This thesis investigates the standardisation of Modern Scottish Gaelic orthography from the mid-eighteenth century to the twenty-first. It presents the results of the first corpus-based analysis of Modern Scottish Gaelic orthographic development combined with an analytic approach that places orthographic choices in their sociolinguistic context. The theoretical framework behind the analysis centres on discussion of how the language ideologies of the phonographic ideal, historicism, autonomy, vernacularism and the ideology of the standard itself have shaped orthographic conventions and debates. It argues that current spelling norms reflect an orthography that is the result of compromise, historical factors and pragmatic function. The research uses a digital corpus to examine how three particular features have been used over time: the dialect variation between < eu > and < ia >; variation in s + stop consonant clusters (sd/st, sg/sc, sb/sp); and the use of the grave and acute accents. Evidence is drawn from the Corpas na Gàidhlig electronic corpus created at the University of Glasgow: the sub-corpus used in this study includes 117 published texts representing a period of over 250 years from 1750 to 2007, and a total size of over four and a quarter million words. The results confirm a key period of reform between 1750 and the early nineteenth century, and thereafter a settled norm being established in the early nineteenth century. Since then, some variation has been acceptable although changes and reform of some features have centred on increasing uniformity and regularisation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, Aug. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study with two major objectives, namely to investigate both the cultural and historical developments which took place between c.795 and c.1000 in the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Various types of evidence are examined in order to understand the impact of the Norse upon the preexisting population of Western Scotland and vice versa. In Chapter 1, the onomastic evidence is reviewed in order to isolate the total area of Norse settlement, and to find within it areas where this settlement developed in differing ways. In Chapter 2, I survey the archaeological evidence. Chapter 3 examines the linguistic situation pertaining in the west vis a vis Norse and Gaelic, while Chapter 4 reviews the evidence for the survival or otherwise of Christianity. Particular attention is paid to the investigation of the people called Gall-Gaidheil 'Foreign Gael'. Using onomastics and historical sources, the area of their ethnogenesis is isolated and their linguistic and religious affiliation explored. Chapter 5 examines the evidence for their later presence in Galloway. On the historical side, Chapter 6 investigates the Norse raids and settlement and provides a date for these events. Also in Chapter 6, and in Chapters 7 and 8, I focus upon the political links between the West Highlands and Islands and the kingdoms of Scotland and Dublin during the ninth and tenth centuries.

This thesis is a survey of the work in poetry and prose of William Livingston or Uilleam Mac Dhunl`eibhe, the Islay bard (1808-70). The version of his English surname without final `e' has been preferred because it is used in the definitive, 1882 edition of his poems and throughout the text (but not in the title) of the section of his own clan in the Vindication. The first chapter, `Biography and Background', gathers the available information on the poet's life, and attempts to set him in the context of the cultural, social and economic situation of Islay during the century preceding his birth. The second chapter, `The Intellectual Background', investigates Livingston's reading and his knowledge and use of historical and antiquarian texts. His familiarity with the traditionary version of the origins of the Scottish monarchy, elaborated by patriotic historians before the Union, is especially interesting. Chapter Three, `Polemicist and Historian', looks in detail at a work Livingston edited for publication, MacNichol's remarks on Dr Johnson's account of his journey through Gaelic Scotland, before turning to the poet's longest prose work, the Vindication of the Celtic Character. His shorter pamphlets and the incomplete History of Scotland are also examined. The fourth and fifth chapters explore Livingston's attitude to James Macpherson and to the Gaelic version of his Ossian, and attempt to decide to what extent and in what way he was influenced by the earlier poet. Explicit references to Macpherson in the poetry and prose are surveyed before the triangular relationship between Livingston the poet, Macpherson's work, and ballad material of various degrees of genuineness is discussed. The next two chapters offer close readings of the two major battle poems, `Na Lochalannaich an Ile' and `Bl`ar Shunadail', while Chapters Eight and Nine look at the shorter battle poems, ranging from Mons Graupius, in the first century of the Christian era, to the battle at Gruinard Bay on Islay, which took place just before the union of the crowns, and the battles of Alma and Balaclava in the Crimean War. Chapter Ten is devoted to Livingston's poetry of the Clearances. Its two main focuses are `Cuimhneachan Bhraid-Alba' and `Fios thun a' Bh`aird', and the thesis ends with a close reading of this, perhaps his most famous poem.

Extensive literature has argued the important role that education plays in the process of language shift. Within this literature, it is widely acknowledged that education in which the target language is also the medium of instruction can make a positive contribution toward Reversing Language Shift. For users of minoritised languages in particular, having access to education in one’s own language has important status and educational consequences: helping to support the prestige of the target language and also reducing the kinds of educational inequalities that are often associated with minoritised languages. In keeping with the prime importance of language-as-medium education to language planning goals, there is a growing body of research which focuses upon Gaelic Medium Education in Scotland. The role that second or additional language education can play in Reversing Language Shift is acknowledged to a much lesser extent. This is especially true within the context of Scotland, where the relevant education provision within state secondary schools, Gaelic (Learners) Education, has only received passing recognition. This thesis aimed to address this gap in knowledge about the way in which education contributes to development goals for Gaelic in Scotland by questioning what, if any, role the Gaelic (Learners) Education programme has to play in the reversal of language shift. The first aim of the dissertation was to identify a theoretical foundation for the role that second or additional language education can play in Reversing Language Shift. Several prominent theoretical approaches were reviewed and a hypothesis posed that Gaelic (Learners) Education was beneficial to both Acquisition and Status development. Subsequent analyses of policies at the macro, meso, and micro levels confirmed the relevance of this hypothesis. However, it was also found that there was a lack of overt policy acknowledgement for Gaelic (Learners) Education in Scotland overall, suggesting that the stream was not regarded as being particularly relevant to Reversing Language Shift. The next aim of the thesis was to clarify the ways in which the stream could be used to help contribute to the reversal of language shift. This focused on identifying areas in which this educational programme could be improved. Using data elicited in semi-structured interviews with education professionals and gathered through surveys of pupils within GLE classes, several blockages for Gaelic (Learners) Education could be identified including aspects of capacity, opportunity and attitudes.

George Campbell Hay (1915-1984) is acknowledged as one of the towering figures of 20th c. Gaelic poetry, and also respected outwith that linguistic tradition for his work in Scots and English, yet since the appearance of his three poetry collections shortly after the war, the greater part of his work has been unavailable, and its appreciation limited to a handful of Gaelic poems. Even the 1970 anthology which brought his non-Gaelic poems to wider attention has long been out of print, and his master-work - the unfinished long narrative poem Mochtar is Dughall - only emerged from almost forty years' obscurity in 1982. In short, there is an urgent need for the totality of Hay's work to be made available again, both for the enjoyment of the poetry-reading public and to enable a proper assessment of his contribution to Scottish literature. This thesis aims to provide the basis for such a Collected Edition. As a scholarly edition, however, it does not seek to provide single ideal texts or an editor's anthology, but to present the development of each poem through all its variants (shown in a critical apparatus), and bring some light to bear on the creative process. The poems are given in a separate volume, in chronological order, with no interfering classifications (such as by language, or publication status). In the way of introduction, I first give an account of Hay's life. This is based primarily on the man's own correspondence, to complement already published portraits drawn in the main from personal reminiscence. I have stressed the socio-political context in which Hay operated up till the war, as his passionate evangelical nationalism held such a dominant place in his poetry throughout his life. The following chapter looks in more detail at Hay's poetic activity in the 1940s, marked by his growing reputation and his association with the Scottish Renaissance of Hugh MacDiarmid, and culminating in the publication of Fuaran Sleibh, Wind On Loch Fyne and 0 Na Ceithir Airdean. A third chapter surveys the principal themes which exercised Hay's poetic imagination. In view of the edition's eschewal of categorisation, such a thematic classification may be of help in giving an overview of Hay's poetry; its aim however is not to create artificial segregations, but to stress both the diversity and the underlying philosophical unity of the poetry. Hay was a poet of virtuosic technique, and a final chapter examines both his own professed attitudes to poetic technique and his practical craftsmanship; this includes the linguistic and musical aspects of his work. The edition proper is preceded by a statement of editorial policy, illuminating some of the problems posed by the differing nature of the sources, and by Hay's inveterate tendency to revise his work. There follow notes to the poems, appendices of material which did not find a place in the main body of the edition, and an illustrated index of the Argyll place-names which so copiously populate Hay's poetry. An index to the poems is also supplied.

This dissertation draws upon local aesthetic attitudes held by members of the elder generation of first-language Scottish Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton Island, Canada towards various forms of communally-based cultural expression as conceived through metaphor. Through such engagement one begins to sense the central role of emplaced identity alongside embodied experience in describing these forms. In many ways, to the ethnographic fieldworker, this is uncharted territory. Here fieldwork functions within emic models of the cèilidh (visit) through collective social engagement in seanchas, an intracultural form of metalinguistic and metacultural discourse. Such a methodological approach facilitates in unveiling an intersubjective understanding of past, present and future acts, the forging of collective identity in the social world and finding meaning in cultural expression. In the context of this dissertation, what began as a seanchas-based exploration into local ethnoaesthetic attitudes revealed a wealth of metaphor in various abstractions arising out of our shared discourse. Such organically yet creatively conceived metaphors function between that which is symbolic and habitual, capable of crossing the boundaries of genre and breaking-down the partitions of that which is at once deemed abstract and concrete. Through the conceptual metaphor theories of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson among others, this works employs a dynamic system of interpretation that, when working in this ethnolinguistic context, makes full use of the available body of cultural and linguistic knowledge both synchronically and diachronically. This ethnography of metaphor, therefore, follows a pathway arising out of a sequential understanding of sensory experience in interpreting both identity and aesthetic thought as expressed by these Scottish Gaels. Beginning with individual orientation in time and space through cultural, social and emotional engagement with both the physical and cognitive landscape, the ethnography goes on to explore both a synaesthetic and kinaesthetic awareness of the various ways in which we conceive expressive sound in its flow. Within this conceptual metaphor framework a system is unveiled in which the expression of communal tradition is seen as emanating from a shared cridhe (heart/centre). Subsequently, the transmission of this knowledge is conceptualised among encultured individuals as capable of being metaphorically eaten and, therefore, (re)internalised in the body. Such an understanding is intrinsically linked to the mutual aesthetic appreciation of language and music through their blas (taste). Ultimately, these metaphors are rooted in an integrated system oriented towards the collective attainment of social wellbeing and a principal desire to sustain that which they serve to describe.

This thesis provides a description of the Scottish Gaelic dialect spoken on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay. This dialect has not previously been the subject of any serious academic research. Gaelic was the dominant language on Colonsay until the 1970s, but the local dialect is now in terminal decline, with only a handful of fluent speakers still living on the island. The study focusses mainly on the phonology of the dialect, but other aspects such as morphology, syntax and lexis are also covered. Following a brief introduction, Chapter 1 seeks to situate the dialect in its wider geographical, historical and sociolinguistic context, highlighting the major changes that have taken place in the past forty years, and have led to its present endangered situation. Chapter 2, which comprises approximately half the thesis, examines the phonological structure of the dialect in detail, based on the results of the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland (SGDS). Issues of phonetic and phonemic transcription are discussed. The phonemes identified are then listed, with their respective allophones and non-allophonic variants. Chapter 3 deals with prosodic and other non-segmental features which are of significance for the phonology of the dialect. Chapter 4 highlights those aspects of morphology and syntax where Colonsay usage differs from other varieties of Gaelic. Chapter 5 discusses lexical features which are particular to this dialect, or shared with neighbouring dialects in Argyll. An annotated Glossary lists words which are of particular interest in the study of this dialect, some of which are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. This thesis will provide future students of Gaelic dialectology with an account of the Colonsay dialect, to complement the numerous monographs that have been written about other varieties of Gaelic. Because of the precarious position of this dialect, the timing of this study is critical: it represents the last opportunity to 'preserve by record' a distinctive variety of Gaelic which, sadly, is on the verge of extinction.

This thesis examines the language shift, maintenance, and code-switching of three generations of a bilingual family on the Isles of Skye and Harris, Scotland. Based on ten hours of recorded conversations among family members in the home environment, this thesis focuses particularly on the speakers’ alternation between Gaelic and English and uses a microinteractional approach in looking at how code-switching is used in the meaning-making process of this family’s interactions. It concludes that although speakers vary in terms of both ability and use of the minority language, code-switching is nonetheless a powerful communicative tool within this family. Additionally, speakers within the three generations have different ways of code-switching for effect as well as various ways of ‘doing being bilingual’ (cf. Auer, 1984). In looking at the family’s overall use of both languages, the study finds that the first generation proportionally uses more Gaelic than the second and third generations, confirming that language shift is occurring within the family. Analysis of the first generation speakers’ intragenerational language use demonstrates that speakers use code-switching in concert with reifying certain stances and in modulating between different stances in the conversation. It also examines how code-switching is used in congruence with rendering constructed dialogue, and argues that these instances of language alternation are related to the narrator’s indexical and discourse organisational goals. The discussion of the first generation concludes by arguing that these speakers use code-switching primarily as a strategy to mitigate communicative trouble, a theme which is carried forward in focusing on the use of one first generation speaker’s code-switching in two lengthy narratives. This section argues that the use of code-switching is integral to the speaker’s success in the storytelling process, and demonstrates how the speaker uses code-switching in oscillating between the storyworld and the real-world interaction, as well uses code-switching in navigating different temporal frames within the narrative. Although the second generation evidence language shift by their overall low use of Gaelic, they are nonetheless trying to maintain the use of Gaelic with the third generation. An examination of the second generation’s language use focuses primarily on their use of the minority language in creating a child-centred context. It also further looks at how the parents of the third generation speakers use Gaelic when taking up authoritative stances towards their children. Discussion of the third generation’s language use centres on how the children in turn pereceive and use Gaelic as a ‘strategy for gain’ and focuses in particular on their occasional use of Gaelic in constructing argumentative stances vis-à-vis their parents’ displays of authority. The section concludes by examining an interaction where the youngest speaker in the study uses an increased amount of Gaelic on the telephone, arguing that the use of Gaelic in this context is one of the ways this third generation speaker enacts a first generation identity. This study demonstrates that although language shift is occurring, the family is nonetheless trying to maintain their minority language. Code-switching is a powerful communicative strategy within the family and all members, and even family members with only passive bilingual skills ‘do being part of a bilingual family.’

Within contemporary Scotland there are two distinct language systems which may be considered to be threatened with extinction. These are the Germanic system of Scots, decended from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, and the Celtic system of Gaelic, one of the languages of the Goidelic branch of Celtic. Both systems are dominated by English, in the written form and through the spoken forms of Received Pronunciation and Standard Scottish English. The common ancestry of Scots and English, both being derived from dialects of Old English, suggests that the form of domination in this relationship could be distinguised from the influence of English on Gaelic. This is paralleled in the distinction made between the processes of 'language suicide' (ie the gradual assimilation towards a similar system) and 'language murder' (ie the displacement of one language by another). This is considered in terms of register and domain. Interference is analysed within various registers and domains in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and orthography. Further studies assess the extent of usage for Gaelic in the Isle of Lewis and Scots in Banffshire. The main conclusion that is drawn from the study is that the broad distinction between language suicide and language murder has some validity, but the process of language death, as evidenced by Scots and Gaelic, is more complex than that. In both languages there is evidence of assimilation towards English through interference in the system, and of displacement in terms of the number of speakers and the domains in which the languages are used. Assessment of the state of Gaelic reveals that, despite an apparent increase in the number of speakers, there is evidence of greater English dominance amongst present day speakers, who use English in more situations and include more English features in their Gaelic. A similar picture is found for Scots.