Immersion education outcomes and the Gaelic community:Identities and language ideologies among Gaelic-medium educated adults in Scotland

Scholars have consistently theorised that language ideologies can influence the ways in which bilingual speakers in minority language settings identify and engage with the linguistic varieties available to them. Research conducted by the author examined the interplay of language use and ideologies among a purposive sample of adults who started in Gaelic medium education during the first years of its availability. Crucially, the majority of participants’ Gaelic use today is limited, although notable exceptions were found among individuals who were substantially socialised in the language at home during childhood, and a small number of new speakers. In this paper, I draw attention to some of the language ideologies that interviewees conveyed when describing their cultural identifications with Gaelic. I argue that the ideologies that informants express seem to militate against their more frequent use of the language and their association with the wider Gaelic community. In particular, I discuss interviewees’ negative perceptions of the traditionally defined, ethnolinguistic identity category ‘Gael(s)’ in their expression of language ideologies and identities, and the implications of this finding for other contexts of minority language revitalisation

Governmentality and Language

This article reviews how the analytics of governmentality have been taken up by scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics. It explores the distinctive logics of “linguistic governmentality” understood as techniques and forms of expertise that seek to govern, guide, and shape (rather than force) linguistic conduct and subjectivity at the level of the population or the individual. Governmentality brings new perspectives to the study of language ideologies and practices informing modernist and neoliberal language planning and policies, the technologies of knowledge they generate, and the contestations that surround them. Recent work in this vein is deepening our understanding of “language”—understood as an array of verbal and nonverbal communicative practices—as a medium through which neoliberal governmentality is exercised. The article concludes by considering how a critical sociolinguistics of governmentality can address some shortcomings in the study of governmentality and advance the study of language, power, and inequality

Language education for new speakers

No abstract available