CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE POLICY IN SCOTLAND TOWARDS GAELIC AND SCOTS

A few years ago, I did a Masters in Applied Linguistics at Birmingham University. My dissertation, completed in November 2023, was on the topic of language policy towards Gaelic and Scots.

I have provided an abstract of the paper below. If it stimulates your interest, you can read the full paper, all 51 pages of it (!), here

ABSTRACT

Scotland has two indigenous languages, Scottish Gaelic and Scots, but Standard Scottish English is the overwhelmingly dominant language.  Nevertheless, space has emerged for Scotland’s minority languages in recent years.  This paper assesses language policy towards Gaelic and Scots since the devolved Scottish Parliament was created in 1999.  The three research questions pursued are to: review how well the language policy literature can explain situations in which language policy is concerned with the maintenance of a minority language; assess the effectiveness of explicit language policies in Scotland towards Gaelic and Scots; and assess the effectiveness of alternative language policy strategies in the past and the future.  The literature on language policy has only belatedly, and still not wholly effectively, begun to tackle some of the issues pertinent to the Scottish situation such as ‘bottom up’ strategies and language ideologies.  There has been some success in the stated priorities of language policy towards Gaelic, concerning learning and promoting Gaelic.  In contrast, language policy towards Scots remains poorly articulated and has achieved very little.  Consideration of alternative counterfactual language policies focused on the revitalisation of Gaelic and the maintenance of Scots suggests that time may have run out for both languages.