Professional learning for teachers is an area of international interest, not least because teacher quality is seen to be a factor in pupil outcomes. Scholars agree that immersion teaching requires a particular knowledge and skill set; yet there is a paucity of international research on the professional learning of bilingual and immersion teachers and none in the context of Gaelic-medium education. This thesis examines what professional learning opportunities Gaelic-medium primary teachers perceive they require to support them in teaching Gaelic as a language and teaching the curriculum through the medium of Gaelic. Factors such as stage of career, teacher language background and contexts for teacher learning were also considered. Theories of bilingual and immersion education, second language learning and teacher learning informed the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Gaelic with 25 Gaelic-medium primary teachers, including teaching managers, across 7 local authorities. The teachers completed a short questionnaire eliciting relevant information of educational background, professional learning and experience that supplemented the interview data. Thematic analysis was used to identify key professional learning themes across the transcripts. The results show that professional learning to further develop teacher language proficiency, including a deeper understanding of the grammatical structures of Gaelic, was of key importance to the teachers. The research also demonstrated that the teachers perceived a better understanding of bilingual and immersion education, how to teach language in the curriculum and extending their pedagogical practices were necessary areas of further learning for them. There was little Gaelic-specific professional learning available to the teachers, with English-medium local and national priorities taking precedence. The role of leaders and managers in choosing and facilitating professional learning opportunities was identified as a significant contextual factor shaping teacher learning. While there is a scarcity of bilingual and immersion studies in teacher professional learning, there is a wealth of research related to the language areas identified by the teachers for further learning which are drawn on in discussion. This thesis offers a contribution to the professional learning literature base of Gaelic-medium teachers, based on their needs, through its analysis of teacher-identified learning opportunities in relation to teaching Gaelic as a language and teaching the curriculum through Gaelic. Key areas of teacher language proficiency, form-focused instruction, immersion pedagogies and assessment are identified for professional learning across the career continuum to further enhance classroom practice. It is recommended that professional learning opportunities in these teacher-identified areas be progressed at both national and local level, through flexible methods of delivery, to ensure availability and accessibility to the geographically dispersed Gaelic-medium teacher group.

This thesis explores the musical world and the song compositions of eighteenth-century Sutherland Gaelic bard Rob Donn MacKay (1714-1778). The principal focus is musical rather than literary, aimed at developing an analytical model to reconstruct how a non-literate Gaelic song-maker chose and composed the music for his songs. In that regard, the thesis breaks new ground in at least two ways: as the first full-length study of the musical work of Rob Donn, and as the first full-length musical study of any eighteenth-century Scottish Gaelic poet. Among other things, it demonstrates that a critical assessment of Rob Donn merely as a “poet” seriously underestimates his achievement in combining words and music to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The study also illustrates how widely melodic material circulated in eighteenth-century Scotland through aural transmission, easily crossing between languages and between instrumental and vocal music. The thesis includes a musical biography, a review of sources and commentary on Rob Donn, an introduction to relevant theoretical concepts in ethnomusicology and related fields, and a survey of eighteenth-century Scottish music, followed by several chapters analyzing the music of one hundred songs by topic (elegies; social and political commentary; love, courtship and weddings; satire and humor; and praise, nature and sea songs). The study shows that Rob Donn borrowed tunes for 67 of these songs from earlier sources (45% from Gaelic song, 25% from Scots song, 12% from English or Irish song, and 18% from instrumental tunes). It then provides evidence that he composed the melodies of 33 songs, examining in detail how he adapted earlier musical models and created musical settings to reinforce aspects of his poetic message. It also analyzes the musical features of all 100 songs, providing charts summarizing their vocal range, musical meter, scales and tonality. The thesis is accompanied by two appendices, one containing 121 musical settings of the 100 songs, and the other containing their complete texts with English translations (most translated here for the first time).

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.

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.’

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1998. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-250).

The Scottish Gael is objectified in an un-modified ‘Tourist Gaze’; a condition that is best understood from a post-colonial perspective. John Urry showed that cultures are objectified by the gaze of a global tourist industry. The unequal power relations in that gaze can be mediated through resistance and the production of staged touristic events. The process leads to commoditisation and in-authenticity and this is the current discourse on Scottish tourism icons. An ethnographic study of tour guiding shows a pattern of (re)-presentation of a silenced and near invisible Gaeldom. By building upon Foucauldian theories of power, Said’s critique of Orientalism’s discourse and Spivak on agency, this unmodified gaze can be explained from a postcolonial perspective. Six related aspects of Gaeldom’s (re)-presentation are revealed ; the discourse of the Victorian invention of Scottish cultural icons, and, by metonymic extension, Gaelic culture; the commoditisation of Gaelic culture in the image of the Highland Warrior; the re-naming of landscape and invention of new place narratives; historical presence by invitation; elision with Irish culture; and, the mute Gael. Combined, the elements of (re)-presentation result in the distancing and the rendering opaque of Gaelic culture. The absence of informed mediators, either tourist authorities or individuals, the lack of an oppositional narrative and the pervasive discourse of invention reduces the Gael to a silenced subaltern ‘other’. Thus the unmediated tourist ‘gaze’ continues. This exceptionally singular condition of Scottish Gaeldom is comprehensible through analysis of Scottish tourism from a postcolonial perspective.

No description available.

The thesis, 'Cianalas Redefined', examines a selection of modern Gaelic literature by writers from the island of Lewis. The texts include: the poetry of Derick Thomson and Iain Crichton Smith, Iain Crichton Smith's short stories and novellas, and novellas by Norman Malcolm MacDonald and Alasdair Campbell. The thesis explores how the common and traditional theme of exile has come to be manifest in modern Gaelic literature in a form similar to European Existential literature. In illustrating the connection between exile and Existential literature, it is hoped that a new form of the Gaelic term 'cianalas' (homesickness/nostalgia) may be understood. In order to redefine cianalas, the following are some of the topics considered in relation to the chosen texts: intrinsic love of island home and culture; conventional physical exile; the 'split' between primary and secondary environments; crisis of personal identity; clarification of different types of exile present in the literature, including metaphysical and temporal exile; whether this literature fulfils the prerequisites of Existential literature, as described elsewhere; Existential concepts of 'authentic' and 'inauthentic existence' and 'bad faith'; the 'outsider' living in a close-knit community; cultural stereotypes; the 'Gaelic psyche' and 'unconscious'.

Bookstore in Skaebost Skye

Christine and Muriel discuss what it was like to be a kid who sang when she lived in Carloway Lewis