Gaelic Cultural Maintenance and the Contribution of Ethnography

Closing Plenary Session, 17th November 2018, Third Celtic Sociolinguistics Symposium, NUI Galway One notable legacy of the Clearances and mass migration of Highlanders to Maritime Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries is the continued presence of a Gaelic-speaking minority in the province of Nova Scotia. In this paper I will discuss the role of ‘new’ speakers in Gaelic revitalisation initiatives in the divergent contexts of Scotland and Nova Scotia. The concept of the ‘new speaker’ has gained currency in the sociolinguistics of minority languages in the past decade, referring to individuals who have acquired an additional language outside of the home setting and make frequent use of it in the course of their daily lives. In addition to Scotland’s 57,602 Gaelic speakers, the 2011 census recorded 1,275 Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia (amounting to just over 0.1% of the total population). Of that number, only 300 individuals reported Gaelic as their ‘mother tongue’, with the remainder likely to have acquired Gaelic through educational programmes in adolescence or adulthood. Policymakers and language advocates in both Scotland and Canada make frequent reference to the role that new speakers may play in the future of the Gaelic language on both sides of the Atlantic. The present-day Nova Scotia Gaelic community is thus substantially smaller than that of Scotland, having experienced a decline of over 99% in the last hundred years, from over 80,000 in the early 20th century. As a response to rapid language shift in both Scotland and Nova Scotia, Gaelic language teaching has been prioritised by policymakers as a mechanism for revitalising the language. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among speakers in Scotland and Canada, this paper will examine reflexes of this policy in the two countries, juxtaposing the ongoing fragility of Gaelic communities with new speakers’ ideologies around heritage, identity, and their own language learning motivations. In particular, I consider how Nova Scotian new speakers foreground and emphasise their sense of identity as ‘Gaels’, an ethnonym largely avoided or problematised by new speakers in Scotland.

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2021

Scottish Affairs, 1998

Sharon Macdonald sets out to challenge conventional wisdom on two related counts. She presents her study as an informed stance on the analysis of identity in a 'remote' region of Europe. She argues that the cthno-nationalist constructions of culture, and implicitly 'pcoplehood', are problematic and can be countered by alternative conceptions of belonging and identity. Macdonald's anthropological research was conducted on Skye in the community of 'Carnan' (a pseudonym). In addressing the first general challenge, Macdonald presents her account as an ethnographic study of Gaelic cultural identity which explores the cultural possibilities of imagining and reimagining identity in an era of 'Gaelic renaissance'. Her suggestion is that identities arc not imagined 'once and for all' but, rather, arc open to processes of change and reinvention, and for this she cites the now well established source on such 'imagining', Benedict Anderson. Macdonald stresses that her book is the product of a situated ethnography whereby ready-made assumptions or habitual categories of explanation arc reassessed and other possibilities for understanding cultural identity are revealed. She appropriates Billig's use of 'banal' to refer to the 'everyday' expressions of identity (for example, 'Carnan' residents' relationships to animals, their taste in home decoration and the recounting of 'tourist/crofter' jokes, amongst other things), which she studies with intent in order to reveal to us the ambivalence of identity construction and expression amongst her informants. Macdonald presents herself as one who is at pains to avoid projecting 'our own' categories of thought, our ready-made assumptions, onto explanations of 'local' social relations and environment. And in order to locate herself within this 'methodological' challenge, Macdonald proceeds to reveal to us her own 'identity' and her own situated relationship to Skye, the Highlands, and Scotland more generally. This last account of rcflexivity is now a Kathryn A. Burnett is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. She has undertaken research in the Outer Hebrides on identity formation and constructions of home with special reference to 'incomers'and notions of'localness'.

ffn" srudy of contacts between b{orse storytelling rradirions and Gaelic traditions. Throrrrsh necessiry, my discussions of Norse, and especially lcelandic, rrrateriars have also bee'confrned to their r.lation ro scot_ land. Frrnlll', I wilr briefly review dhe recent work thar has taken prace in the.fielcl of migratory legends, highrighcintr; exampres thar q,ith furdrer study seem likely to produr:e resultso, u. leus. ,o-" fruidul questions.

This is the first sustained attempt to gather historical documentation about Scottish Gaelic-speaking people of African descent in North America. Many Scottish Gaels contemplated the consequences of assimilating into whiteness in America, in order to access wealth and privilege. Gaels were not just losing their language and culture, they were adopting an Anglophone identity during a time of rabidly racist Anglo-Saxonism in America. The folk anecdotes regarding Gaelic-speaking people of African descent examined in this article — and there must have been many more variants in oral tradition — illustrate the anxieties of immigrant Highland communities. By assimilating they would no longer be ‘Other’ to the institutions of the state, but their own ancestors would be ‘Other’ to them. Yet, at the same time, they were aware of several significant cases of the ‘Other’ of white identity in North America — African-Americans and Native Americans — assimilating into immigrant Highland communities and becoming Gaelic speakers. A range of folklore is explored, describing the ways in which they engage with questions of linguistic and racial identity.

1997

Attempts to revive the Gaelic language in Nova Scotia have failed numerous times in the past. Now another Gaelic Revival is undeway. This thesis looks at the history of Gaelic Revivals in Nova Scotia and how they reflected the evolving Gaelic identity and its relationship to the wider provincial and Canadian society. The first eighty years of Gaelic life in Nova Scotia saw a taking root and strengthening of the language and its attendant cultural expressions. The following half decade shows a marked decline in the numbers of Gaelic speakers, a result of outmigration and the intemalization of negative attitudes ioward Gaelic culture held by outsiders. This period is followed by the first organized attempts from outside the Gaelic cornrnunities to revive the language, usually accompanied by romantic and tartanist ideais of Gaelic culture with which Nova Scotian Gaels could not identify. Since the 1970's. a new sensibility has accompanied effons at language revitdization, one which attempts to identify and promote those aspects of Gaelic life which have been part of the lived experience of Nova Scotian Gaels, but were heretofore unknown or unappreciated by past Revivalists. The current situation reflects a continuing dialog over what constitutes "real" Gaelic culture, while at the sarne time some parts of that culture are being promoted worldwide under the assimilative labels "Celtic" and "East Coast". As the native Gaelic speakers age and dirninish in numbers, the future of Gaelic society in the province is increasingly in the hands of adult learners. Data b r n a survey of sixty-six such learners indicates that, as they become more fluent in Gaelic, they interact more with native speakers and become more in tune with the lived Gaelic redity, as opposed to the more romantic notions derived from the tartanism which is ni11 ubiquitous throughout the province.

This chapter attempts to provide an overview of how Scottish Gaels have understood and expressed their own identity, tracing continuities and innovations in the expression of ethnic consciousness from the pre-migration Highlands to mid-20th-century Nova Scotia. It attempts to take into consideration the most significant factors and institutions which influenced the formation of Gaelic identities in the province in that period and the ways in which these identities have been expressed. These perspectives and sources provide a strong contrast to the stereotypes of tartanism and Highlandism dominant in anglophone sources and external representations of the Scottish community.

Scottish Affairs, 2022

This article responds to the recent special issue of Scottish Affairs on ‘Gàidhealtachd Futures’ and in particular the article by Iain MacKinnon proposing that ancestry, ethnicity and indigeneity should become the principal elements in contemporary Gaelic identity. The editors of the special issue do not give an analytically meaningful presentation of the term Gàidhealtachd and MacKinnon fails to give a complete or balanced account of previous research on the question of Gaelic identity. There is considerable uncertainty about how the term Gael is understood today; many Gaelic speakers are reluctant to accept this label for themselves. MacKinnon's arguments concerning the role of ancestry in defining Gaelic identity are highly problematic in both analytical and political terms. His proposals concerning ethnicity and indigeneity are unsustainable, particularly in light of relevant legal standards, and amount to a strategic, ethical and legal dead end for the Gaelic revitalisation...

Language in Society, 2020

The concept of the ‘new speaker’ has gained currency in the sociolinguistics of minority languages in the past decade, referring to individuals who have acquired an additional language outside of the home and who make frequent use of it in the course of their daily lives. Policymakers and language advocates in both Scotland and Canada make frequent reference to the role that new speakers may play in the future of the Gaelic language on both sides of the Atlantic, and Gaelic language teaching of various kinds has been prioritised by policymakers as a mechanism for revitalising the language. This article examines reflexes of this policy in the two countries, juxtaposing the ongoing fragility of Gaelic communities with new speaker discourses around heritage, identity, and language learning motivations. In particular, I consider Nova Scotian new speakers’ sense of identity as ‘Gaels’, an ethnonym largely avoided or problematised by Scottish new speakers.