Gaelic Language Revitalization Concepts and Challenges

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• Reviewed by Dr. Claire Nance in the Journal of Sociolinguistics 2021:1-11: free full-text version | paywalled published version
• Reviewed by Dr. Stuart Dunmore in the Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 2021: paywalled published version

“I’m glad that a new volume strong on Gaelic survival, persistence, and revitalization is now on offer, with due emphasis on social setting and social factors. Congratulations to the author on bringing such a strong body of work out in a form where it can be appreciated as a whole.”
—Dr. Nancy C. Dorian

“…I found it exciting and inspiring to read much of McEwan-Fujita’s published work together in one place and to see the development of thinking across multiple projects and research contexts. […] To sum up, [the text reviewed here is] critical, constructive and provide[s] an exemplary level of detail. The focus is naturally on Gaelic, but the work has wide implications for language policy, linguistic anthropology, and minority language sociolinguistics more generally. I consider mysef fortunate to have read and reviewed [this] excellent [text], which advanced my knowledge and provided much inspiration.”
—Dr. Claire Nance

“McEwan-Fujita’s significant scholarship on the sociolinguistics and anthropology of Gaelic revitalisation is of considerable interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students – not just of Gaelic, but of language decline and revival more generally. It is very beneficial to have some of her most important work in a single volume.”
—Dr. Stuart Dunmore

Introduction

Part 1:  Knowledge and Representation
1 Sociolinguistic ethnography of Gaelic communities
2 Research and representation: Gaelic and Uist

Part 2:  Discourses of Death and Revitalization
3 Discourses of death and denigration: Ethnolinguistic differentiation and the ideology of contempt
4 “Gaelic doomed as speakers die out”? The public discourse of Gaelic language death in Scotland
5 Language revitalization discourses as metaculture: Gaelic in Scotland from the 18th to 20th centuries

Part 3:  Neoliberalism and Language Revitalization
6 Neoliberal discourses of Gaelic language revitalization: The “Gaelic economy” and “rocketing spending”
7 Neoliberalism and minority language planning in the Highlands of Scotland

Part 4:  Language Ideologies and Affect
8 Ideology, affect, and socialization in language shift and revitalization: The experiences of adults learning Gaelic in the Western Isles of Scotland
9 Ideologies and experiences of literacy in interactions
between adult Gaelic learners and first-language Gaelic speakers in Scotland
10 Working at “9 to 5” Gaelic: Speakers, context, and ideologies of an emerging minority language register

Part 5:  New Speakers and Reversing Language Shift
11 Gaelic revitalization efforts in Nova Scotia: Reversing Language Shift (RLS) in the 21st century
12 “Ìle ga Bruidhinn”: A community-based Gaelic dialect revitalization proposal

References
Index