish and English, many also use other languages regularly. They express a range of stances on how their identities are shaped by the minoritised position of Irish and their other language(s) and reflect also on the intersections between their linguistic and queer identities.