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

Language education for new speakers

No abstract available

A Celtic view on minority language dynamics: support, transmission, education and target language varieties

When we talk of the modern Celtic languages today we refer to the Insular Celtic varieties that have maintained (or indeed regained) a degree of their linguistic vitality and that are practised, to varying extents and in various forms, by users of the Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh languages. Further to their common linguistic derivation, the Celtic languages share a number of additional characteristics that lend themselves well to a common analytical framework (features that they indeed share with many other ‘small’ languages). Each of the languages has, for a long time, been functioning in a bilingual, if not multilingual, environment. Consequently, in global terms, each of the languages is reliant on a relatively small pool of speakers for their survival. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those familiar with the dynamics of minority languages, then, language maintenance, revitalisation and revival projects have been among of the hallmarks of the Celtic-language experience for some time. This speaks to a familiar appetite among at least some users, as well as non-users, to go against the grain of language loss and to try to ensure that the Celtic languages are used into the future despite an extremely challenging climate