This thesis analyses the sociolinguistic representations of the Irish language and its learning among secondary school students in Galway, in the Republic of Ireland. The role given to schooling is central for the transmission of this minority language, threatened by English ; thus, it seems particularly appropriate to take into account the sociolinguistic representations shared by the Irish youth in order to understand to which degree compulsory learning can play its role and help the Irish language to survive. The first chapter puts the Irish sociolinguistic situation into a diachronic perspective andgoes on to present the theory of representations as well as the methodology. The questionnaire survey, which took place in four secondary schools and involved 356 students aged 12 to 18 years, is the object of the second chapter ; it tries to identify the representations and to evaluate their potential influence on the attitudes, motivation and future linguistic behaviour of the learners. To complete this main survey, two ethnographic studies are presented in the third chapter : they explore the links between the representations expressed by the studentsand schoolbook discourses, as well as between representations and media discourses (TV andcinema). The conclusion will give the opportunity, on the basis of our results, to makesuggestions concerning educational language policies and aiming to improve therepresentations, and consequently the chances of survival of Irish.
