Today's children's Gaelic is different in a number of ways from the Gaelic that their grandparents’ generation would speak (cf. Gillies 1980; MacAulay 1982; NicLeòid 2016). Sometimes Gaelic-medium pupils receive harsh reactions from older, native speakers, such as: ‘Chan eil fhios ‘am dè tha thu ag ràdh an sin! Dè seòrsa Gàidhlig a th’ agad an sin?‘(‘I don't know what you're saying there! What kind of Gaelic is that?’). Comments of that kind usually refer to different aspects of change which native speak-ers recognise in the children's speech in comparison to their own. The most obvious change manifests itself in the choice of vocabulary. Sometimes this means that the younger generation uses Gaelic terms where the older would traditionally use English (for example, for names of the months), but also newly coined terminology which is established in schools and other educational institutions, for specific subjects (math-ematics, science and so on) – a necessary prerequisite for minority language immersion education in order to teach subjects which had never been taught through that particu-lar language before (cf. Slaughter 1997; Baker 2011) − but unknown to speakers who were not educated through the medium of Gaelic (cf. McIntyre 2009; Baker 2011). Further changes concern grammatical structures in the language (cf. NicLeòid 2016).

To an extent, linguistic differences may be expected as a part of normal language change between generations, in any language (cf. Dorian 1981, 1994; Johnstone 2002; Thomason 2007). However, the process of language change is different for minority languages, due to the strong, continuous influence of the majority language(s) (Clyne 1992; Sankoff 2001; Baker 2011). Apart from that, language attitudes of the minority language speakers themselves can influence linguistic domains and speaking patterns as well (Baker 1992; Bradley 2013 [2002]). This means that, in general, minority lan-guages deal with more complex linguistic and meta-linguistic factors in the process of language change (Martin-Jones 1988; Aitchison 2001). These will be discussed later, within the context of the research data.

Language ideology in Edinburgh and Gaelic-medium education

As an alternative pedagogical model, additive immersion education is clearly a success; by a range of measures and in a variety of contexts, students in immersion schools have been shown to equal and even surpass the attainment of their mainstream peers (for research on attainment in Scottish Gaelic immersion see: Johnstone et al. 1999; Highland Council 2009; O'Hanlon et al. 2013). However, as a tactic for language revitalisation, the efficacy of immersion education is far less certain; while students may attain reasonable communicative competence in their classroom language, that competence does not always translate into much social use of the language outside of school (Dunmore 2014, 2016 and this volume; O'Hanlon 2012). Parents and educators often hope that out-of-classroom spaces in the immersion school – the cafeteria, the hallways and particularly the playground – might serve as sites where students can be encouraged to use the school language informally together, thereby normalising the school language as a social language for use outside of the classroom. If immer-sion education is to function as an effective tactic for language revitalisation, children would need to not only acquire full proficiency in the threatened language, but also be motivated to take the language out of the classroom and use it in their daily lives outside of the school, and then, ideally, in the future as adults. This is a difficult aim, but it is not impossible or unprecedented, and language ideology plays a central role in this regard. If immersion schooling is founded on a clear revivalist ideology linking language and identity, an ideology that leads to a strong, independent school ethos and a coherent school language policy, immersion schools can both provide excellent bilin-gual education to their students and serve as an effective means for language revival in their communities (cf. Nahir 1998; Brenzinger and Heinrich 2013).

Immersion education does not always develop in this way, but it can, and this natu-rally raises the question, when it does, why? Why do some immersion schools develop a strong ideological focus and others less so? In this chapter, I will suggest that part of the answer may be found by examining the history of the establishment of immersion chools.

Introduction

Decennial census data from the late nineteenth century onwards has shown a sharp decrease in the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland, in absolute terms, but also as a percentage of the population; whereas in 1891 254,415 people, 6.3 per cent of the total population of Scotland, were recorded as being ‘in the habit of making colloquial use of the Gaelic language’ (Census Office 1893), by 2011 this had fallen by 85 per cent to 57,375 people, 1.1 per cent of the population, self-reporting to be able to speak the language (National Records of Scotland (NRS) 2013). This decline in numbers of speakers has also been accompanied by a contraction in the geographical regions where the language is spoken by a majority of the population; whereas in 1901 Gaelic was spoken by more than 75 per cent of the population in the Inner and Outer Hebrides and, with the exception of North Mull, ‘all mainland parishes in an unbroken line from Appin in the south to Farr in the North’ (Mac an Tàilleir 2010: 33), in 2011 no parish remained where more than 67 per cent of the population claimed to be able to speak the language (NRS 2013). With research conducted in the Gaeltacht in Ireland by Ó Giollagáin et al. (2007) suggesting that the proportion of active, integrated minority language speakers needs to be more than 67 per cent for the use of the language in the community to be sustainable, it is therefore likely that Gaelic is continuing to yield to English as the main language used in communities, even in last remaining ‘heartland’ of the language, the Western Isles, where more than half the population are still able to speak Gaelic (NRS 2013).

This continuing language shift from Gaelic to English should be set against various support initiatives from the early twentieth century onwards, initially aimed at sup-porting and developing the fragile economic status of the traditional heartland of the language, the Gàidhealtachd. Although economic status has been identified by Grenoble and Whaley as ‘maybe the single strongest force influencing the fate of endangered languages’ (1998: 125), with Crystal (2000: 132) acknowledging that ‘an endangered language will progress if its speakers increase their wealth relative to the dominant community’, no official consideration was given to supporting the Gaelic language itself until the 1980s.

Introduction

Individually and collectively, the chapters in this collection offer empirically rich and compelling insights into the modern Gaelic community and language planning initiatives. The cases examined here have shed light on the complex processes and patterns of Gaelic language acquisition, use and management across a range of spaces of interactions: in the community, in public organisations and in educational settings. Gaelic continues to be classified as ‘definitely endangered’ in the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010) on account of weak intergenera-tional transmission of Gaelic in the home. The contributions here clearly illustrate, however, that the decline of Gaelic as a ‘mother tongue’ is not necessarily incompatible with Gaelic's maintenance as an additional language used by an expanding bilingual population in private and social domains.

The socio-political status of Gaelic as a minority language plays a fundamental role in the degree of language acquisition, maintenance and use of Gaelic throughout an individual's lifespan, as well as at different geographical scales within Scotland. Central to the findings presented here, therefore, is the national policy for Gaelic, as enshrined in the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and implemented through Gaelic lan-guage plans and initiatives. As Dunbar explains, the overriding purpose of the Act and the National Gaelic Language Plan is the revitalisation of the Gaelic language. Yet the authors in this collection show that, some thirteen years after the ratification of the Act, it is unclear whether this framework is effecting the attitudinal and behavioural change it aims to produce. In this final and concluding chapter we synthesise the main themes which arise from our findings and elaborate the implications for theoretical claims about minority language revitalisation, for language planning and policy, and for future research.

Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: issues and obstacles

Three cross-cutting issues can be elaborated from the authors’ examinations. The first emergent theme is one of ambiguity: ambiguity over what it means to be a ‘Gael’ in modern Scotland; ambiguity over what revitalisation means in a national context today; and ambiguity over the policy and planning mechanisms best-suited to support the maintenance of a community of Gaelic bilinguals.

The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 (the ‘Act’) is the single most important piece of legislation to have been enacted in support of the Gaelic language. Passed by the Scottish Parliament on 21 April 2005, it received Royal Assent on 1 June of that year, and came into force on 13 February 2006. The Act created a dedicated language planning body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig (the ‘Bòrd’), and a mechanism, Gaelic language plans, by which potentially all Scottish public authorities – essentially, the wider public sector subject to regulation by Scotland's devolved institutions, as well as those institutions themselves – can be subjected to obligations in relation to their use of, and policy for, the Gaelic language. In this respect, the Act replicated the approach taken in Wales in the Welsh Language Act 1993 and in the Republic of Ireland in the Official Languages Act 2003, in which language plans, or ‘schemes’, to use the term employed in those two pieces of legislation, were central. Before the Act, public authorities in Scotland were under no obligation to use Gaelic in dealing with the public or to provide other support for the language, although a small number of such bodies, including Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (CNES), the local authority for the Outer Hebrides, the Highland Council and the Scottish Executive (as the Scottish Government was called prior to 2007), had voluntarily adopted policies on these matters.

Both domestic legislation and international legal standards in relation to minor-ity languages can have a variety of aims. In some cases, the aim is political: relations between the linguistic minority and the majority can be a source of tensions which can lead to instability, secessionist movements and, in extreme cases, violence, and in such circumstances legislation can be intended to assuage such tensions. In some cases – particularly those in which significant numbers of members of the linguistic minority are unable to communicate in the majority or official language – legal meas-ures are motivated by equality considerations: provision of minority language services facilitates equal access to such services for members of the minority who are unable to communicate effectively in the majority or official language. And, often, the aim is the revitalisation of the minority language.

McLeod (2004a) argued persuasively that the post-1970s renaissance in Gaelic lan-guage development had been neglecting issues related to corpus planning, with the result that codification and elaboration of the language had seriously fallen behind the status planning ambitions of the Gaelic community. He concluded that corpus planning should become a ‘key priority’ for the new statutory language body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, created as a result of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, and that ‘a dedicated unit focused on corpus planning, including both the ongoing creation of new terms and specific projects such as dictionaries, thesauruses and style guidebooks, should be created without delay and made a top priority’. When the Bòrd published its first five-year National Plan for Gaelic in 2007, it included a commitment that ‘Bòrd na Gàidhlig, consulting with key partners, will investigate the most suitable structure for a Gaelic language academy in order to ensure the relevance and consistency of Gaelic, including place-names’ (BnaG 2007: 35). The need for a Gaelic language academy to deliver codification and elaboration was given further impetus by Bauer et al. (2009) in a Bòrd-commissioned survey of the prospects for Gaelic language technology.

By March 2011, Bòrd na Gàidhlig was reporting that ‘progress on [the Gaelic lan-guage academy] has been slower than expected and it is now anticipated that the public consultation will take place as part of the National Gaelic Language Plan 2012/17 consultations’ (BnaG 2011: 39). In an attempt to break the apparent deadlock, in late 2011 a group of Soillse-affiliated academics from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh drafted a discussion paper for the Bòrd's Gaelic Academy Working Group, recommending ‘a twelve-month investigative survey into corpus planning for Gaelic, aimed at establishing an appropriate linguistic foundation, and surveying and evaluat-ing the work that has already been done’ (McConville et al. 2011). This recommenda-tion was largely accepted in late 2012, and in January 2013 Soillse commenced work on the Dlùth is Inneach public consultation project, commissioned by Bòrd na Gàidhlig to answer the following questions:

It seems apt to open this volume with a quote from Nancy C. Dorian, whose work on the Gaelic spoken in East Sutherland has not only profoundly shaped scholarship on Scottish Gaelic sociolinguistics as a whole, but has guided research on language shift and maintenance for decades now. In 1987 Dorian wrote:

More than thirty years later, as the authors in this volume can attest, this question still lies at heart of conducting research on the social and linguistic dynamics of the Gaelic (Gàidhlig) language. Collectively, we have been asked this same question by various interlocutors, dozens, if not hundreds of times – sometimes with genuine interest and concern, sometimes pejoratively, with clear intent to aggravate. Indeed, a cursory glance at the mainstream and regional Scottish press will reveal that in popular discourse, the answer to this question is a loud and resounding ‘no’. Gaelic is referred to as a ‘dead language’, or a language that only a tiny proportion of the population speak; and children receiving their education through the medium of Gaelic, or attempts of any integration into public signage (recently, for example, the use of Gaelic – Poileas Alba – on the Police Scotland logo), cause public outcry. These acts are considered ‘vanity projects’ and deemed ‘a waste of money’. In other words, the fate of the language is sealed, and any attempt to alter this trajectory goes against deep-seated notions of what ‘ought’ to be (cf. Duchêne and Heller 2007). These types of discourses occur contemporaneously with – and sometimes even in tandem with – overly romanticised framings of the language: ‘Scotland's ancient language’, evocative of the ‘wild’ landscape of the language's perceived heartland, the Outer Hebrides. As McLeod (2001: 27) aptly summarises the situation: ‘The position of Gaelic in Scottish public life and discourse is contradictory: a dominant softcore, romanticized support coexists with a residual contemptuousness that borders on racism’ (see also McEwan-Fujita 2006 and MacKinnon 2011 for further discussions on these discourses).

In recent decades, and especially in the twenty-first century, ‘new speakers’ of Gaelic have become more numerous and prominent within the Gaelic-speaking community and the Gaelic professional world in Scotland (MacCaluim 2007a; McLeod et al. 2014). The national census does not distinguish between new and traditional, first language (L1) and second language (L2) Gaelic speakers, however, and there are no other authoritative data that show the number or proportion of new speakers within the overall Gaelic-speaking community. The term ‘new speaker’ has become increasingly widely used in contemporary sociolinguistics (O'Rourke et al. 2015); although operative definitions vary somewhat, the key factor is the absence of inter-generational, home-based language transmission. Some definitions are more exacting than others in terms of the degree of language ability and active use that is required for an individual to be properly classified as a ‘speaker’, or more accepting of lesser degrees of ‘newness’ in terms of the timeline of individuals’ learning trajectories (i.e. the age at which they began to acquire the language) and socio-cultural distance from the traditional speech community (Armstrong 2013; McLeod et al. 2014: 22). The term ‘new’ may also be misinterpreted so as to posit newness in a historical sense, i.e. to imply that such speakers did not exist at an earlier point in time, so that their emergence is to be understood as an unprecedented sociolinguistic phenomenon. In the Gaelic case, it is true that until recently (until the 1990s or indeed the 2000s) new speakers were relatively few. Yet on closer examination, new speakers can be seen to have made important contributions to Gaelic cultural and political initiatives since the middle of the nineteenth century, even if new speakers were rarely valorised and the importance of producing new speakers rarely prioritised by policy-makers or activists. This chapter will review the evolving role of new speakers since the late nineteenth century and analyse the principal sociolinguistic issues and policy chal-lenges that have come to the fore today.

Two interrelated factors acted to constrain the number of such new speakers in earlier decades. First, the limited provision for Gaelic that existed within Scotland's public school system from the 1870s onwards was aimed almost entirely at native speakers of the language.

Introduction

This chapter examines the learning experiences and linguistic practices of adult second language (L2) learners of Gaelic in Scotland and reflects on this group's possi-ble contribution to Gaelic revitalisation. O'Rourke and Walsh (2015: 15) argue that L2 speakers ‘are a necessary part of reversing language shift’, though are often overlooked in sociolinguistic models of language revitalisation and in practice. Whereas this might have held true in the past, in Gaelic Scotland there is now a strategic imperative to ensure greater numbers of adults learning Gaelic achieve fluency in order to help meet target increases in the crude number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland. Current Gaelic language-in-education policy aims to motivate adults to learn the language and, ultimately, to become active members of the Gaelic speech community (see Bòrd na Gàidhlig 2012). Making the transition from being an adult L2 learner to a user, or speaker, of a target language is known, however, to be a complex and non-linear process (O'Rourke and Walsh 2015; Nic Fhlannchadha and Hickey 2018). Since inter-action with target language speakers is a desirable condition for adult second language acquisition (SLA), it is argued that opportunities to practise using the language in and outside the classroom are fundamental (Norton 2013). Yet, even when the classroom experience is positive and individual motivation sustained, achieving high proficiency levels is particularly challenging in a social context which does not necessarily afford opportunities to practise the target language beyond the classroom.

This chapter reports the results from an online survey of 282 L2 learners as part of a wider study exploring the effectiveness of a classroom learning programme for Gaelic, called Ùlpan (MacLeod et al. 2015). The focus of this chapter is to understand Gaelic learner pathways and to explore their potential contribution to Gaelic language revital-isation. The results offer fresh insights into the disjuncture between the aspirations of minority language policy and the social realities of adults learning a minority language in the context of diminished place-based speaker communities. The findings also highlight the liminal space which minority language learners occupy both in practice and in contemporary theorising over adult language learning; their learner situation neither replicates the foreign language social context – despite the target language not being the typical language of communication in their immediate environment – nor the immersion learning context, in which naturalistic learning of the target language can complement classroom learning.

In this chapter, I will describe how a colourful new information pack produced by the national statutory language board, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, and the reaction to it of the play leaders at a Gaelic parent-and-child group helped me to understand parents’ first stages of involvement with Gaelic. Research into Gaelic-medium education choice has focused on why parents choose Gaelic-medium education (Roberts 1991; Stockdale et al. 2003; O'Hanlon et al. 2010; Goalabré 2011; O'Hanlon 2012; Rice 2012; McLeod and O'Rourke 2015; O'Hanlon and Paterson 2016). Most of this research asked parents with children already in Gaelic-medium primary education about their reasons for enrolling their child in the provision some, often many, years previously. Exceptions to this include Stephen et al. (2010), whose research into early years pro-vision included exploring Gaelic-medium education choice amongst parents of pre-school children, and also O'Hanlon and Paterson (2016: 2), which utilised a national social attitudes survey to investigate what factors influenced respondents to tick that ‘they would be likely to choose Gaelic-medium primary education for their own child’. There is a paucity of research into parents who are in the process of considering Gaelic-medium education or are yet to consider formal education but are involved in Gaelic provision at the early years. Rather than focusing on education choice, in this chapter I will examine how parents are supported by play leaders and fellow parents at Gaelic parent-and-child groups at this initial stage of involvement in Gaelic-medium education and how the role of these groups is wider than promoting and encouraging Gaelic-medium education enrolment at primary level.

This chapter is based on six-months of ethnographic fieldwork within Cròileagan Dùn Èideann. I regularly attended Cròileagan sessions across all locations, includ-ing participant observation at fifty-seven sessions, and I conducted semi-structured interviews with play leaders, parents – from twenty-six families in total – and Gaelic-medium education staff. Researchers in Language Planning and Policy are increasingly engaging with ethnography as a research method to understand the ‘interpretation and implementation’ of language policy at a local level (Hornberger and Johnson 2007: 511). Rather than examining the interpretation of a specific policy at a local level, in this chapter I will explore how concerns regarding a new information pack illumi-nated differences in priorities and understandings between local- and national-level organisations.

Introduction

This chapter presents data from doctoral research conducted by the author, which examined language use and ideologies among a purposive sample of 130 adults who started in Gaelic-medium education (henceforth ‘GME’) during the first years of its availability in Scotland (Dunmore 2015). As part of this research an online survey of language use and attitudes among this group elicited 112 responses between 2011 and 2013. Twenty-eight of these participants were also interviewed, as were eighteen further individuals. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrated that the major-ity of participants’ social use of Gaelic is limited today, although notable exceptions were found among some speakers who were substantially socialised in the language at home during childhood. Only a small minority of participants may be described as ‘new speakers’ of Gaelic, that is to say having been raised without Gaelic at home and acquiring the language in GME, but continuing to make frequent use of it in the present day (see McLeod et al. 2014; Dunmore 2018). This chapter focuses specifi-cally on the degree to which questionnaire participants reported using the Gaelic lan-guage in the work, home and community environments, before moving on to examine the sociological and educational correlates of these professed language practices statis-tically. As I hope to demonstrate, the question of former-GME students’ socialisation in Gaelic at home during childhood appears from the quantitative analysis to have an important bearing on rates of Gaelic language use with various interlocutors in adult-hood. Similarly, continuation with GME after completion of primary school seems from the statistical analysis to play a crucial role, correlating consistently with higher rates of Gaelic use.

Gaelic in Scotland in the early twenty-first century

The 2011 Census in the UK showed a 2.2 per cent decline in the number of people claiming an ability to speak Gaelic in Scotland compared to the 2001 Census. In spite of this, the census also showed growth, for the first time, in the number of Gaelic speakers under the age of twenty. Although the proportion of individuals in this group able to speak Gaelic increased by just 0.1 per cent compared to the figure in 2001, the actual increase in numbers of speakers under twenty-five grew by 8.6 per cent from 2001 (National Records of Scotland (NRS) 2015: 9).

Representing and Acquiring Thematic Roles

The concept of thematic role is one of the most vaguely defined, yet appealing, technical tools in the linguist's toolkit. Since its settlement in the circle of relevant modern theoretical issues, thanks to investigations by Tesnière (1959), Gruber (1965), Fillmore (1968), and Jackendoff (1972), this concept has been approached with what Dowty (1989) called the I-can't-define-it-but-I-know-itwhen- I-see-it stance; that is, by using it without offering a proper definition.