| FT-58327-10 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Emily McEwan-Fujita | Language Revitalization and Neoliberalism: Language Workers and Economic Ideologies of Gaelic in Scotland | 9/1/2010 - 10/31/2010 | $6,000.00 | Emily | | McEwan-Fujita | | | | University of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh | PA | 15260-6133 | USA | 2010 | Anthropology | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 |
This project investigates the contradictory ways that neoliberalism shapes the revitalization of Gaelic, a minority language in Scotland. Neoliberalism facilitates the formation of a new ethnolinguistically self-identified Gaelic-speaking middle class, but it impedes the sociolinguistic goal of transmitting Gaelic to future generations. Gaelic has been undergoing language shift in Scotland since 1200 CE: it is gradually being replaced by English in its former locations and contexts of use. This endangered language is now spoken by about 50,000 people. In the 1980s-90s native Gaelic-English bilinguals and supporters with experience in English-speaking industry and business coalesced around the agenda of economically developing Gaelic in Thatcher's Britain. They successfully garnered public funding that created new middle-class jobs requiring Gaelic, but declining numbers of speakers show that labor and commerce alone cannot produce the new speakers and attitudes needed to save Gaelic. |