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 is discussed.