The Queen’s speech : desecuritizing the past, present and future of Anglo-Irish relations
Abstract
This article adopts the Copenhagen School’s concept of desecuritization to analyse the gestures of reconciliation undertaken during the 2011 state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland, including her willingness to speak in Gaeilge at Dublin Castle. In the process, it opens new pathways to explore if, when and how desecuritizing moves can become possible. To respond to these questions, this article advances the concept of bilingual speech acts as a nuanced yet fruitful way to tease out the complexities of security speech and (de)securitization processes. It is also suggested that the concept of bilingual speech acts provides a way to respond to calls to include translation in critical security and securitization studies. However, while acknowledging the importance of these calls, it is shown that paying attention to bilingual speech acts demonstrates what can also be lost in translation. Empirically this article provides an in-depth analysis of the 2011 state visit to unpack the different kinds of desecuritizing moves that were undertaken in this context as well as the different modalities of security speech that were in play. To conclude, the merit of bilingual speech acts for understanding how to speak security in different ways and vocabularies are discussed.
Citation
Donnelly , F 2015 , ' The Queen’s speech : desecuritizing the past, present and future of Anglo-Irish relations ' , European Journal of International Relations , vol. 21 , no. 4 , pp. 911-934 . https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066115570157
Publication
European Journal of International Relations
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1354-0661Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright the Author 2015. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354066115570157
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