Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512815580

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Language r > e c r c t a GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect GG

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Nancy C. Dorian

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia 1981

Copyright © 1981 by Nancy C. Dorian All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dorian, Nancy C. Language death. Bibliography: p. 188 Includes index. 1. Gaelic language—Dialects—Scotland—Sutherland. PB1598.S96D63 491.6'37 80-50692 ISBN 0-8122-7785-6 ISBN 0-8122-1111-1 (pbk.)

I. Title.

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To the memory of my brother, who also met an untimely death: Donald McEwen Dorian 1932-1957 Gad chuimhneachadh.

Tha leigheas air gach cäs, Ach cha'n eil leigheas air a' bhäs.

"There's a cure for every condition except death.' East Sutherland proverb

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Contents

Acknowledgments/xi Maps/xv Introduction/1

The Sociohistorical Setting of a Cultural Rivalry/10 Language Competition in Sutherland during the Middle Ages/10 Divided Scotland/15 Public and Private Policies toward Gaelic: The Schools/20 Dislocation of the Gaelic-Speaking Population: The Clearances/29 Summary and Conclusions!37 The East Sutherland Fishing Communities Development, Linguistic Alignment, Ethnicity, Stigmatization/42 Fishing in East Sutherland before and after the Clearances/42 Gaelic in East Sutherland before and after the Clearances/48 The Fisherfolk as an Ethnic Group/54

vii

"Fisher" as a Stigmatized Ethnic Identity/61 Summary and Conclusions/68 East Sutherland in Sociolinguistic

Perspective/74

Language Allocation/74 ESC and the Schools/80 The Verbal Repertoire/84 East Sutherland Bilingualism/93 Code-Switching and Interference/98 Language Loyalty/102 Summary and Conclusions/110 Language Change in Dying ESG Fluent Speakers' Gaelic and Semi-Speakers' Gaelic/114 The Proficiency Continuum of Speakers/114 Methods of Testing along the Proficiency Continuum/117 The Consonant Mutations of ESG/122 Changes in the Nominal System: Gender! 124 Changes in the Nominal System: Case/129 Changes in the Nominal System: Number/136 Changes in the Verbal System: Tense/138 Changes in the Verbal System: Number/141 Changes in the Verbal System: Voice/142 Retention of Basic Lexicon/145 Summary and Conclusions/146 Appendix Questionnaire Surveys of East Sutherland Bilinguals and Monolinguals/157 Bibliography/188 Index/197

Contents viii

Tables

1. Increase in boats and fishermen, 1855-1881 45 2. Percentage of gender-appropriate diminutive suffixes according to speaker group 126 3. Lenition in the attributive adjective after feminine and masculine nouns in the gender-testing sentences 127 4. Expression of the possessive by prepositional phrase and by genitive case in four test sentences 131 5. Preservation of the dative lenition in prepositional phrases by village and speaker group 132 6. Use of lenition to signal the vocative 135 7. Summary of retention and failure of occurrence for nominal and verbal categories in ESG by speaker group 147 8. Self-report by fully fluent bilinguals of use of Gaelic with various interlocutors 161 9. Self-report by fully fluent bilinguals of use of Gaelic in various activities 162 10. Projections by fully fluent bilinguals of their willingness to speak Gaelic to a hypothetical Skye incomer of varying social positionl63 11. Reasons for valuing Gaelic cited by bilinguals and monolinguals in descending order of strength 167 12. Reasons for valuing Gaelic stressed by bilinguals and monolinguals in descending order of strength 169 13. Reasons for valuing Gaelic rejected by bilinguals and monolinguals in descending order of strength 170 14. Mean response by school to the B, C, D, A, E, and F items of Questionnaire III (schoolchildren) 174

ix

15. Percentage of children whose responses to Β items averaged to a score of 4 or 5 (favorable to Gaelic) according to "yes" or "no" responses on background factors 175 16. Mean response by school to the A, C, F, B, D, and Ε items of Questionnaire IV (teachers) 177

χ

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Acknowledgments

Since my involvement with East Sutherland Gaelic spans a sixteen-year period, there are a great many people who have lent assistance to this project, in a great variety of forms, over the years. Professor James Downer of the University of Michigan agreed to supervise a dissertation on an unlikely language, thereby enabling me to begin my study of Gaelic. Professor Eric Hamp of the University of Chicago ensured departmental approval of the project by agreeing to serve extramurally as a Celtic specialist. Professor Kenneth Jackson of the University of Edinburgh directed my attention to East Sutherland as an area of special linguistic interest. Eric Cregeen of the School of Scottish Studies provided limitless collegial support, ranging from bibliographic references to office space; he also made available to me the questionnaire he himself uses to investigate fisherfolk life in the British Isles. The School of Scottish Studies and the Gaelic Division of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland did me many professional courtesies during the entire period. David Clement of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland shared my interest in Sutherland and enthusiasm for its Gaelic. In East Sutherland the public library branch at Brora, where a collection of books of local interest is housed, was unfailingly helpful; unfortunately I can thank by name only the most recent of a series of kind staff members, Mrs. Dora MacLeod. Mr. Ian MacKay of the Golspie High School library also gave me free access to a large collection of books, journals, and papers of local interest and provided professional courtesies of several kinds. A great many old books and journals kept under lock and key in the Dornoch reading room were repeatedly made available to me through the good offices of a variety of public servants.

xi

The exceptional willingness of a very large number of East Sutherland natives and residents freely to share their knowledge and experience was crucial to this project at every stage. The warm and generous acceptance I met with in so many homes made the research reported on here as pleasurable as it was instructive, and the ease with which I found myself absorbed into kinship and friendship networks (often one and the same) made my role as participant-observer both taxing and rewarding in all of the ways important to fruitful fieldwork. I list below the residents of the various East Sutherland villages who provided linguistic, social, or historical information in the course of this study, often over a period of more than a dozen years. Several have lived in more than one of the villages concerned, and a good few now live elsewhere in Britain; they are identified here in terms of the place in which they lived at the time that I interviewed them, although those of them who are quoted in the text are identified there in terms of the village of their birth or chief period of residence. Of Brora: the late Mrs. Bella Coull; Miss Jean Dempster; Mrs. Catherine McDonough and the late Mr. Lawrence McDonough; Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay MacKay; Mrs. Jessie MacLennan; Mr. Donald MacLeod; Mrs. Sarah MacRae and the late Mr. John MacRae; the late Miss Bella MacRae; the late Mr. William MacRae; Mr. George Seaton; the late Mr. Adam Sutherland; Miss Bella Jean Sutherland. Of Golspie: the late Mr. Hugh MacDonald; Mrs. Margaret MacKay; Miss Jean MacRae; the late Mrs. Margaret MacRae; Miss Elizabeth MacRae, Mrs. Betty Sutherland and the late Mr. Sinclair Sutherland; Mrs. Elizabeth Sutherland and the late Alexander Sutherland; Mrs. Margaret Sutherland; Mr. Stuart Sutherland. Of Embo: the late Mr. and Mrs. W. Alasdair Calder; Mrs. Maina Cumming and the late Mr. James Cumming; Mrs. Nana Cumming; the late Mr. Donald Hugh Cumming; Mrs. Sophia Davey; the late Mr. and Mrs. John Fraser; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fraser; Mrs. Isobel Haddon; the late Mrs. Nana MacPhail Johnston; the late Mr. Thomas MacKay "Brown"; the late Mr. Thomas MacKay; the late Mr. Alexander MacKay; the late Mrs. Bella MacKay; the late Mrs. Lena MacKay and Mr. Kenneth MacKay; Mr. David MacKay; Mr. Donald MacKay; Mr. James MacKay; Mrs. Elizabeth Phimister; Mrs. Jessie Fraser Ratel; Miss Margaret Ross; Mr. Peter Ross; Mrs. Bella Ross; the late Mr. Paul Ross; Mr. Alec Ross; Miss Jessie Ross; Miss Wilma Ross; Mr. Donald Ross; Mrs. Barbara Ross; Mr. Donald Sutherland. Of Helmsdale: Mrs. Mary Sutherland; Mrs. Adaline MacPherson. Of Badninish: the late Mr. Duncan Sutherland; Mr. William Leslie. Of Rearquhar: the late Mr. David Sutherland. Of Ayr: Mrs. Jessie MacKay Frew. OfTobermory: Mrs. Adie MacKenzie. Of London: Mr. Dan Banks; Mrs. Isabel Finch; Mr. Thomas Fraser; Mr. and Mrs. Harold MacKay; the late Mrs. Jessie Ann Ross and Mr. Donald Ross. In addition to those mentioned above by name, all of whom were interAcknowledgments xii

viewed in person, a good many more filled out questionnaires of one kind or another, as did numerous pupils and teachers in the primary and secondary schools of Brora, Golspie, Embo, and Domoch. My debt to Mr. Bryan Wood, Divisional Education Officer for Sutherland, is acknowledged in the appendix. I would like to thank here the headmasters of the various schools for their land cooperation: Mr. J. MacDonald of the combined Brora primary and secondary schools, Mr. G. A. Nelson of the Golspie primary school, Mr. C. D. Taylor of the Embo primary school, and Mr. W. F. MacDougall of the combined Dornoch primary and secondary schools. Professor E. Glyn Lewis of the University College of Wales most generously shared with me one of his questionnaires on Welsh language attitudes. In the preparation of this book likewise many people have helped. Computer analysis of questionnaire data was obtained with the help of Charlene Zolad, Carol Jones, and Professor Jay Anderson of the Bryn Mawr College computer center. Problems in achieving the computer analysis were solved thanks to the statistical expertise of Professor Judith Porter. Jean Godsall-Myers prepared preliminary transcriptions of two of the tape recordings from which quotations are drawn. Pauline Johnsen tirelessly supplied references to pertinent anthropological literature and lent volumes from her personal library. Mary Tower served as "first lay reader" and proofreader for the first draft. Most special thanks are due to Professor Michael Silverstein for a critical reading of the first draft and copious useful suggestions for improvements great and small. I owe many improvements in the text to his criticisms; however, all responsibility for the shortcomings of the final form is mine. Kenneth MacKav of Embo checked many small details for me, and supplied others, during the year I was preparing the manuscript; his prompt and full replies to my letters full of questions were a great boon. Financial support for my field trips to East Sutherland was generously provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (1963-64; summer 1970); Bryn Mawr College (summer 1974); the American Philosophical Society (summer 1976); and the National Science Foundation (summer 1978). Grant BNS-7726295 from the National Science Foundation supplemented my sabbatical salary in 1978-79 and supported the preparation of this study. The generous vacation policies of my head of department, Professor Werner Winter, made it possible for me to make field trips to East Sutherland and other Highland areas in the fall, winter, spring, and summer of 1967-68, when I was teaching at the University of Kiel in Germany. Unfunded field trips to East Sutherland were made in the summer of 1965 and the summer of 1972. I am particularly indebted to all of the Gaelic speakers in whose homes I stayed during these various trips to Scotland; first and foremost to Mr. and Mrs. William MacKinnon of Tobermory, in whose home I learnt my first words and phrases of Gaelic, and to Mrs. Margaret MacKay and Miss Jean MacRae of Golspie, in whose home I spent the great bulk of my East Sutherland time, with vast pleasure and equally vast profit, over the entire sixteen-year period; also to Mr. and Mrs. Donald Ross of London, Miss Margaret Ross and Mr. Peter Ross of

Embo, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay MacKay of Brora, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth MacKay of Embo, Mrs. Jessie MacKay Frew of Ayr, Mr. and Mrs. Angus MacRae of Inverness, and Mr. Roderick MacKay and Miss Martha MacKay of Muir of Ord. The social scientist who works in Highland Scotland need never envy any other fieldworker his site.

Acknowledgments xiv

PICTS

dt PICTS

Picts: language family unknown Scots: Goidelic Celtic Angles: Germanic Britons: Brythonic Celtic Map 1. Location of linguistic groups in seventh-century Scotland

Map 2. Ethnic Scotland around the early eleventh century, showing political territories mentioned in the text

Map 3. Mainland and Hebridean Scotland, showing major cities and locations mentioned in the text

CAITHNESS ( \

Map 4. Coastal East Sutherland and adjacent areas, showing the route of the A9 north-south road-

Introduction

Extinction is a common enough phenomenon in the history of the world's languages. Within the relatively well-studied and well-documented IndoEuropean family one or two cases leap to mind: Gothic and Hittite have deeply engaged the attention of historical linguists because of the availability of fairly extensive written materials from an early period, yet they have no modem descendants. In spite of the historical importance of these languages, it is probably the still-continuing loss of North and South American aboriginal languages that comes most forcibly to mind when extinction is under discussion. The title of James Fenimore Cooper s novel The Last of the Mohicans has become a metaphor for the lonely, and temporary, persistence of any isolated relic individual or group, and reports of Amerindian languages extinct or on the brink of extinction are still frequent. Grubb (1975:2), for example, writes of the toll taken in a single Canadian province: Five of the languages known to have existed in the Province before the arrival of Europeans are now extinct, and of the remaining twenty-seven only four are considered viable: the remainder are deemed to be two generations or less away from total disappearance.

Linguistic extinction, or "language death," to give it a simpler and more metaphorical name, is to be found under way currently in virtually every part of the world: in the Middle East (e.g., Örmuri [Kieffer 1977]); in the Soviet Union,

1

west (e.g., Batsbi [Lewis 1972:87]) and east (e.g., Oroch [Nielsen 1972-73:218]); in South Asia (e.g., Limbu [Miller 1969:438]); in Southeast Asia (e.g., Ketagalan [Dyen 1971:171]); in Africa (e.g., the Bullom languages [Sapir 1971:63]); in Australia (e.g., Barbaram [Capell 1971:688]); in western Europe (e.g., Breton [Dressier and Wodak-Leodolter 1977]); and, of course, in North and South America. Further, Lamb (1964:458-59) argues convincingly for the assumption of considerable linguistic extinction wherever we find a language distributed over a large geographical area: It won't do to have the previous languages of a large unaccounted-for area moving elsewhere to displace other languages which, in turn, move to still another territory, because sooner or later we run into the ocean. In other words there is a limit to the amount of inhabited area, which means that territorial expansion and its resulting diversification must ordinarily be accompanied, on the average, by a roughly corresponding amount of linguistic extinction. This means that linguistic classifications shed light not only on the prehistory of surviving linguistic groups, but also furnish an indication of the extent to which other languages have become extinct. Following this line of reasoning, he holds that not only familiar expansionist linguistic groups such as Romance have achieved their spread at the expense of other languages, but that such less well known but widely extended groups as Numic and Algonkian have done so also. Aside from the countless languages which have already become extinct or are currently dying, there are many others which were at one point or another endangered. These include a good few of the now well-established languages of present-day Europe. They were usually feared for because the elite were abandoning them, which raised the distinct possibility that the masses would follow suit, a familiar pattern in language death. Finnish was threatened in this fashion by Swedish (Ellis and mac a' Ghobhainn 1971) and Hungarian by German (Inglehart and Woodward 1967-68:34). Moving back in time we find that some of the expanding languages of our own day were themselves threatened in this way. English, the bane of so many other languages, was at risk in the two centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest (Baugh 1957; Cottle 1969), and German, which absorbed Prussian and threatened VVendish, Hungarian, and Czech, was itself under extreme pressure from French in the seventeenth century:

In the seventeenth century . . . it was not so much a matter of influence [on the German language] as it was of possible displacement, for a knowledge of French was no longer limited to the aristocracy but was shared to an unprecedented degree by members of the middle class,

Introduction 2

many of whom used French in their homes in preference to German. [Waterman 1966:138] Although extinction may be a common linguistic phenomenon, it has not been well studied. In the case of extinctions relatively distant in time (Hittite, Etruscan), there is little or no information to work with. In the case of extinctions recorded in this century, the same was often true by the time investigators reached the district where the language was dying: we have Haas's account o f what little was left of Biloxi (Haas 1968) and Swadesh's similar report on vestigial Mohican (Swadesh 1948:229-30). Some investigators with the opportunity to study language death as such had other concerns (Krauss 1963-70), and some contented themselves with a general overview of the situation (Bloomfield 1927; Miller 1971). O n e common reason for neglect of the extinction process in language was the reluctance of the linguist or anthropologist to work with imperfect speakers of a language, who were also, by implication, imperfect representatives of the cultural group in question. Most researchers have had a natural desire to capture the most unadulterated picture possible of less well known cultures, and this has led to the choice of informants whose command of the threatened language was the fullest available—and to avoidance of imperfect speakers. One linguist who has lately b e c o m e interested in the study of language death phenomena followed precisely this policy originally:

Voegelin was told in the early thirties almost all names of South Fork Indians who spoke Tubatulabal and how old, approximately,

each

speaker was, but he worked only with middle-aged and old speakers. Like other anthropological linguists, he was interested in recording the " b e s t " variety of the language he was studying, rather than in recording most varieties. (So also in our ongoing study of Hopi, we used to refrain from recording the speech of young Hopi, described by their elders as "broken-down Hopi ") [Voegelin and Voegelin 1977:336]

My own practice was the same at the outset, but from 1972 on I found myself seeking out imperfect speakers whom I had eliminated from my regular informant pool in 1 9 6 3 - 7 0 . In recent years attention has turned to dying languages within several subdisciplines of linguistics and anthropology. Linguists of various persuasions have begun to look into what dying languages may reveal about simplification processes, whether phonological (Dressier 1972), morphophonological (Dorian 1977b), morphological (Dorian 1978b; Dressier 1977), or syntactic (Hill 1973; Dorian 1973). Because of the reductive aspects of language death, comparisons with pidginization (Trudgill 1 9 7 6 - 7 7 ; Dorian 1978b) and with language acquisition

3

(Voegelin and Voegelin 1977) have quite naturally emerged. Sociologists of language have developed an interest in questions of what Fishman (1964) dubbed "language maintenance and language shift," and language shift frequently leaves a dying language in its wake. Such a shift is an aspect of sociocultural change, intimately linked to phenomena like urbanization, industrialization, and secularization, though—interestingly—not predictable from any of them. Increasingly, studies of linguistic persistence or replacement have focused on contexts of modernization and nationalization (Denison 1971; Cole 1975; Timm 1973). Historical linguists, for their part, look to current studies of language death for insights into earlier extinctions: "many languages of which we know are now extinct; the steps to their extinction may be understood more clearly if w e have thorough descriptions of languages now on the way to extinction" (Lehmann 1962:111). Recently progress has been made in providing the basic data for a more thorough study of language death. Not only do we have multiple studies of a single beleaguered language in various settings (Mougeon 1976, 1977; Hill and Hill 1977), but w e also find investigators working in more than one threatened speech community and thus providing comparative material (Hill 1973; Dorian 1978e; Williamson and Van Eerde 1980). The present work is intended to fill another need by providing a fine-grained study of a single dying speech form, with consideration of its history as well as its current sociolinguistic situation, and with a detailed account of linguistic changes taking place in its last phases. So far it is difficult to generalize about language death because the cases studied are too few and the data too meager. While East Sutherland Gaelic is only a single case, its history and its recent condition can be followed closely. This has potential interest for many future studies of a wide range of extinction phenomena. East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG) can make several claims to particular interest and utility for the study of extinction. Its displacement has been fairly gradual, encompassing a number of phases, which allows for a relatively long historical and sociolinguistic perspective. Its competitor, English, is a language of ever wider currency, and one which plays the replacivc role in a great many other extinction cases. Studies are available of other languages and dialects of the same linguistic family which are also faced with extinction or probable extinction (e.g., Breatnach 1964; Dressier and Leodolter 1973; Timm 1973); in fact, one observer (Adler 1977) expects that this entire language family, in all its branches, faces likely extinction. Further, two branches of the family—Cornish and Manx—have already died relatively well documented deaths and are the focus of revival movements. But perhaps the most useful feature of ESG for the purposes of a study of linguistic extinction was the presence, during the period of study, of a fairly broad range of speakers: a continuum of speakers of differing proficiency in Gaelic ι and English. The oldest speakers included some who were noticeably more at /home in Gaelic than in English, while the youngest included many who were : considerably more adept at English than at Gaelic. This proficiency continuum

Introduction 4

can be plumbed not only for differences in actual Gaelic usage, but also for differences in personal linguistic history and in language attitudes and habits. Though no studies of other Scottish Gaelic dialects which are clearly dying are yet available, a few studies of Gaelic-speaking communities with shrinking numbers or shrinking domains for Gaelic use have appeared (Campbell 1936; Parman 1972; MacKinnon 1977). A monograph detailing the fortunes of Gaelic in Scottish official life over several centuries exists (Campbell 1950), as do a number of papers on more recent educational policies toward Gaelic (MacLeod 1966; Smith 1968; MacKinnon 1972). These sources make it possible to set the fate of ESG into better sociohistorical context. My own earlier monograph (Dorian 1978a) provides a description of the linguistic norms for the dialect as spoken by the Gaelic-dominant community members still available in the 1960s, so that various features in the usage of younger speakers can be thrown into sharper relief by comparison with those norms. The past and present situation of ESG will, of course, emerge in detail in the chapters which follow, but it will be useful to introduce here the speech community and its setting in brief geographic and demographic profile. "East Sutherland Gaelic," while a handy and simple label, is, to begin with, something of a misnomer. There is no area in Sutherland which is officially known as "East Sutherland," although the villages covered in this study are all on the east coast of Sutherland and the label is in popular use within the county of Sutherland. The discreteness of eastern coastal Sutherland is partly a result of geography: the rather mountainous central area of the county has very few inhabitants, and consequently the tendency—for native and outsider alike—is to think of the county as consisting of three coasts; the west, the north, and the east. History reinforces geography: each of the coastal areas is associated with a different clan and its history: the MacLeods of the west (Assynt), the MacKays of the north (the Reay country), and the Sutherlands of the east (Machair-Chat, or "Sutherland proper," as it was often called). Language follows history and geography: each of these districts has a distinctive Gaelic (Cunn and MacKay 1897). "East Sutherland," then, is used here as a kind of shorthand to designate an eastern coastal area which is historically and linguistically part of Machair-Chat or "Sutherland proper," neither of those names being any longer current. The second sense in which "East Sutherland Gaelic" is an imprecise label is that the Gaelic of Machair-Chat was not itself entirely monolithic, and what is here being so called is simply the sole surviving variety of Gaelic in eastern Sutherland today. There was once a certain amount of differentiation north to south along the east coast, as the records of the Gaelic division of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland indicate, and, much more importantly for this study, there was a distinction between the Gaelic of the agricultural population and that of the fishing population (Dorian 1978a: 145-47). Since only the latter survives, it is being assigned the label "East Sutherland Gaelic" by default. A more precise description of the Gaelic variety which will be treated here, then, would have to

5

read: " t h e G a e l i c o f t h e fisherfolk o f central eastern coastal Sutherland and t h e i r d e s c e n d a n t s . " 1 T h e label " E a s t Sutherland G a e l i c " should b e taken as a c o n v e n i e n t stand-in for this m o r e exact but c u m b e r s o m e designation. Sutherland itself fills t h e n o r t h e r n m o s t mainland area of the British Isles, except that t h e m u c h smaller county o f C a i t h n e s s is set into the e x t r e m e northeast of that land mass (see m a p 3). S u t h e r l a n d is t h e fifth largest county in Scotland, but t h e least populous, and it c o n t i n u e s to lose population at a slow rate. T h e 1961 c e n s u s r e c o r d e d a population of 1 3 , 5 0 4 , and the 1971 c e n s u s a population o f 1 3 , 0 5 5 . T h e east coast is conspicuously g e n t l e r and m o r e fertile than t h e west or north coasts and has t h e bulk o f t h e county's population. T h e m a j o r villages of coastal E a s t Sutherland are linked with each other, and with m o r e northerly and southerly population c e n t e r s (Wick and Inverness) by t h e main north-south roadway o f eastern Scotland, t h e A9 (see map 4). Sutherland is unusual among t h e Highland counties in having n o single c h i e f town and no single administrative c e n t e r . B r o r a is t h e largest village, but its population of 1 , 4 3 6 in 1971 was only slightly g r e a t e r than that of Golspie, with 1 , 3 7 4 in 1971. D o r n o c h is t h e official capital, but its population is smaller (840 in 1971) and it lies several miles off t h e main road. 2 G o v e r n m e n t a l agencies are scattered among t h e s e t h r e e villages. B r o r a boasts t h e region's c h i e f industries, a woolen mill and a distillery; t h e B r o r a coal m i n e and brickworks, in operation at intervals since t h e sixteenth century, closed in 1975. Golspie has the only full senior secondary school and the only general hospital. T h e courthouse is in D o r n o c h . Apart from t h e mill and t h e distillery in Brora, t h e r e is very little industry in S u t h e r l a n d . T h e east coast fishing industry, so central to the story o f the survival o f G a e l i c in eastern Sutherland, has disappeared almost entirely. H e l m s dale, t h e n o r t h e r n m o s t o f t h e east coast villages, has still some local fishing, but otherwise c o m m e r c i a l fishing is now largely a west coast p h e n o m e n o n in S u t h e r land, c e n t e r e d on L o c h i n v e r and Kinlochbervie. Sutherland is a highly scenic county, with e x c e l l e n t fishing in many areas and famous golf courses on the east coast; tourism is fairly well d e v e l o p e d . Hotels throughout the county, but especially on the m o r e populous east coast, provide a good deal of seasonal employm e n t . A g o v e r n m e n t radio station in B r o r a and the F o r e s t r y Commission near D o m o c h also provide a certain amount of e m p l o y m e n t . S u t h e r l a n d is o n e of t h e "crofting c o u n t i e s " of the Highlands: a significant n u m b e r o f people earn part or all o f their living by crofting, that is, small 1

Even in this narrow sense "East Sutherland Gaelic" is not undifferentiated. The two more northerly of the former fishing villages speak Gaelics so similar as to be almost one, but the southernmost of the three speaks a Gaelic distinguished from that of the others by minor phonological, lexical, and syntactic differences; over two hundred words show phonological differences, for example. But these two subvarieties of Gaelic clearly deserve to be grouped together, since each is far more like the other than either is like any other form of Gaelic.

2

Population figures courtesy of the General Register Office for Scotland.

Introduction 6

farming on rented land. A sharp distinction is made, economically and socially, between farmers

and crofters.

Farmers own fairly extensive acreage, in favorable

locations, and are prosperous by local standards; they are most numerous along the more gentle east coast. Socially they are usually among the leading families of their district. Crofters, on the other hand, have by definition small holdings and seldom make more than a very modest living from their agricultural pursuits, if that; many combine crofting with some other occupation in order to earn a living. Insofar as Scotland can be said to have a peasantry, the crofters represent that peasantry. In Sutherland crofters are most numerous on the west and north coasts, but there is a significant crofting population in the rural districts of the east coast as well. Northern and especially western Sutherland (the two often being taken together as opposed to the more populous and relatively "urbanized" eastern part of the county) are generally recognized as part of the residual Gaelic area of the Highlands. The percentage of Gaelic speakers in the five northern and western coastal parishes ranged from a high of 38.3 to a low of 27.3 in the 1971 census. By contrast, no east coast parish recorded more than 8 . 5 percent Gaelic speakers at the same census, and the low was 3 . 8 percent. But the weak position of Gaelic throughout

the county is indicated by the fact that only 70 Gaelic speakers out of

1,305 in the county were between five and twenty-five years o f age in 1971, although there were 3 , 5 3 5 individuals in that age range.' Census figures reflect the situation of E S G very poorly, however. In the first place, they are given by parish rather than by town or village (for example, the figures for English-speaking Dornoch and its strongly bilingual satellite E m b o are merged under "Dornoch parish"). And, in the second place, indigenous Gaelic speakers ( E S G speakers) are not distinguished from speakers of other dialects who have come to live in the area. To offset the second factor I conducted a personal census of E S G speakers in 1 9 6 3 - 6 4 and brought the results up to date periodically over the years. I found that in 1972, E S G speakers constituted 1.6 percent of the population of Brora (23 out of 1,436), 3 . 0 percent of the population of Golspie (42 out of 1,374), and 30.4 percent of the population of Embo (79 out of 260). 4 These are the only three villages with an indigenous ESG-speaking component in their populations; Helmsdale has a few surviving E S G speakers, but all were born either in Brora or in Golspie. Over the period from 1964 to 1972, 3

All figures in this paragraph are drawn from Census 1971, Scotland:

Gaelic

Re-

port. ' The year 1972 is chosen for the figuring of percentages because a national census was taken in 1971, and my 1972 survey was closest in time to that date. The village populations given are taken from the national census, the number of ESG speakers from my personal census. Some, but not all, "semi-speakers" are included (see chapters 3 and 4 for the distinction between fluent speakers and semispeakers). Included are those known to me in the 1960s, but a full roster of semispeakers could be identified only by individual testing.

7

Brora lost 50 percent of its ESG speakers (22 out of 44), Golspie 22.2 percent (12 out of 54), and Embo 25 percent (26 out of 104).5 Between the start of my fieldwork in 1963-64 and its close in 1978, almost half of the original group of 202 ESG speakers resident in the three villages died: 100 individuals. And of the 102 surviving speakers, 17 were in 1978 either temporarily or permanently away from home—a few because of jobs, but a good number because of confinement in geriatric or mental hospitals. The rapid rate of attrition over a fifteen-year period reflects the fact that Gaelic is the language of the older half of the population in these East Sutherland villages; younger people do not speak it. There is a small demographic countermovement in the return home of retirees from overseas or from other parts of Britain, some six speakers over the decade from 1968 to 1978, but this small influx obviously cannot offset the losses to the speech community in the same period. Communications along the east coast of Sutherland are excellent by Highland standards. The A9 is a two-lane roadway, and it links the East Sutherland villages not only with each other, but with the east Highland "capital," Inverness, and ultimately with Edinburgh. A railroad line runs along much the same route and provides ready access both to Caithness and to Inverness (and via Inverness to southeastern and southwestern Scotland). There is also bus service between Inverness and eastern coastal Sutherland. But east-west and east-northwest communications in Sutherland, which might link the Gaelic speakers of the east coast with those of the west and north coasts, are markedly inferior to those already described. The roads were until very recent years one-lane over most of their length, and in part they remain so. There is no train service, and no direct east coast-west coast bus service, although there are connecting bus services from the east to central Sutherland and from the west to central Sutherland. Because ESG has become cut off from all other varieties of Gaelic,* and because it is succumbing to English rather than to some more prestigious variety of Gaelic, it seems proper to speak in this case of language death. What is dying here is actually a particular local dialect of the Scottish Gaelic language, and what it is yielding to is—equally—a particular local dialect of the English language, "East Sutherland English." But as the competition is between two quite different languages, so that the question is always one of which language, and not what dialect, a person chooses to speak, I take this to be a case of language shift. Scottish Gaelic will not become extinct with the loss of East Sutherland Gaelic, but where there were two distinct languages spoken in eastern Sutherland, only one will remain. In the regional context, then, a language will have died.

5

The figures for Brora and Embo do not tally perfectly with the figures given above because in each case one ESG speaker retired home to the village in time to be counted in the 1972 census.

6

It should b e noted that the rugged Highland landscape had for many centuries prior to the modern provision of good roads and cheap public transport brought about conditions of relative isolation even when Gaelic-speaking settlements

Introduction 8

T h e developments leading to the present-day isolation of ESG will occupy much of t h e next two chapters of this book. These two chapters reveal a curious parallel: as the Highlanders stood to English-speaking Britain (including the Lowlands of Scotland), so the fisherfolk stood to the non-fishing population of East Sutherland. In each case an entire subpopulation was stigmatized, paying severe social and economic penalties. Distinctive linguistic behavior was a feature in the stigmatization in each case. It is not too much to say that both were cases of culture conflict. In the light of this dual pressure, a stigmatization within a stigmatization, t h e survival of the dialect into the late twentieth century is the most extraordinary thing about ESG. That is, the story h e r e is as much one of language maintenance as of language shift, and d u e attention will b e paid to this aspect. In this, too, ESG may be typical of a great many t h r e a t e n e d languages past and present: before succumbing they show an astonishing persistence in the face of great pressure. were not at all distant from each other. As a result, discernible differentiation is evident within amazingly small areas: "The village [of Leurbost, in Lewis] . . . is about two miles long, which is apparently enough for minor dialectal differences to manifest themselves from one end to the other" (Oftedal 1956:14). It was proverbial in the Highlands even at the beginning of the twentieth century that every glen had a recognizably different form of speech from its neighboring glens. However, there was a Gaelic spoken in eastern Sutherlandshire up to the early years of this century which had certain general features common to the entire area, or overlapping features from one district to another (a dialect "chain"). All varieties of this eastern Sutherlandshire Gaelic are now extinct except for the Gaelic of the coastal fisherfolk and their descendants, so that ESG exists as a relic Gaelic speech island in an English-speaking area.

9

1 The Sociohistorical Setting of a Cultural Rivalry

Language

Competition

in Sutherland

during

the Middle

Ages

Gaelic was not the language spoken in Sutherland at the beginning of historical times. Sutherland was Pictish territory, and eastern Sutherland still preserves some of the famous plaeenames in "pit-" (Pitgrudy, Pitfour) that reflect the earlier Pictish era (see map 1). It is an irony in the extinction of ESG that history has repeated itself: Gaelic, which arrived in the area as the language of an expanding alien culture, is now being replaced in just the same way by the latterday expansion of another alien culture. The earlier displacement is described by one scholar as follows: The Scots, who had settled in Argyll and the Isles, gradually spread northwards and eastwards. . . . Though Gaelic was introduced into Argyll with the Roman period, probably it did not extend into Sutherland until the seventh century, when the Columban missionaries settled among the northern Picts. By the Columban missionaries Gaelic was employed in religious services and a knowledge of the language was communicated to the native Picts, whose ancestral tongue gradually became extinct. Gaelic supplanted Pictish much in the same way as English is now supplanting Gaelic. At the arrival of the Norse in the ninth century

Gaelic was the language of the people.

[Campbell

1920:105-6] With the expansionist power of a proselytizing religion behind it, Gaelic estab-

The Sociohistorical

10

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

lished itself fully in Sutherland within two centuries. It seems clear that C a m p b e l l was right to claim that it had b e c o m e the genuine v ernacular of t h e region before the Norse period. Certain archaic features of Gaelic which date to t h e pre-Viking period survive in ESG; since they disappeared early elsewhere, they w e r e not brought into the area subsequently, b u t rather indicate that t h e Gaelic language was already spoken in East Sutherland before 900 A.D.1 That the Gaelic presence in Sutherland was severely buffeted by Norse during the Viking period is evident from placenames. Helmsdale, Brora, Golspie, and E m b o are all Norse names (Watson 1905-6), as are many others on t h e east coast of the county. T h e Norse began by raiding the coast but e n d e d by settling it, eventually the Gaelic speakers retained only the less favorable lands away from t h e coastal plain (Gray 1922:16). T h e Viking impact in Sutherland was considerable, as the placename evidence indicates. With the Vikings in u n d i s p u t e d control of the Shetland and Orkney islands, it was natural enough that they should seek to extend their control to the mainland, and this they did. Their physical presence in the n o r t h e a s t e m m o s t part of the mainland was ultimately so great that t h e area which constitutes modern Caithness never again b e c a m e Gaelicspeaking after the Viking period, except at its western and southern peripheries. T h e "Caithness" of the Viking period actually consisted of two areas. T h e Viking "Ness corresponds to the modern Caithness, while the Viking "Sudrland" was t h e equivalent of Machair-Chat, or "Sutherland proper"; the latter corresponds more or less to present-day East Sutherland (see map 2). These two areas were, and are, separated by a formidable hill formation, "the O r d , which runs straight to the sea at the east coast boundary between the areas, making communications difficult even in m o d e r n times when the weather is poor and forming a natural geographical demarcation. Ness was the more scandinavianized of t h e two areas, though saga literature joins placename evidence in showing that Sudrland was also very much a Norse settlement area. Political control of the whole of Caithness (that is, Ness and Sudrland) was a matter of constant contention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. T h e Viking jarls vied with the Scottish kings for supremacy. In the course of the first half of t h e thirteenth century, the jarls gradually lost control over Sudrland. Und e r King William the Lion (reigned 1165-1214) the district passed into the hands of a prominent family lately "planted" in Moray, in t h e Lowlands, who subsequently took the n a m e of their home province and called themselves de Moravia or, in anglicized form, Murray (Crawford 1976-77). 2 T h u s it was not the native Gaelic-speaking aristocracy which came to power after the Viking grip on Sudrland weakened, but an aristocracy of alien ethnicity. 1

Lack of "preaspiration" before voiceless stops and affricates is a case in point. I am i n d e b t e d to David C l e m e n t for acquainting m e with t h e a r g u m e n t and t h e example.

2

Moray was t h e site of repeated rising by leaders with s o m e claim to t h e Scottish throne, and as such it was the target of early feudalization efforts by reigning

11

In this fact we have the makings of a new linguistic competition in the area. During the Viking period, roughly 900-1200. Gaelic contended with Norse. A fundamental difference between the linguistic situation in Ness and that in Sudrland is revealed by the Gaelic names for those two areas. Although Sutherland derives its modern English name from the Viking perspective, looking south from Orkney and Ness, its Gaelic name retains the Celtic perspective. It is known in Gaelic as Cataibh, that is, "land of the Catti," its pre-Viking inhabitants. Mode m Caithness, on the other hand, the old Ness, is known in Gaelic as Gallaibh, that is, "land of the strangers," the Norse. In the latter area, as noted above, Gaelic never regained its position as the universal everyday language. In the Sudrland area, however, Gaelic once again became the vernacular. It is not clear to what extent the Gaels of East Sutherland were bilingual during the Viking era, but certainly there was Norse influence in the local Gaelic after that period, some of which persists to the present day (Gunn and MacKay 1897:178-80). Still, it was Gaelic, not Norse, and not some hybrid, which emerged as the popular language in the area when Norse political control waned. The arrival" οΓ a Moray family as the dominant landholding power in Sutherland marks the beginning of a different configuration in the linguistic alignments of the area. As noted above, the first of the de Vloravias gained lands in Sutherland about 1130. William, son of that first de Moravia landholder, came to hold the whole of Sutherland (that is, "Sutherland proper": [Crawford 1976-77:108]), and he was soon created Earl of Sutherland, so swift was the rise of de Moravia power in the area. This was a power directly connected with the Scottish crown and in no way derived from ancient Pictish or Gaelic ruling lines of the Sutherland district. At this date, and for a century before, the monarchy of Scotland was itself undergoing marked cultural change. Wholly Celtic at the outset, it was subjected first to Anglo-Saxon influences and then to Anglo-Norman. The beginnings of strong Anglo-Saxon influence on the Celtic royal line of Scotland are commonly seen in the reign of Malcolm III, "Canmore" (1058-93), in particular from the time of his second marriage, to Margaret, sister of the Anglo-Saxon Atheling, probably in 1070 (Trevelyan 1959:173). Subsequently a strong normanizing influence appeared during the reign of Maleom's youngest son, David I (1124-53): Much of his [David's] youth had been spent at the English court. . . . [H]e had seen much of the central government of England under Henry I. . . . This new king at once strove to 'improve' his kingdom by estab-

kings. Moray was "planted" by several of the descendants of Malcolm III (reigned 1058-93) with powerful families loyal to their line. David I (reigned 1124-53) seems to have settled the ancestor of the de Moravias in Moray about 1130 (Kermack 1957:40).

The Soctohistorical 12

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

lishing and d e v e l o p i n g t h e Anglo-Norman institutions and t h e AngloN o r m a n system of central and local g o v e r n m e n t which h e had l e a r n e d in E n g l a n d and h a d c o m e to a d m i r e . Before long, A n g l o - F r e n c h w h o m h e had b r o u g h t to Scotland (many of t h e m f r o m his N o r t h a m p t o n s h i r e estates), or s u b s e q u e n t l y att r a c t e d n o r t h , w e r e holding most of t h e i m p o r t a n t offices in c h u r c h a n d state. . . . I n d e e d , u n d e r David I and his i m m e d i a t e successors, s o m e t h i n g v e r y like a p e a c e f u l N o r m a n c o n q u e s t ' of Scotland took place. A F r e n c h - s p e a k i n g aristocracy was established which a d m i n i s t e r e d a new, p r e c i s e , a n d o r d e r l y rule, and t h e g r e a t e r part of Scotland was gradually knit t o g e t h e r by a well-organized system of g o v e r n m e n t similar to that of E n g l a n d u n d e r H e n r y II. [Dickinson and D u n c a n 1977:77] T h e d e Moravia family w h o w e r e elevated to t h e earldom of S u t h e r l a n d w e r e not t h e m s e l v e s N o r m a n , b u t probably F l e m i s h in origin ( W h i t e 1953; P i n e 1959). H u g h , w h o r e c e i v e d lands in Sutherland before 1211 (Pine 1959:2176), was t h e g r a n d s o n of o n e F r e s k i n , s u p p o s e d on t h e basis of his n a m e to h a v e b e e n a F l e m i n g . ' C e r t a i n l y t h e r e w e r e Flemings aplenty in Lowland Scotland f r o m t h e m i d d l e of t h e t w e l f t h c e n t u r y on, and d u r i n g t h e reign of David I some r e c e i v e d grants of land in Moray for their aid in s u p p r e s s i n g rebellions t h e r e ( F l e m i n g 1930:312-15). F r e s k i n , w h a t e v e r his origin, was g r a n t e d Duffus in Moray, in addition to o t h e r lands in t h e Lowlands, by David I, and was c o n f i r m e d in that grant by William t h e Lion later in t h e same c e n t u r y (Pine 1959:2176). It was as a Moray family that t h e F r e s k i n s , as they w e r e t h e n called, m a d e their a p p e a r a n c e in S u t h e r l a n d . T h e F r e s k i n s , t u r n e d d e Moravias, w e r e from t h e first i n s t r u m e n t s of t h e Scottish c r o w n ( C r a w f o r d 1976-77:113; Kerinack 1957:41). T h e r e m o t e n o r t h e r n regions of Ness a n d S u d r l a n d w e r e to b e w r e s t e d from Norse control and i n t e g r a t e d into t h e Scottish kingdom. To this e n d a p o w e r f u l family of p r o v e n loyalty was strategically p r o m o t e d in t h e area. First H u g h " F r e s k i n " was g r a n t e d land in S u d r l a n d , a n d t h e n King Alexander II (reigned 1214-49) saw to it that H u g h ' s relative G i l b e r t d e Moravia c a m e into a n o t h e r position of great p o w e r as b i s h o p of C a i t h n e s s . Finally H u g h ' s son William was created earl of S u t h e r l a n d . G i l b e r t , w h o lived until 1245, was appointed to t h e bishopric in 1222, transferring t h e seat of t h e d i o c e s e from Halkirk in C a i t h n e s s to D o r n o c h (Bentinck 1926:61; MacKay 1920:8, 19). William's elevation to earl probably c a m e d u r i n g t h e 1230s ( C r a w f o r d 1976-77:109). Thus, both secular and ecclesiastical control of t h e S u d r l a n d a r e a w e r e in d e Moravia h a n d s at t h e same t i m e . In t h e c o u r s e of five h u n d r e d years, S u t h e r l a n d was thus u n d e r t h e sway of four d i f f e r e n t cultural p o w e r s : Pictish, Gaelic, Norse, and Anglo-Norman. Lin3

For a counterargument that Freskin was a Lowland Pict or a Scot, see Gray 1922:54.

13

guistically the legacies of the Picts and the Norse were small in Sutherland. The legacies of the Gaels and the Anglo-Normans—the latter ultimately themselves anglicized—were vast, and the rivalry between them will be finally resolved only in our own time. Early in their dynasty the earls of Sutherland conducted their official business in three languages, Latin, French, and ultimately English, but not in Gaelic. Latin predominates in the extant materials of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, with some French interspersed; beginning in the early sixteenth century English comes to play a considerable role and gradually supplants the other languages (Fraser 1892, vols. 2 and 3). In the fourteenth century and again in the fifteenth, earls of Sutherland spent considerable portions of their lives as hostages in England during the Scottish struggles against English domination. By the sixteenth century, and perhaps before then, the earls of Sutherland were by choice spending substantial amounts of time in residence in parts of Scotland where the Scottish form of English was spoken, but not Gaelic, Edinburgh, because of the earls' parliamentary role, was the usual location. After the Act of Union, which united the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707, London replaced Edinburgh as the favored place of residence. William, who became the sixteenth earl in 1733, wished to abandon Scotland permanently. When his mother urged him to return there, he wrote to her that "it would be hard to force me to live in Scotland where I can never be happy, when I can live here at quiet upon a moderate expense near the court, upon which I have still some pretensions" (quoted in Fraser 1892; 1:428-29). Conspicuous by their infrequencv in the early history of the House of Sutherland are marriages with ancient Celtic or mixed-Celtic families. An uncle of the thirteenth earl married a woman of the MacLeods of Assynt in the seventeenth century (Fraser 1892; 1:207); the eighth earl was married at least for a time to a daughter of the Lord of the Isles in the fifteenth century (Grant 1977:13). But for the most part the Sutherland brides seem to have come from great families outside the Gaelic aristocracy. In marriage lines, then, as in language, residence, and the ultimate source of their power, the ruling house of Sutherland was essentially alien to the district which constituted its domain. Thus, while the western part of what is today Sutherlandshire, and much of the northern part as well, remained in the hands of hereditary Gaelic chieftaincies (MacLeod in the west and MacKay in the north), the east coast was from a rather early period considerably removed from the Gaelic political sphere. That English should play the major role in the official life of the House of Sutherland from at least the sixteenth century is in keeping with the political realities of the Scottish realm and with the history of the family itself as part of an external and national, rather than a local and Celtic, power. What is surprising, however, is that English was favored in local governance, too, as early as the sixteenth century. Campbell (1920:106) tells us:

The Sociohistorical 14

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

In 1544 at the Baillie Court at Dunrobin [the Sutherland family seat, just outside Golspie to the north] letters of charge were read to the tenants of the earldom enjoining them to pay terce to the dowagercountess. T h e letters were first read in English and then explained to the people in Gaelic by interpreters. This incident reveals the linguistic and social situation of that century (and several to come): a Gaelic-speaking tenantry and an English-speaking aristocracy; a vernacular virtually universal among the general populace but probably not shared by the highest social stratum, whose language in turn is certainly not understood by ordinary folk. W h e n there is such a dichotomy, prestige quite naturally accrues to the language of the uppermost stratum. Gaelic, the Highland vernacular, on the other hand, had by the sixteenth century a standing in the nation at large which reflected several centuries of conflict between rival Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon cultures, with the latter in the ascendant at the expense of the former.

Divided

Scotland

Just how much of Scotland was Gaelic in speech at the period of maximum Scottish Celtic power is a matter of debate, but certainly the greatest part was, very much more than is Gaelic-speaking, or even "Highland," today. T h e Gaelic-speaking Scots were an expanding power for some centuries, and the Kingdom of Scotland formed under Duncan I (reigned 1 0 3 4 - 4 0 ) included not only the Scottish heartland but also Pictland, Anglo-Saxon Lothian, and C e l t i c — but not Gaelic—Strathclyde (Dickinson and Duncan 1977:56). Much of Pictland had become Gaelic in speech, as we have seen. T h e likely prospect seemed to be the development of a Celtic Scottish kingdom with an Anglo-Saxon fringe in the eastern coastal lowlands (Trevelyan 1959:173). T h e tide first began to turn against Gaelic under the rule of Malcolm "Canmore" and his successors. Under Malcolm Canmore and his son Edgar (reigned 1097-1107), the Scottish royal house looked more and more to the south. A substantial number of high-born Englishmen found important places in Scotland under Malcolm Canmore; under Edgar's younger brother David I, a similar wave of powerful Anglo-Normans came to play a major role in Scottish politics and governance, as noted above. Though the wave of French influence associated with David I passed, it was replaced by English influence, and soon a pattern of Gaelic retreat to the north and west, which was to continue for centuries, had b e e n established. T h e Scottish economic historian I. F. Grant notes that the transformation of the Lowlands into an Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere is something of a puzzle, given the numerical and cultural dominance of Gaelic speakers in the Scotland of the eleventh century. She scrupulously traces the evidence of placenames, personal names, and shared folk traditions to show that the Highlands and Lowlands

15

of Scotland were not differently peopled, and concludes on the basis of such evidence that "we are faced with the almost insoluble problem of how the Lowlanders became Lowland" (1930:59), that is, linguistically Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic. Factors recognized by Grant as important in the anglicizing process include the Anglo-Saxon immigrations of Malcolm Canmore's time, the presence of Saxon slaves in southern Scotland, Anglian colonization of the Lothians, and the growing importance of the rich Lothian lands (1930:59-61). Most historians, including Grant, also point to the rise of the burgh in twelfth-century Scotland. Burghs were created by royal grant and were usually located in the immediate vicinity of one of the king's castles. They were centers of commerce and crafts, and were settled rather conspicuously by English, Anglo-Normans, and Flemings, as well as Scots. Fifteen royal burghs had been erected in Scotland by the end of David I s reign in 1153, and the prominent role of Englishmen and Flemings in these new trade centers must have promoted the use of English in the twelfth century (Grant 1930:60; MacKinnon 1974:21; Dickinson and Duncan 1977:104-6; Mitchison 1970:36). Finally, during the Scottish Wars of Independence (1296-1328), "the greater part of the Lowlands was continually under English occupation" (Campbell 1950:18), a situation which cannot have been without linguistic impact. With both the Scottish nobility and the Scottish mercantile class ultimately English in speech, the position of Gaelic soon became unfavorable: By the thirteenth century Gaelic had ceased to be a socially dominant language. Except in the Highlands and Hebrides, where it conserved and developed an integrated culture, Gaelic in central and southern Scotland was restricted to the common people although territorially the greater part of Scotland whether "highland" or "lowland" was Gaelicspeaking. [MacKinnon 1974:25] If not in the thirteenth century, then at least in the fourteenth, more could be said: Gaelic had not only ceased to be socially dominant; it had ceased to be socially acceptable. It had come to be looked on as the language of a wild, even savage, people: the Highlanders. John of Fordun is among the earliest of Scottish writers to describe Scotland in terms of two different and opposed peoples. The Lowlanders he characterized in his 1387 account of Scotland as "of domestic and civilized habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful"; the Highlanders and Islanders—that is, the Gaels—he characterized as "a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, . . . hostile to the English people and language, . . . and exceedingly cruel" (Skene 1872:38). Fordun's characterizations were only early salvos in a barrage of English and Lowland condemnations of the Highlanders, or Wild Scots, as they were called. As with the people, so with their language: even Gaelic personal names were condemned

The Sociohistorical 16

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

for their "barbarousness" by a fifteenth-century abbot (Nicholson 1968:4), and in 1615 a Lowland lord clerk register epitomized the attitudes of English speakers to both the Gaels and their language when he wrote of them as "these unhallowed people with that unchristiane language" (Kermack 1957:86). Careful commentators on Scottish history like I. F. Grant are quick to point out that there was most probably no marked difference in "blood" between Highlanders and Lowlanders, that the Lowlands were not so much resettled by Anglo-Saxons after Malcom Canmore's time as drawn into an Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence. As Trevelyan puts it (1959:59): "The history of Scotland is largely the history of [the] process of Anglicizing the Celt." Similarly, even after the differentiation of Highland and Lowland cultural spheres, the cultural differences, though marked, were not always so great as has been supposed. Historians Nicholson (1968) and Smout (1969) establish that each area had institutions influenced by and similar to the other's. Thus, for example, 'The clan system . . . had also become imbued with some feudal characteristics of Norman origin in exactly the same way as feudalism became imbued with clannish characteristics of Celtic origin" (Smout 1969:45). If there were neither sharp racial lines nor total cultural distinctiveness, what did separate Highlander and Lowlander so deeply? Nicholson reminds us that myths of racial origin are as important as actual origin, and that the Gaels regarded the Lowlanders as of different blood (1968:5). Smout stresses the threat to the Lowlands represented by the armed might of predatory Highland forces (1969:44), and Nicholson agrees that the combative fierceness of the Highlander was terrifying to the Lowlander (1968:10). And, finally, we have the linguistic division. Smout notes that by the late fourteenth century the linguistic dichotomy in Scotland was more or less complete, with the English language (albeit in Scottish form) "almost as universal in the Lowlands as Gaelic had always been in the Highlands" (1969:44). Two different linguistic groups, pursuing very different economic modes in neighboring territories (transhumant pastoralism coupled with predation—their famous cattle raids—among the Highlanders, and settled agriculture among the Lowlanders), the one engaging in occasional forays against the other, are unlikely to stay long in sympathy with each other's way of life. Measures to detach the Gael from his culture and his language began fairly early. At the close of the fifteenth century an effort was made by means of a Scottish education act to oblige "all barronis and frehaldaris" to send their children to school to learn "perfite latyne," "art and jure"—and schools offering that curriculum were by definition outside the Gaelic-speaking area (Donaldson 1970:92). By the beginning of the seventeenth century the thrust of the national government's efforts was specifically to supplant Gaelic with English. Sixteen hundred and nine is the date of the notorious Statutes of Iona, accepted under a combination of force and persuasion by the Gaelic chiefs of the Western Isles. The statutes speak of the "ignorance and incivilitie" of the Isles, and require "everie gentilman or yeaman within the said Ilandis" to put his eldest son, or failing

17

sons, his eldest daughter, "to the scuillis on the Lawland, and interteny and bring thame up thair quhill they may be found able sufficientlie to speik, reid, and wryte Inglische" (Dickinson and Donaldson 1954; 3: 268). Given the extraneous origins of the House of Sutherland, reinforced through repeated marriages with Lowland families, it is not surprising to find the same thrust strongly represented in the Sutherland domains. John, the thirteenth earl, was only six when his father died in 1615. He was placed under the tutelage of his uncle, Sir Robert Gordon,' who in about 1620 wrote the young earl a letter of advice. The letter has survived, and is printed in the second volume of The Sutherland Book (Fräser 1892). Sir Robert's sentiments and advice are a provincial echo of the national attitudes and policy embodied in the Statutes of Iona: Use your diligence to take away the reliques of the Irishe [that is, Gaelic] barbaritie which as yet remains in your countrey, to wit, the Irishe langage, and the habit. Purge your countrey peice and peice from that unciwill kynd of cloithes, such as plaids, mantels, truses and blew bonnets. . . . The Ireishe langage cannot so soone be extinguished. To help this plant schooles in ewerie comer in the countrey to instruct the youth to speak Inglishe. Let your cheif scooles for learning be at Dornoche, and perswade the gentlemen of your countrey to bestow lairglie upon ther children to make them schollers [i.e., pupils], for so shall they be fittest for your serwice. Presse to ciwilize your countrey and the inhabitants thereof, not onlie in this poynt. . . . [Fraser 1892; 2:359] Gaelic culture—in particular the language and the garb—represents barbarity; "civilizing" the Sutherland domains requires "extinguishing" the Gaelic language. The attitudes seen in Fordun's descriptions and in Sir Robert Gordon's letter have been remarkably persistent. The contemporary Scottish writer and nationalist Fionn MacColla (T. Douglas MacDonald), himself born and brought up in the Lowlands, claims that Scottish schoolchildren are still taught their national history in terms of three ethnic stereotypes, two favorable and one unfavorable; the "sturdy Saxon" and the "hardy Norseman," but the "wild Highlander" (1975:26-27). He describes the policy of the school in a Gaelic-speaking district where he taught in the 1920s as "simply . . . de-Gaelicization," cultural and linguistic (1975:72). A number of factors have served over the centuries to reinforce the Highland-Lowland division remarked by Fordun and to exacerbate regional differences. These have kept early prejudices alive, and even strengthened them,

' The male de Moravia line yielded to the Gordons with the marriage of Elizabeth, sister and successor of the ninth earl, to Adam Gordon of Aboyne. The succession was contested, but Elizabeth was successful in her claim, and Adam Gordon became Earl of Sutherland in 1514 (Fraser 1892, 3:65-74).

The Soctohistorical 18

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

in the fashion that outrages MacColla. First, there was the question of official language. By the time French was given up as the language of governance in the fourteenth century, English had gained great strength in the more prosperous Lowlands, and the aristocracy turned to English rather than to Gaelic. In the fifteenth century, the Highland town of Perth ceased to be a governmental center; parliaments and exchequer audits were held thereafter in more southerly districts where English dominated, and by the time of James VI (reigned 1567-1625), Edinburgh had become the official capital (Nicholson 1968:15). In the sixteenth century, religion also became a powerful factor. Parts of the Highlands remained Catholic after the success of the Scottish Reformation was assured in 1560, and this was anathema to the Protestant Lowlands (MacKinnon 1972:117; Campbell 1950:45). Highland support for the Catholic Stuart claimants to the British crown in 1715 and 1745 united the religious theme with the political, and to have been on the losing side did nothing to improve Highland standing or acceptability. Most of the Highland clans ultimately became Protestant, but the lag in their conversion relative to the development of Protestantism in southern Scotland was an element in Lowland hostility to the Highlands for two centuries at least. In larger perspective it is possible to see the alienation of the Highlands as part of a general fate which befell Britain's "Celtic fringe"—Ireland, Wales, and Gaelic Scotland—a form of colonialism within Great Britain itself, leading to political domination of the fringe, or "periphery," and to its economic exploitation by a "core," that is, a modernizing, centralizing, and industrializing England. The sociologist Michael Hechter has described social change in Britain from the sixteenth to the twentieth century in terms of such a model of internal colonialism. Its general features he outlines as follows (1975:9): The spatially uneven wave of modernization over state territory crcatcs relatively advanced and less advanced groups. As a consequence of this initial fortuitous advantage, there is crystallization of the unequal distribution of resources and power between the two groups. The superordinate group, or core, seeks to stabilize and monopolize its advantages through policies aiming at the institutionalization of the existing stratification system. It attempts to regulate the allocation of social roles such that those roles commonly defined as having high prestige are reserved for its members. Conversely, individuals from the less advanced group are denied access to these roles. This stratification system, which may be termed a cultural division of labor, contributes to the development of distinctive ethnic identification in the two groups. Certainly many of the characteristics of the internal colony, as Hechter specifies them, are true of the Highlands in general and of Sutherland in particular: transportation lines which serve to facilitate movement of commodities between periphery and core, rather than to interconnect various regions of the periphery; recruitment of commercial and financial managers from the core rather than lo-

19

cally within the periphery; exploitation of, and discrimination against, a peripheral population distinguished by language or religion or other cultural markers ( 1 9 7 5 : 3 0 - 3 4 ) . T h e demographic features Hechter identifies as typical of a periphery are also generally true of eastern Sutherland: a declining population, an aging population, and a disproportionate number of females (1975:43). In following the fortunes of the Gaels, linguistic and ethnic names can b e seen to have symbolic importance. Scotland takes its name from the Scots, who arrived from Ireland in the fifth century, bringing the Gaelic (that is, the "Scottish") language with them. That language was appropriately called "Scots" until the sixteenth century, while the Germanic speech of Lowland Scotland was called "Inglis" (Campbell 1950:19). In the course of the sixteenth century, the Germanic dialect preempted the label "Scots," along with its associations with the national identity, and Gaelic came to be called "Irish" (as in Sir Robert Gordon's letter quoted above)—not a favorable label in the century of the Scottish Reformation, when to b e Irish was to be Catholic and to be Catholic was to be unacceptable. Under the "Irish" label, "the Gaelic language and its speakers came to b e regarded as in some way alien within their own nation" (MacKinnon 1974:29). In the next section one prominent and well-documented aspect of the alienation of the Gael and his language is considered.

Public and Private Policies toward Gaelic: The

Schools

From the mention already made of the 1496 education act and the Statutes of lona, it is clear that the national government of Scotland, located now in the Lowlands and English in speech, was not content to leave the Highlands and Islands to their own linguistic devices. This early pressure on Gaelic continued. An act of the Privy Council in 1616 looked for the universal "planting" of English and spoke of the "Irish" language as "one of the chief and principle [sic] causes of the continuance of barbaritie and incivillitie among the inhabitantis of the Isles and Highlandis" (Campbell 1950:115). T h e Scottish Parliament confirmed this act in 1631 and passed another in 1646 calling for the implementation of the Statutes of lona (Campbell 1 9 5 0 : 4 9 - 5 0 ) . T h e seventeenth-century church was as active as the seventeenth-century state in calling for the introduction of English to Gaelic speakers by means of schools. T h e records of the Assembly of the Church of Scotland call for the use of the rents of the bishoprics of Argyll and Dunkeld after 1688 for the "erecting of English schools for rooting out the Irish language and other pious uses" (quoted in MacKinnon 1972:128). As MacLeod (1966) points out in his survey of educational policies toward Gaelic, these early enactments probably had very little practical effect; yet they were important in establishing an official attitude hostile to Gaelic. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, religious involvement in Highland education took a sharp rise with the founding of the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge ( S . S . P . C . K . ) , modeled on a similar soci-

The Sociohistorical Setting of a Cultural Rivalry 20

ety in England. The S.S.P.C.K, had a patent from the crown and was enthusiastically supported by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Its purpose was to found schools in which religious instruction was combined with training in reading, writing, and reckoning (Smout 1969:463). From the society's founding in 1709 up until 1766, the use of Gaelic was forbidden inS.S.P.C.K, schools, despite the fact that most of those schools were in monolingual Gaelic-speaking areas. The goals of the society appear clearly set forth in its 1716 Memorial to the Court of Police (quoted in Campbell 1950:55): Nothing can be more efectuall for reducing these countries [that is, the Highlands and Islands] to order and making them usefull to the Commonwealth than teaching them their duty to God, their King and Countrey, and rooting out their Irish language. By 1766, however, the realization that Highland children often failed to understand the English scriptures they mouthed had led to the introduction of Gaelic as a permissible school language. As in the case of some of the bilingual education programs of our own day, though, it appears from the records of the S.S.P.C. K. itself that this was regarded as a transitional use of the home language, a bridge to the more successful acquisition of English. For example, in one of the very 1765 society lectures which urged the introduction of Gaelic, we find that the New Testament translation into Gaelic for school use is to be accompanied by

a few short rules with respect to the reading of the Galic [sic]. It is hoped, that the children will make more progress in the knowledge of the English language, by thus learning to translate from the Galic into English, than they have done hitherto. . . . [Education in the Highlands: [S.]S.P.C.K. Reports and Sermons, i762-6S:91] Progress in English is to be achieved through Gaelic. That is, at bottom the anglicizing purpose of the society is unchanged even after 1766. The number of S.S.P.C.K, schools was impressive, and likewise the number of their pupils. With 176 schools in 1758, a pupil population of 6,500 was instructed; at a possible peak of 189 schools in 1808, the number of pupils reached was 13,000 (Smout 1969:463). There were four S.S.P.C.K, schools in eastern Sutherland by 1777, one each in the parishes of Dornoch, Clyne (centering on Brora), Creich (centering on Bonar Bridge), and Kildonan (to the west and slightly to the north of Helmsdale). The Dornoch parish school had disappeared from the rolls by 1814. The others persisted through 1819, and the Kildonan parish school was still in existence in 1825, to be joined by a "Golspie parish" school, somewhat mysteriously located in Helmsdale, far outside the boundaries of Golspie parish, in 1826. In the 1830s the only East Sutherland S.S.P.C.K.

21

school was at Loth, just north of Brora. By the 1840s no S.S.P.C.K, schools remained in East Sutherland. 3 During the early part of the nineteenth century, the educational torch in eastern

Sutherland,

as apparently elsewhere

in the Highlands

(Smout

1969:464), passed to various Gaelic societies based mostly in the Lowlands. These societies were in effect missionary efforts, dedicated to advancing the social, educational, and especially moral condition of the Highlanders. Some of their members were doubtless Highland emigres in the Lowlands, but many others were Lowland philanthropists,

clergymen,

and the like. In the Gaelic

societies'

schools, Gaelic had, of course, a secure place from the start. The motivation for this was religious, and it led in its strongest form to an absolute prohibition of English as representing too much the language of the world: It would . . . tend materially to paralyze your [the Gaelic Schools Society's] operations, were your Teachers permitted to teach both languages in your Schools; for the temptation to which the people would be thereby exposed, of preferring what they deem their worldly, to what is really their eternal interest, would be so strong, that the main object you have in view would certainly be left unaccomplished. 6 Your Committee has felt it their painful duty, under a strong conviction of this truth, . . . to suspend some of your Teachers, who, notwithstanding repeated admonitions,

have persevered in teaching English in your

Schools. [Annual Report Gaelic

Schools

Society's

1822:11-12, in Education Reports

in the

Highlands:

1811-24]

The Gaelic Schools Society's insistence that every man must be able to read the Bible in his own language led to a strict adherence to the principle of Gaelic instruction in their Highland schools, but this was not achieved without opposition. The same report quoted above speaks o f " . . . Gentlemen of high respectability, and deeply interested in the improvement of the Highlands, who are sceptical, to use no stronger term, about the propriety of preferring in your Schools the Gaelic to the English language." The anonymous committee presenting the report connect that viewpoint directly with the political aim of subjugating the Highlands, an aim which was thought to require the "obliteration" of the Highlanders' language; their argument in reply is that the Highlands are now an integral part of Great Britain, so that such measures are no longer required (Annual Report

1822:11).

5

The details on S.S.P.C.K, schools in eastern Sutherland are taken from the following volumes of Education in the Highlands: S .S .P.C K. Reports and Sermons: 1771-80, 1781-90, 1811-20, 1821-28, 1829-35, 1836-33 [sic], 1841-52.

6

Note the implicit acknowledgment of the value of English in social and economic mobility.

The Sociohistorical

22

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

The policy of the Gaelic Schools Society seems to have been to support a school in a given locality for a few years only and then to open a new school in some other part of the same region, often moving the original teacher to that new location. In East Sutherland, for example, the earliest Gaelic schools were in the parish of Creich, but they were continued only from 1815 through 1819. In 1820 the Annual

Report

makes the following statement with reference to Creich:

Inhabitants, at least in various instances, are now attending to their own Education, either by helping each other forward in the art of reading their vernacular tongue, or by employing Schoolmasters at their own expense. [Gaelic

School

Society,

Reports

1811-19:47]

Gaelic schools were maintained by the society from 1815 to 1820 in Creich parish; from 1821 to 1829 in Dornoch parish, at a variety of locations; 7 from 1823 to 1826 in Golspie parish; and from 1828 to 1833 in Clyne parish. The year 1834 marked the end of this vigorous movement as far as East Sutherland was concerned; as of that year there were no schools in the area supported by the Gaelic Schools Society.' As might be expected, the schools which made use of Gaelic in Highland areas were more successful in reaching their educational goals than the schools which did not. The latter included not only the early S . S . P . C . K , schools, but also a fair number of parochial schools supported by the Church of Scotland, or, in lieu of a single parochial school, a scattering of smaller schools within some larger Highland parishes with dispersed populations (Smout 1969:462). The favorable effect of Gaelic education is noted in 1825 by an Argyllshire minister who compares schooling in Gaelic and schooling in English directly: T

In the Gaelic Schools Society's Reports 1811-24 there is a rare view of early educational activities in Embo, which is the more welcome since the formative years of this fishing village are otherwise very poorly documented. The minister of Dornoch, the Reverend Angus Kennedy, writes in a letter dated 17 October 1821: On Monday, 24th September, I examined the Gaelic School at Embo, taught by Mr. Sutherland. There were present twenty Boys and twenty-one Girls. I presided at the opening of this School, and it was truly an interesting sight to see so many Parents coming with their Children, eager to avail themselves of the opportunity to have their young ones taught to read the Word of God in their native language. The number enrolled, the first day, amounted to near thirty, and the number continued to increase, till the fishing and the harvest called the efficient heads away. But I anticipate a very crowded School for the Winter-Session. The Scholars present, with the exception of a few who read the Psalm-Book, were all beginners. [Gaelic

School Society, Reports

1811-24.26]

" The details on Gaelic schools in eastern Sutherland are taken from the Reports of the Gaelic Schools Society for the following years: 1811-19, 1811-24, 1825-39.

23

to the examination of a Gaelic school I have always looked forward with pleasure. In the examination of our English schools there is in general little to interest. The children may read, and often do read, with considerable correctness; but they read what is to them a foreign language. . . . But it is not thus in the Gaelic school. . . . In one word, in Gaelic schools the children understand what they read. Hence it is that Gaelic scholars [pupils] cannot be kept from school, whilst English scholars cannot be whipped into a regular attendance. Hence it is that Gaelic schools are productive of immediate good and that the good is permanent: whilst English teachers labour amongst us often for years ere any good is produced, and the good effects that at length do result are in nine cases out of ten transitory and evanescent. [Quoted in MacLeod 1966:315] Despite testimony such as this, governmental support for Gaelic was not forthcoming. When planning for a national system of education was under way in the 1860s, the commission charged with investigating the state of Scottish education favored the use of English in the conversation of infant-school teachers, and indeed all other teachers in Highland schools, "as far as possible," on the grounds that young children acquire a foreign language easily by simple exposure to its use in conversation. The goal was to enable "the youngest to acquire a power of speaking English with ease and accuracy." Campbell (1950:67), who supplies these quotations from the commission's report, goes on to comment ironically on commonplace nineteenth-century methods for "encouraging" the use of English in Highland and Island parish schools, quoting from first-person accounts of brutal physical punishment for the use of Gaelic in school, or even within hearing of the schoolmaster (p. 68). One of these accounts includes a description of the tessera, or maide-chrochaidh, a piece of wood handed in succession to each child heard to speak Gaelic and at the end of the school day handed back from the last possessor to each previous possessor, severe floggings accompanying it in its backward progression to the day's original unfortunate. The tessera was known and feared in many Highland and Hebridean parish schools, the more so since so many pupils had no language other than Gaelic in which they could express themselves when they first came to school. One characteristically nineteenth-century motive for encouraging English at the expense of Gaelic was that for economic reasons many people in authority favored large-scale emigration from the Highlands. For the emigrant, English was clearly the more useful language, as one expert consulted on the use of Gaelic in education by the commission observed (Campbell 1950:65). When, as a result of the commission's efforts, the Scottish Education Act eventually made its appearance in 1872, the most extraordinary thing about it was that Gaelic was not so much as mentioned. To set this fact in perspective it is only necessary to note that at the 1881 census the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland was 231,594 (Smith 1968:59), and that a good many of them were The Sociohistorical 24

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

monolingual in Gaelic. 9 In the Highland regions Gaelic was the first language of virtually the whole population; yet the existence of a significant population with a mother tongue other than English was p a s s e d over in silence. No special provision was m a d e for their education. T h e tacit assumption was that a single system of education—an English system, of c o u r s e — w o u l d suit all of Scotland. T h e r e were objections to the act, naturally enough. In particular the Gaelic Society of Inverness, f o u n d e d in 1871, mounted a vigorous campaign for the recognition of G a e l i c as a special subject and as a teaching medium ( M a c L e o d 1966:320). It was largely unsuccessful, although s o m e concessions were m a d e . For example, provision was m a d e in 1875 for testing the intelligence of Gaelicspeaking pupils by asking for a Gaelic explanation of a passage read in English. T h e provision was virtually useless, however, since none of the school inspectors stationed in the Highland area at the time spoke Gaelic (MacLeod 1966:320-21). In 1878 allowance was m a d e for the teaching of Gaelic during regular school hours and for the hiring of a teacher of "Gaelic, drill, cooking or any other special subject," but the will to i m p l e m e n t Gaelic teaching was lacking, and apparently money for such teaching was not readily m a d e available in spite of theoretical support from the school boards ( M a c L e o d 1966:322). T h e socioeconomic constitution of these school boards was in itself a problem. As a schoolteacher from the northwest Highlands noted in his r e s p o n s e to a private questionnaire investigating the teaching of Gaelic in 1877, "School Boards, as a rule, disapprove of [Gaelic] b e i n g taught, for they are c o m p o s e d of lairds, factors, 10 clergymen, doctors, and s h e e p - f a r m e r s — c l a s s e s which generally have very few Celtic sympathies, indeed a strong desire to have the whole race Saxonized right off . . . (Cameron 1877:186). A further difficulty, and one which continued into the early part of the twentieth century, was that Gaelic was not a subject in which educational r e q u i r e m e n t s could b e met; all the required standard tests were in other subjects, and consequently little time or effort was likely to be spared for such an "extra" (Campbell 1950:73). Little p r o g r e s s was m a d e toward a more secure position for Gaelic in Highland schools until 1918, when a single parenthetic clause in the Education Act of that year stipulated that there must b e "adequate provision for teaching Gaelic in Gaelic-speaking areas" ( M a c L e o d 1966:324). T h e ambiguity of the terms " a d e q u a t e " and "Gaelic-speaking a r e a s " left this policy open to widely different interpretations and c a u s e d d i s a g r e e m e n t among implementors of the policy and a m o n g m e m b e r s of the interested public (Smith 1968:64). It would b e fair to say that the so-called Gaelic clause in the 1918 act led to more frequent introduction of Gaelic as a subject of study in Highland schools, especially in the later school years, but there is considerable difference of opinion as to whether it led to sig* More reliable census figures are available from 1891 on. In 1891 there were 210,677 speakers of Gaelic, of whom 43,738 spoke no English (MacDonald 1968:178). 10

The factor is the manager of a landowner's estate.

25

nificantlv greater use of Gaelic in the crucial primary years (MacLeod 1966:324; Smith 1968:66). In 1956 there was a marked improvement in the situation, with the Schools Code for that year recommending not only instruction in the Gaelic language and literature for Gaelic-speaking pupils, but also, "where appropriate," the use of the Gaelic language "for instructing Gaelic-speaking pupils in other subjects" (MacLeod 1966:325). Gaelic is thus explicitly recognized both as a subject of instruction and as a possible medium of instruction. No further major steps were taken to improve the position of Gaelic in education until the 1970s. As recently as 1968 a major review of Gaelic in education pointed to the marked contrast between the provision for the Gaelic-speaking minority in Scotland and the provision made for native-language groups in many Commonwealth countries:

Even in its latest and most favourable references to Gaelic the Scottish Education Department is still far removed from the active policy of fully developed bilingualism with literacy in both languages, which is officially advocated even if it is not fully implemented in practice in countries such as Wales and Ireland where the problem is very similar. The truth is that the possibility of making the bilingual Gaelic speaker literate in his two languages has not yet been seriously considered. In this respect the attitude of the official authorities remains within the original imperialist tradition of providing a good English education' for minority or native language groups, a policy long since rejected and abandoned by Britain itself in its dealings with other countries of the Commonwealth. [Smith 1968:63-64]

A more hopeful era for Gaelic began with the initiation of Gaelic radio programs for schoolchildren in 1970. The redrawing of political boundaries in recent years has led, too, to the creation of one new "region" which is overwhelmingly Gaelic-speaking: the Western Isles Region, which encompasses the Outer Hebrides. Whereas, in the old system, these islands were westerly Gaelic-speaking appendages to various primarily English-speaking counties, they are now administratively and representationally joined together. Since Gaelic speakers constitute a majority in the new region, it is not surprising that educational programs making extensive use of Gaelic have quickly appeared. The Western Isles Bilingual Education Project began in 1975 with substantial financial support from the government (Wood 1978:245). It must be stressed, however, that Inner Hebridean and mainland Gaelic-speaking population pockets often remain as bereft as ever of vigorous educational support for Gaelic. The history of educational policy toward Gaelic, here briefly sketched out, demonstrates that the origins of that policy lie in an era of extreme hostility to "Irish," a language which early educators wished to "root out," and that steps

The Sociohtstorical 26

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

toward first a tolerance and finally a promotion of Gaelic have been slow and partial. Generations of Gaelic-speaking children suffered both physically and psychologically on their entrance into an exclusively English-language school system. While only a few of the present-day ESG speakers recall physical punishment, many recall humiliations: Well, you were made to feel small and embarrassed, y' see. I mean, if you were asked anything [in school], . . . it was always in English, and as often as not you'd run home . . . rather than stand it out. [Embo bilingual, 1976] Gaelic was strictly forbidden in school; as a linguistic domain, school was reserved to English. This pattern will be discussed further in chapter 3. For present purposes we may note that it seems clear the schools were more obstacle than aid to a large number of Gaelic-speaking young people over many decades, and that they reinforced substantially the negative views of Gaelic widely held in British society by denying Gaelic any materia] role in education. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that a school policy of excluding the home language does not necessarily lead to the decay or demise of that language, but that it does so only in a context of hostility and prejudice toward the language and its speakers. Given the virulence of English speakers' attitudes toward Gaelic and Gaelic speakers, there is a good deal of truth in comments like the following: Now it is obvious that these two historical processes, the one of the spread of state education and the other of the continuing deterioration of the Gaelic language, have been highly correlated with each other. It could not have been otherwise. [Smith 1968:60] In the context of a culturally divided Scotland, with a history of conflict between the increasingly prosperous anglicized Lowlands, gradually urbanizing and industrializing and merging economically with the English south, and the largely unfertile, economically backward, and isolated Gaelic Highlands, it could no doubt "not have been otherwise." That it can be otherwise is apparent from the experience of a nation such as Somalia. There, in the absence of invidious internal cultural and linguistic divisions, the entire educational system makes use of nonnative languages without posing any threat whatsoever to Somali (Pride 1971:95-98). Likewise the use of High German in the schools of German Switzerland operates not at all to the detriment of the Swiss German dialects. In theory it would have been possible for Highland Scotland to develop the same functional separation of languages which obtains in countries like Switzerland: English used in the schools and most other formal spheres, and Gaelic used in most informal spheres.

27

If the schools are singled out for treatment in this chapter and their policies subjected to a highly critical scrutiny, it is not because they are responsible in any primary way for neglect and derogation of Gaelic. Rather they offer a particularly vivid focus for a general attitude within the dominant segments of the Scottish polity toward Gaelic and Gaelic speakers. Without seeing the schools as the initiators of anti-Gaelic sentiment, one can still agree with MacKinnon's (1972, 1977) view of the Scottish educational system as part of a system of "social control" and with his description of its workings: The school has operated on three levels. The most immediate of these has been the coercive or alienative level. The child has been forced to speak English and the use of physical violence has induced a type of aversion therapy in alienating him from his own language. On the second level a curriculum where content is relevant principally to industrial and urban life has been provided and this came to be seen and to be defined not only as a relevant education but moreover as the only feasible form which education could take. Education within the home culture and the cultivation of the child's home language have been defined out as educational activities. On the third level not only have secondary and higher education "inevitably" been associated with English and an urbanized curriculum-content, but for the brighter child education has also been associated with a physical move from the Gaelic home and its setting in the rural community into an institution geographically remote from home and in an anglicised urban setting." [MacKinnon 1972:131] # Because the schools served a national rather than a local constituency in terms of the policies they followed and the practices and attitudes they perpetuated, they reflected the national rejection of Gaelic. The schools have a more pervasive effect in remote areas than most other national secular institutions, touching far more people directly than, say, the police or the courts, and the schools' impact is greater because it begins so early in the individual's life. For these reasons it is unfortunate for the future of Gaelic that the schools followed Lowland and English bias against the language and culture of the Highlands rather than taking the lead in recognizing Gaelic as a valid and valuable cultural heritage of a part of the Scottish nation. Minority groups are known all too often and easily to adopt majority attitudes toward themselves, even when these are

" Just as in Sutherland all pupils qualified for the most advanced secondary education must leave home and attend school in Golspie, so with virtually all other Highland and Island districts; the children live in hostels at schools outside the Gaelic-speaking areas from age twelve or fourteen until they finish high school. There are likewise no universities in the Highlands.

The Sociohistorical 28

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

hostile, in the absence of countervailing forces (e.g., Lambert 1967; Tajfel et al. 1972), and this has clearly happened in Highland Scotland, where native Gaelic speakers are often

heard to denigrate

Gaelic (Smith

1968:65;

MacKinnon

1972:132).

Dislocation of the Gaelic-Speaking

Population: The

Clearances

Efforts to anglicize the Highland leadership go back to the fifteenthcentury attempt to place chieftains' children in Lowland schools. Though scarcely successful in any immediate sense, the anglicizing effort had a considerable effect over time, largely by the attractive force of a more advanced material culture in the south and o f a concentration o f the high-bom in certain southern centers, notably Edinburgh and London. We have seen that the sixteenth Earl of Sutherland felt that his proper place was near the court in London, and that even Scotland, let alone his own dominions in Sutherland, represented a desolate exile to him—this in the first half of the eighteenth century. T h e House of Sutherland was not a native Gaelic house, and therefore it was perhaps more susceptible than some to the lure of the south. But the situation was general:

In the early eighteenth century, depending on whether they favoured the Whigs or the Jacobites, many chiefs were as at home in Edinburgh or Paris as they were in the Highlands, and French or English rolled off their tongues as easily as—perhaps more easily than—Gaelic. 1 2 While away from his clan, moreover, the typical chief—conscious since childhood o f his immensely aristocratic status in the Highland

society

whence he came—felt obliged to emulate, or even surpass, the life style of the courtiers and nobles with whom he mingled. And it was at this point that the eighteenth century c h i e f s two roles came into irreconcilable conflict with one another. As a southern socialite he needed more and more money. As a tribal patriarch he could do very little to raise it. [Hunter 1976:7]

Highland chieftains had once reckoned their wealth in fighting men (Grant 1961:33), but as they participated increasingly in the money economy o f the south, cash came to b e their principal need. Highland estates in the eighteenth century yielded very little o f it. At the end of the eighteenth century the situation came to a head. T h e r e

12

Timm (1973:287) reports that the Breton aristocracy likewise assimilated very quickly to the dominant culture, "abandon[ing] allegiance to both the language and the social habits of their forebears."

29

had been rapid population growth in the Highlands in the second half of that century (Mitchison 1970:376), resulting in a "high ratio of population to arable land and the repeated subdivision of the land" (Richards 1973a: 153). In the infertile and inaccessible Highlands, no great progress was made in agricultural practices, and the standard of living had fallen within that half-century (Youngson 1973:40). Coinciding with these developments came the introduction of large, hardy breeds of sheep into the Highlands, and around the turn of the nineteenth century wool prices were soaring (Hunter 1976:15). The combination of an excessive population practicing an unprofitable agriculture and the appearance of a profit-promising new industry was suggestive of a potential solution to the financial problems of the great Highland landowners, most of them at this time clan chieftains. If the people were to be cleared off their smallholdings and the multitude of little holdings combined into substantial sheep farms, the estates could be made to show a worthwhile profit. Sheep fanning was well developed and highly profitable in the Lowlands, and Lowland entrepreneurs could easily be found to develop the new industry in the Highlands if adequate scope was allowed them. This was a well-nigh irresistible prospect to debt-ridden, cash-needy Highland landlords. Some eagerly, some reluctantly, they entered into an era of "improvements." Rates and forms of development differed in various parts of the Islands and Highlands. The Highland Clearances, 13 as the "improvements" have come to be known, were undertaken under the management of factors who were usually Lowlanders for great landed proprietors who were usually absentee clan chieftains. All of these conditions obtained in tum-of-the-centurv Sutherland. Since the clearances on the Sutherland Estate were among the most notorious and are also relatively well documented (see the bibliographic references throughout the rest of this section), we can concern ourselves in what follows with local conditions in eastern Sutherland, considering the wider Highland situation where necessary. Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland and Baroness of Strathnaver (1765-1839), was orphaned at the age of one and raised by her maternal grandmother in Edinburgh, moving at the age of fourteen to London. Three years later she visited the Sutherlands' ancestral castle at Dunrobin, just outside Golspie, and subsequently developed an interest in her family estates (Richards 1973a:9-10). At the age of twenty she married George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), Lord Trentham, Earl Gower, an English aristocrat who later came into enormous wealth by inheritance. The Countess (sometimes with Earl Gower, who suc-

13

Here and in the next chapter, the term clearances will be capitalized when it is used to refer to the historical phenomenon and its period (ca. 1800-1850) in Sutherland and in the Highlands in general. When it refers to a particular eviction or set of evictions in a local setting, the term will appear in lower case.

The Sociohistorical Setting of a Cultural 30

Rivalry

ceeded to t h e title of second Marquis of Stafford and to the aforementioned wealth in 1803) made a series of s u m m e r t i m e visits to Dunrobin in the early years of the n i n e t e e n t h century. She was in s u m m e r residence in 1802, 1805, 1808, 1810, and 1812-16 (Adam 1972,l:xv). T h e Estate's factors in that same period included in succession a Highlander, although from a very distant southwestern part of t h e Highlands, and two Lowlanders (Adam 1972, l:xiv). T h e Sutherland Estate seems not to have been a financial drain on the Countess in t h e years before her husband's inheritance. T h e historian R. J. Adam, working with Estate papers which survive at Dunrobin, reports that "the estate had p r o d u c e d a surplus income in most years since 1780," that surplus being "deliberately exported to maintain the Countess and h e r husband" in E n gland (1972, l:xxxi). Nonetheless, in the climate of the end of the eighteenth century the Stafford family was interested in "improvement" which would make the estate m o r e profitable and bring their Highland Scottish properties more nearly into line with their relatively well-managed, efficient, and productive English properties. T h e earliest discussion of tenant evictions in the published Estate papers occurs in conjunction with an invocation of "the Spirit of improvement," though the context for the threatened evictions is the punishment of resistance to military recruitment rather than the institution of advances in pastoral farming for their own sake. Long-term planning had begun, however: Colin MacKenzie, the law agent who exercised control over the Sutherland factors and had great influence on Stafford family thinking at the beginning of the nineteenth century, advocated in this 1799 correspondence that "in future the tenants . . . should never get a Certain hold [that is, lease] for any length of time" (Adam 1972,2:8)." T h e existence of a great many leases which would not run out until 1808 was one of two reasons for a delay in the Sutherland Estate's introduction of large-scale sheep farming. T h e other was the fact that Earl Cower came into his inheritance only in 1803, and experimenting with sheep farming was sure to be costly at the outset (Richards 1973a: 169; Adam 1972, l:xxxi). But in 1806 the first Sutherland clearance took place in inland areas, which were converted into a sheep farm. No provision seems to have been made for supplying the dispossessed with land elsewhere, and Richards (1973a: 170) reports that many emigrated to America, only to perish when the ship on which they were traveling was lost. Failure to provide in some wise for the evicted was not, in most later evictions, a characteristic of the Sutherland clearances. On the contrary, the Estate prided itself on its farsighted planning. Not that the evicted were happy with the Estate's provisions—their bitter protests and v e h e m e n t recriminations have echoed down the century and a half since that time. But from the point of view of the estate owners and their advisors and managers, the removals were part of a 14

Italics in original. T h e letter makes it clear that he means only the smaller tenants.

31

master plan for the rational development of the estate. Its elements, in the thinking of Colin MacKenzie, were the introduction of large sheep farms (predicated upon the removal of the small tenants), the establishment of fishing villages on the coasts (to be populated by the evicted), the reduction of the authority of the tacksmen," and the reclamation of muir [that is, moor] ground (also to be settled by the evicted) (Adam 1972, l:xxxii). All of these plans went forward on the Sutherland Estate in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Of particular interest to this study are the fishing villages and the muir settlements, since these were the intended destinations of the mass of the Gaelicspeaking tenantry. Adam, using the estate papers, has traced some of the movement to the reclaimed muir ground. He relates that ten tenants (which is to say ten households) were displaced by a farm created for Earl Gower in 1812 at Achavandra, inland from Dornoch; seven of these tenants reappeared as settlers on muir land in Achavandra. Nearby, at Balvraid, three farms were established, and of the fifteen tenants displaced, ten reappeared on Balvraid muir, "while two others may have gone to the Achavandra settlement" (Adam 1972, l:liii). There are today still crofting settlements at Achavandra and Balvraid. Far more elaborate planning, and far higher hopes, were associated with the fishing villages. It was here that some of the major investment of Stafford family resources was made in the hope of establishing a permanent industry which would provide work for the evicted and revenues for the estate. We have a good account of this undertaking in a book written by James Loch, the Edinburgh "intellectual, lawyer, economist, financial expert, M.P., estates commissioner, political agent, apologist, family historian and antiquarian, as well as trusted friend" of the Stafford family. Loch came into their employ about 1812 and "as much as anyone determined the uses of the Sutherland fortune" (Richards 1973a: 19). In 1820 Loch published An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquess of Stafford, in the Counties of Stafford and Salop, and on the Estate of Sutherland. By that date the Sutherland clearances had already attracted a great deal of notoriety through the arrest and trial of Patrick Sellar, one of the agents of the Sutherland Estate; a version of Loch's Account was apparently distributed anonymously shortly before the trial and served as a defense of "improvement" policy (Richards 1973a; 190). The 1820 Account sets out the policy, humane at least in theory, according to which the improvements were to be introduced: As there was every reason . . . for concluding, that the mountainous parts of the estate, and indeed, of the county of SUTHERLAND, were as much calculated for the maintenance of stock as they were unfit for

15

Tacksmen, often lesser kin of the landlord, were resident large tenants who sublet to small tenants. Historically their universal Highland role as intermediaries, local leaders, officers of Highland regiments, and the like, was a major one until their power was broken in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Sociohistorical 32

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

the habitation of man, there could be no doubt of the propriety of converting them into sheep walks, provided [italics in original] the people could be at the same time, settled in situations, where, by the exercise of their honest industry, they could obtain a decent livelihood, and add to the general mass of national wealth, and where they should not be exposed to the recurrence of those privations, which so frequently and so terribly afflicted them, when situated among the mountains. [Loch 1820:70] As for the chief form which provision for the evicted was to take, that too was explained: It had long been known, that the coast of SUTHERLAND abounded with many different kinds of fish, not only sufficient for the consumption of the country, but affording also, a supply to any extent [italics in original], for more distant markets or for exportation, when cured and salted. Besides the regular and continual supply of white fish, with which the shores thus abound, the coast of Sutherland is annually visited by one of those vast shoals of herring, which frequent the coast of Scotland. It seemed as if it had been pointed out by Nature, that the system for this remote district, in order that it might bear its suitable importance in contributing to the general stock of the country, was, to convert the mountainous districts into sheep-walks, and to remove the inhabitants to the coast, or to the valleys near the sea. [Pages 71-72] Sometime toward the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the second decade, a start was made on the development of fishing villages in Golspie and Brora (Adam 1972, l:liv and lv). Resettlement at Helmsdale was possible as of 1816 (Adam 1972,1 rlviii), and two years earlier two Morayshire entrepreneurs had been encouraged by the Estate to attempt the development of a local branch of the herring industry there. The enterprise was successful enough to attract other businessmen, and in 1818 the utility of the river Helmsdale as a harbor was increased by a breastwork and pier the Estate undertook to build (Loch 1820:128). Helmsdale was the most successful of the Estate's fishing villages and became a small but vigorous curing center, achieving an output of 20,000 barrels of herring in 1819, up from a mere 2,400 barrels at the outset in 1814 (Loch 1820:129). The Staffords' financial commitment to the new fishing industry was considerable. The pier and breastwork at Helmsdale cost £600; houses for the fishing village at Brora cost £560; houses for a fishing hamlet created at Portgower, between Brora and Helmsdale, cost £1,100; and "many thousand" hooks and lines were distributed to the new fishermen (Loch 1820:128, 134, 138). It is clear from Loch's almost lyrical description of the possibilities afforded by Sutherland's coasts that great things were expected in return for this outlay. Precau-

33

tions were taken; because the lucrative and abundant herring were available for only a short time off the Sutherland coasts, and because their migratory patterns were unpredictable, encouragement was given also to the "white" fishing—hence the hooks and lines mentioned above—which could be pursued over much of the year in local waters, yielding such fish as haddock, cod, and ling. When we come to the manner of the evictions, and to their reception by the intended objects of all this planning, we have reached controversial matters indeed. A surprising amount of material has survived touching the Sutherland Clearances, none of it neutral. Because there was resistance, termed "riots" by the improvers, to one of the clearances (in Kildonan, in 1813), and because the estate agent Patrick Sellar was charged with culpable homicide and other crimes and brought to trial in 1816 in connection with his execution of another clearance (in Strathnaver, in 1814), the Sutherland Clearances were more than usually in the public eye even at the time they were under way. They have never been anything but controversial since. The record is one of charge and countercharge, accusation and defense. Loch in 1820 and Sellar's son in 1883 published apologias for the Estate. Of the attacks on the Estate, the best-known and most vehement are that of Donald MacLeod, a stonemason who suffered eviction under the "improvements" and published his Gloomy Memories'6 in 1857, long after he had emigrated to Canada, and that of Hugh Miller, a famous but humbly born geologist who knew the common man's Sutherland first-hand both before and after the clearances. Miller's Sutherland as It Was and Is, or, How a Country May Be Ruined appeared in 1843. It seems likely that the improvers were high-minded in their intentions and plans; it seems equally likely that they were high-handed in the execution of those plans. Their own writings indicate that they had, in common with most of the rest of English-speaking Scotland, a low regard for Highlands, their customs, and their language. Loch delivered himself freely on the subject of Gaelic and its supposedly deleterious effects: Many attempts have been made of late years, by different excellent and worthy gentlemen connected with the highlands, to arrest the inevitable and rapid extinction of the Gaelick language. This certainly would be a matter of deep regret, in the view which has been taken of the detrimental effects which the existence of this dialect produces, in retarding the improvement and progress of one portion of the people of Britain. [Loch 1820:44] He goes on to characterize Gaelic—in total ignorance of its early history as the

16

The full title given MacLeod's work in later editions (for example, that of 1892) was Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland versus Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Sunny Memories in (England) a Foreign Land: or a Faithful Picture of the Extirpation of the Celtic Race from the Highlands of Scotland.

The Sociohistorical 34

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

language of the Scottish royal house and of its manuscript preservation of heroic poetry, medical treatises, genealogies, and so forth—as "a language in which no book was ever written, and which has never served the purposes of commerce, or of government." T h e people most affected by the improvers' plans were largely Gaelic monolinguals; there was consequently a serious language barrier between the English-speaking estate agents and the Gaelic-speaking tenants, and this can be assumed to have raised extra difficulties in communicating to the people the plans for their eviction and resettlement. In bringing the people into line with improvement plans, coercive measures were openly resorted to. T h e planners anticipated that it would be difficult to persuade the evicted to turn voluntarily from agriculture to fishing. Consequently a method was devised to effect the changeover: W h e n these arrangements [removals] were first commenced, it was necessary to make the lots of a larger size, with a proportional quantity of hill pasture. This was requisite, as those persons who were first settled upon the coast were entirely unacquainted with the sea, and were possessed o f no boats, even if they had known how to manage them. Their lots, therefore, were made of a size sufficient for their comfortable support, without their being at all dependent upon the ocean for any part of their livelihood. But as the herring fisheries encreased, not only those who were settled upon the coast, but a large proportion of the young men belonging to the hills, engaged annually in this occupation, so that they gradually b e c a m e proprietors, or part proprietors, of boats. As the alterations proceeded, therefore, it was no longer necessary to make the lots upon the same scale with those originally set out. Indeed, if they had b e e n so, one great object of the arrangement would have been entirely lost: for if the people had subsisted altogether or chiefly on their lots, they never would have gone much to sea. Even now, although they are of a size to induce every man to engage actively in the prosecution of the herring fishery, yet these two advantages combined, provides [sic] so completely for the maintenance of the families of the greater number of the people, that few of them have as yet been induced to engage to any great extent in the cod or ling fishery. [Loch 1 8 2 0 : 1 0 4 - 5 ] This method o f "inducement" raises an issue which calls forth lively debate today: 17 to what extent can men justifiably interfere with and manipulate the lives of others, even for their own good? In the early nineteenth century, however, that issue was rarely raised. It was assumed that the upper classes had that prerogative where the lower classes were concerned. There might be considerable sympathy for the plight of the removed, as in the following account: See, for example, Paul Starrs review of a volume entitled Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (Starr 1978).

35

At this time there were only two vessels in [Cromarty] harbour. One of them was a brig freighted to carry out emigrants to America: the baggage of the wanderers was piled in heaps on the quay. These men were natives of a district [near Brora] in Sutherland, one and all quitting their fatherland to seek an asylum in that of the stranger. Infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; the patriarch of the tribe and his unweaned grandchild were there, prepared for the voyage; but the dejected looks of those who had reached maturity, declared, that to suffer in crowds scarcely lessens the poignancy of misfortune. Driven from the huts that had sheltered their fathers for generations, the victims of their own prejudice, and that rage for speculative improvement which threatens to depopulate the Highlands, they had resolved on repairing in a body to the untrodden wilds of the new continent. . . . He who emigrates avowedly to become a tiller of earth never tilled before, and covered with wood the growth of centuries, can, at best, only calculate on securing a provision for his children. To him there is no respite from toil, no end to privation. He is a bondsman for life, a slave in the wilderness; and if he has been ousted from his paternal hearth by oppression, his deep-breathed curse will be heard. [Sutherland 1825; 80-82] But the only issue which stirred any deep or widespread scruples was the manner—violent or kindly—in which people's persons or possessions were disposed of. Hence the notoriety of the Sutherland Clearances: accusations of great brutality were leveled at Patrick Sellar in particular and at the Estate's agents in general. Patrick Sellar was acquitted by a jury of his peers—it could scarcely have been otherwise, considering the make-up of that jury, as Ian Grimble has pointed out in his book on the subject. le In the debate over the value of the testimony of those who charged him with criminal brutality, both at the time of his trial and in subsequent years, it is sometimes objected that MacLeod wrote his Gloomy Memories long after the events that he recorded, and that both he and the most forceful eyewitness at the trial were unreliable men of quarrelsome nature or low repute (Richards 1973a:275-76; Grimble 1962:9). The charge of deteriorated living conditions in the post-clearance coastal settlements, brought by the unimpeachable eyewitness Hugh Miller, has been questioned on the ground that he was too young before the clearances to remember that period accurately (Richards 1973a: 159). But it is useful to remember that MacLeod's charges were substantially repeated and confirmed by sworn and witnessed testimony published many years later in the pages of The Celtic Magazine (e.g., 1884, vol. 9:60-64), and that if these witnesses, like Miller, were young at the 18

"The jury had taken a quarter of an hour to reach their unanimous verdict. Eight of them were local landed proprietors, two of them merchants, two tacksmen, and one a lawyer" (Grimble 1962:1).

The Soctohistorical 36

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

period they are recalling, they came from a culture with an inordinately strong oral tradition where powers of memory were highly developed. Such sources are notoriously difficult for historians to check, however, and tend partly on that account to be neglected. It is the case that "the survival of contemporary evidence has been arbitrary—tending inevitably to favour the rich and the literate" (Richards 1973a: 159). The following, written specifically about the Sutherland Clearances, seems to me a fair and reasonable statement: The actual details of the evictions have never been satisfactorily established. Undoubtedly the population was moved very much against its will, from lands its forebears had cultivated from time immemorial, without redress and with no right of appeal; inevitably, ugly incidents would occur in these circumstances, though there was no organised resistance. The operation seems more reminiscent of the treatment meted out to the primitive aborigines of a remote colonial area in that period. [Fairhurst 1964:2] Invocation of colonialism and aborigines is not inappropriate. This chapter has offered some grounds for believing that the Scottish Highlands can be looked upon as an "internal colony" and that the Highlanders were often regarded, even within Scotland itself, as a strange and barbarous race. That the establishment of the east coast fishing settlments at Brora, Golspie, and Embo was a direct consequence of clearances in Sutherland is clear, although there is no documentation for the development of fishing at Embo; Embo was part of a separate small estate and is consequently not mentioned in the surviving Sutherland Estate papers. It can be assumed to have had a similar history, especially since it emerges from the old and new Statistical Accounts (in which the ministers of each Scottish parish gave a sketch of their respective parishes in terms of topography, climate, population, economics, education, and the like) that fishing developed in Embo, as in Brora and Golspie, between 1793 (old Statistical Account) and 1841 (new Statistical Account)—that is, precisely during the Clearance period. It remains to look at those fishing villages and their inhabitants in detail, because they were destined to provide the only climate in eastern Sutherland (and for that matter on the eastern seaboard) in which Gaelic could last out the twentieth century.

Summary

and

Conclusions

In this chapter the long-standing competition between two languages has been set forth (successively) in terms of political, cultural, educational, and economic forces, both in Scotland generally and in Sutherland in particular. In the political context, an anglicized Lowland-based monarchy gradually extended its power into the still-Celtic parts of Scotland. Power and control remained centered in the south of Scotland, and subsequently, after the Act of

37

Union, in the south of England. Twice over, once before the Union and once after, a well-recognized political pattern emerged: . . . by far the most common and the most significant [pattern of communal politics] is the center-periphery pattern. The center-periphery concept is straightforward: one group . . . dominates the center of the political system, the resources and the apparatus of state power, and exercises hegemonic control over other communal groups at the periphery of the system. [Esman 1975:393-94] Before the Union, the Highlands were in a periphery relationship to the Lowland "center"; after the Union, all of Scotland was in a periphery relationship to the southern English "center," with the Highlands then a periphery within a periphery. In Sutherland itself, the political ascendancy of a family which owed its position to the Scottish crown and which was not culturally akin to the indigenous population played a key role in the introduction of an alien language—English— into a Celtic region. In the cultural context a familiar pattern also emerges: the absorption of a social elite, and then an economic elite as well, into a wider, expanding language-culture system, with a resultant assignment of low prestige to competing languages spoken by lesser folk. The favored culture is admired; others are disparaged. By the fourteenth century the aristocracy had turned to English, and the centers of trade followed suit; in the fourteenth century John of Fordun also set forth his division of Scotland into rival cultures, a "civilized" (English) Lowlands and a "savage" (Gaelic) Highlands. One analyst of language survival, William Vlackey, comments that "the [political] importance of a language is derived from the people who have used it—their number, wealth, mobility, economic and cultural production, factors the accumulation of which contribute the innate status or force . . . of a language" (1973:4). The national monarchy had opted for English; the lesser nobility (including the House of Sutherland) and the merchants made the same choice. After the Union in 1707, assimilative processes accelerated, as Hechter notes: "Indigenous elites in these [politically incorporated Celtic] regions who sought the increased opportunities afforded by Union began to assimilate by learning the English language, by practicing the Anglican religion, and by intermarriage" (1975:109). The weight of cultural prestige shifted heavily to English, and with this shift the position of Gaelic underwent a marked worsening: "If political incorporation resulted in peripheral economic dependence, it simultaneously gave English cultural forms superordinate status within the societies of the Celtic fringe" (ibid.). Once differentially ranked positions are assigned to two languages and cultures, it is scarcely surprising, given the concentration of political power in a center distant from the periphery and unsympathetic to it, to find the center vigorously promoting its own language and culture with total disregard for indigenous peripheral languages. The Highlanders were considered barbarous; in rec-

The Sociohistorical 38

Setting of a Cultural

Rivalry

ognition of the link between language and ethnicity—a linkage almost universally assumed—the "rooting out" of their language was regarded as the first step in rendering them more civilized. When Highland education was largely in the hands of religious groups, this policy was at first assiduously followed, though it was succeeded rather briefly, a century later, by a policy equally assiduous in the other direction for religious (as opposed to cultural or educational) reasons. When education passed into the hands of the state, the domination of English language and culture was again total, with Gaelic only slowly and gradually recognized as a legitimate school subject and even more slowly recognized as a legitimate educational medium. The distinctive Highland language and culture were simply not acknowledged in educational policies established at the center. This is, of course, a familiar way of dealing with the low-prestige language in countries with centralized governments and a single dominant language; Sweden's neglect of Lappish might be instanced (Haugen 1973:37), or France's neglect of Breton (Mayo 1974.16-17). Economic exploitation of the Highland periphery began as early as Tudor times, with the consumption of Highland forests in the interests of the English iron industry (Darling 1951:247). Sheep farming represented, in the early nineteenth century, a new way to derive profit from what was essentially a rather infertile and resource-poor region of the British Isles. This new form of economic exploitation not only dealt the final blow to Highland forest cover (ibid.), but also dispersed the indigenous Gaelic-speaking population in a manner which caused great hardship and wholly transformed the social as well as the economic scene. The powerlessness of the local populations was painfully evident, and the pervasiveness of the center's control equally clear. If the espousal of English by the aristocracy had set the national cultural tone five centuries earlier, the rather sudden appearance of a numerically significant, English-speaking moneyed elite within the Highland region set the local cultural tone in the nineteenth century. The demographic advantage of Gaelic was hollow in the face of the cultural and economic ascendancy of English in the nineteenth-century Highlands. This last point is an important one for the study of language death. In the debate over whether English was or was not seriously threatened with extinction during the centuries immediately following the Norman Conquest, it is usually asserted that English was never really in danger since much evidence indicates that the masses continued to speak it (e.g., Robertson and Cassidy 1954:44-45; Francis 1963:81-82). This argument is sociolinguistically naive. Who speaks the language is ultimately far more important than how many speak it— otherwise Irish would not now be in the gravest danger of extinction. The great' numerical superiority of Irish speakers through at least the first half of the eighteenth century could not preserve Irish in the mouths of the people when it was clear to every man, woman, and child that English, the language of the ruling elite, was the prerequisite for social mobility (Macnamara 1971:65). Similarly in eastern Sutherland in the early nineteenth century: Gaelic quickly passed from the status of majority language to that of minority language once an English-

39

speaking elite e s t a b l i s h e d itself in significant n u m b e r s — d e s p i t e t h e fact that those n u m b e r s w e r e tiny in comparison to t h e body of Gaelic speakers p r e s e n t in t h e area. Political resistance to linguistic assimilation was disastrously slow to d e velop b o t h in I r e l a n d and in Highland Scotland, p r e s u m a b l y b e c a u s e of t h e low level of e c o n o m i c and sociopolitical d e v e l o p m e n t in t h o s e areas d u r i n g t h e c e n turies w h e n an elite of alien t o n g u e was b e c o m i n g most visible (Inglehart and W o o d w a r d 1967-68). T h e n o r t h e r n H i g h l a n d s w e r e impossibly r e m o t e and inaccessible until t h e n i n e t e e n t h century. E a s t e r n S u t h e r l a n d only acquired roads w o r t h y of t h e n a m e in t h e " i m p r o v e m e n t " e r a itself; t h e m a j o r bridges w e r e also built in t h e early n i n e t e e n t h century. 1 9 Sociopolitical awareness c a m e slowly to an i m p o v e r i s h e d p e o p l e w h o had so long b e e n isolated from t h e rest of t h e nation and e v e n from o t h e r parts of t h e Highlands. In view of t h e impact of an English-speaking elite, it may b e that t h e adoption of E n g l i s h by t h e Scottish court in t h e f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y is m o r e crucial to t h e u l t i m a t e r e t r e a t of Gaelic than any o t h e r single factor. In a country w h e r e social mobility is possible, e v e n t h o u g h difficult to achieve, t h e linguistic behavior of t h e elite can h a v e a p r o f o u n d effect on t h e rest of t h e population. C h o i c e of language is relatively easily imitated, as behaviors go, unlike imitation of dress, diet, a n d g e n e r a l living style, it can often b e achieved without much financial outlay. C e r t a i n l y linguistic assimilation of t h e masses to t h e language of t h e elite is a r e c u r r e n t p h e n o m e n o n ; within t h e Celtic world alone, t h e romanization of Gaul a n d t h e saxonization of British E n g l a n d are classic cases. T h e decline of East " S u t h e r l a n d G a e l i c may b e viewed in t h e same light. In t e r m s of acculturation studies, t h e a d o p t i o n of a d o m i n a n t - c u l t u r e language (even to t h e exclusion of their own) by t h e m e m b e r s of a s u b o r d i n a t e or p e r i p h e r a l c u l t u r e is an adaptive, or coping, strategy (Spindler 1977:33; Spindler and Spindler 1971:179-86). It

" In many districts overland travel in the difficult Highland terrain was arduous at best, impossible at worse, right through the eighteenth century : . . . any track along which a horse could be ridden in reasonable safety was regarded as a road, and if it could be used by wheeled vehicles or remained open in winter it was a good road. Yet as late as 1790 in scores of highland parishes there were few roads even in the restricted sense of the word. [Youngson 1973:154] Within Sutherland the situation was of this extreme kind: Prior to 1807 there were no roads in Sutherland and no bridges except Brora Bridge. From the Meikle Ferry [over the narrows between eastern Sutherland and Easter Ross] to the Ord [of eastern Caithness] a horse track ran along the sea-shore . . . [N]o wheeled vehicles were in use in any part of the county. The access to Sutherland from the south of Scotland was mainly by sea. [Campbell 1920:147] Since Sutherland had little in the way of commerce or trade before the nineteenth century, contact with the south was not extensive even by the relatively passable sea routes.

The Sociohistorical 40

Setting

of a Cultural

Rivalry

provides linguistic access to the dominant culture, with all the attendant possibilities of incorporation into that culture, if only at the fringes. The history of Scotland after the eleventh century might be seen as the espousal of this choice by one segment of Scottish society alter another, to the point where most of the nation is now effectively anglicized.

41

2 The East Sutherland Fishing, Communities: Development, Linguistic Alignment, Ethnicity, Stigmatization

GGEEGGEEEEGEEEEEEGE

Fishing

in East

Sutherland

before

and after

the

Clearances

There was evidently some fishing in East Sutherland before the Sutherland Estate undertook to promote the industry. Three fishers are listed as seatholders in Golspie church in 1752 (Grant 1977: iii), probably sea-fishers as there was very little salmon fishing in Golspie. Further, the old Statistical Account (OSA) of 1793 includes references to fishing in all three of the parishes which concern us. It seems that the fishing effort of those days was an unimpressive affair, however, and the ministers who reported on the situation were keenly aware of fish as a potential resource that was poorly exploited. The Golspie parish minister, after noting the availability of various and plentiful fish, states that there are twenty fishers and "three boats constantly used in fishing, sometimes for freighting," but he characterizes the people of Golspie as "not fond of a seafaring life" (Sinclair 1793, 9:27, 31). The Dornoch parish minister is far more scathing. "There is only one boat's crew of fishermen, who are neither skillful nor adventurous: they are therefore wretchedly poor, and of little or no advantage to the place . . . " (Sinclair 1793, 8:3). The minister of Clyne parish finds the fishermen successful enough, but the industry underdeveloped: Such of the inhabitants as are contiguous to the sea, fish in small boats with hand lines in summer, and are generally very successful. It is to be regretted that there is not a scheme laid to carry on the fishing on a more extensive scale. . . . There is a spot of dry ground near Brora which turns out to little account at present, but would answer extremely well for a fishing village. . . ." [Sinclair 1793, 10:301] The East Sutherland 42

Fishing

Communities

How prophetic those words w e r e we already know. D u r i n g the Clearance period the fishing village envisioned by t h e Clvne minister was established, and by the 1850s t h e r e w e r e t h r e e curing stations at Brora, fifteen boats, fifty fishermen and boys, eight coopers, and eighty-seven gutters and packers (Anson 1930:271). Helmsdale was an even busier fishing port, but it is less significant for this study because its fishing population was never wholly Gaelic-speaking. T h e ports nearest Helmsdale w e r e deliberately "seeded" with fishermen from Scotsspeaking areas when they w e r e established at t h e time of the Clearances; t h e idea was that the southerners would set an example for t h e Sutherland natives (Loch 1820:135-36). Moray-coast people continued to play a p r o m i n e n t role in the Helmsdale fishery subsequently, and English was thus much more widely used at Helmsdale than in the other fishing villages. W h e n the new Statistical Account (SSA) a p p e a r e d in 1841, t h e develo p m e n t of the fisheries was duly noted by the Dornoch and Clyne parish ministers. T h e "one boat's crew of fishermen" in Dornoch had by then given way to a "fishing town" at E m b o . T h e r e was as yet no curing station there, though, and the minister of Dornoch parish gives the following description of the situation: T h e r e is no regular fishery in the parish. T h e r e is, indeed, a colony of fishermen at E m b o ; but they only fish for haddocks, small cods, flounders, etc., which they sell in the fresh state. T h e w o m e n carry the fish in creels on their backs to this town, and throughout the parish, and sell it as best they can. T h e fishermen also frequently go across with their boats to t h e shore of Tain [a town in Easter Ross], w h e r e they dispose of their fish to advantage. Of late years they have engaged in the herringfishing, by hiring themselves to fish-curers for t h e season—the fish deliverable in t h e fresh state at so much p e r crane [cran], and the nets being provided by t h e fishermen. [Statistical Account 1841, 15:11] From the Clyne minister we get an indication that the Sutherland Estate policy of "inducing" the resettled evictees to shift from agriculture to fishing was not always immediately successful, despite the inadequate size of the new holdings at the coast: Some boats have b e e n engaged at Brora in t h e herring-fishing, and with tolerable success. T h e r e are t h r e e boats' crews of regular fishers, who keep the n e i g h b o u r h o o d abundantly supplied. . . . But t h e other inhabitants have not taken to the sea, as was expected, and they are more inclined to occupy their time in cultivating their lands,—except during the herring-fishing season, when they are all engaged in it at Brora or Helmsdale. [Statistical Account 1841, 15:160] As an economic historian has noted, "Uncertainty was always a drawback of the herring fishing; the risk of a poor season's catch m a d e m e n without capital reluc-

43

tant to cut themselves off altogether from the land" (Youngson 1973:131). Capital the new fishermen certainly lacked, and land was in very short supply for them as well; but it appears that they clung stubbornly to what little land was allowed them. There were several difficulties in the way of a transition from agriculture to fishing for the evicted. One, of course, was their own inexperience of the sea. Donald MacLeod, in his Gloomy Memories, states the case of the Kildonan evictees on the north coast of Sutherland: Nothing . . . could seem more helpless, than the attempt to draw subsistence from such a boisterous sea with such means as they possessed, and in the most complete ignorance of all sea-faring matters; but the attempt had to be made, and the success was as might be expected in such circumstances; while many—very many—lost their lives, some became in time expert fishermen. [1892:26] The combination of inexperience of the sea and makeshift equipment made the initial fishing ventures of the new coastal population hazardous and uncertain of success. MacLeod vividly describes one of his own first tries at fishing: Five venturous young men, of whom I was one, having bought an old crazy boat, that had long been laid up as useless, and having procured lines of an inferior description, for haddock fishing, put to sea, without sail, helm or compass, with three patched oars; only one of the party ever having been on sea before. This apparently insane attempt gathered a crowd of spectators, some in derision cheering us on, and our friends imploring us to come back. However, Neptune being then in one of his placid moods, we boldly ventured on, human life having become reduced in value, and, after a night spent on the sea, in which we freshmen suffered severely from sea-sickness, to the great astonishment of the people on shore, the Heather-boat, as she was called, reached the land in the morning—all hands safe, with a very good take of fishes. In these and similar ways, did the young men serve a dangerous and painful apprenticeship to the sea, "urged on by fearless want," and in time became good fishermen, and were thereby enabled in some measure to support their families, and those dependent on them. [1892:27] Added to the difficulties of inexperience and inferior boats and gear was the problem of sheltering the boats in stormy weather or heavy seas. The eastern coast of Sutherland, and much of the north coast as well, suffers from a total lack of safe harborage. Even Loch, who had such great plans for the Sutherland fisheries, acknowledged this drawback: the Sutherland Estate, he wrote, excepting Assynt on the west coast, "does not possess one good natural harbour" (1820:108). Since the weather in the far north of Scotland is often stormy, lack of safe harbors was The East Sutherland 44

Fishing

Communities

not a minor matter, and even after t h e fisheries w e r e long established the n e e d for b e t t e r piers and the dredging of sandbars blocking harbor mouths continued to b e felt. In reminiscences of the B r o r a of the 1890s or so, Samuel Sutherland Grant writes: T h e sand bar at the mouth of t h e [Brora] river, even in those days, made a return to the pier hazardous in bad weather, and sometimes even perilous. I r e m e m b e r on o n e occasion a little crowd o f women watching, perhaps, some twenty boats making their way back, and as each boat crossed the bar, there was considerable apprehension, and many prayers uttered for the safety of the m e n . E v e n then t h e r e was great talk in the village about the advantages which would accrue from t h e construction of a proper harbour on a r e e f called Lack Robbie, some distance westward from Lower Brora. It had, in fact, b e e n in people's minds years before then. [1959:4] D e s p i t e the difficulties surrounding its beginnings, the East Sutherland fishing developed rapidly. Its c e n t e r s w e r e the curing stations at Helmsdale and at Wick, in Caithness, the latter a major port for all the northern Scottish

fishing.

In a period of not quite thirty years, substantial growth in the n u m b e r of boats and fishermen took place in all t h r e e of the villages central to this study, as table 1 shows. T h e 1851 census gives the occupation of each person recorded, and fisherfolk

are well r e p r e s e n t e d . In Golspie twenty-one heads of households are

listed as fishermen or

fisherwomen;

in Brora twenty-seven households are clearly

composed o f fisherfolk. E m b o leads t h e other villages with thirty-four households given over to fishing. T h e 1851 census also supplies the birthplace of each person e n u m e r ated. B e c a u s e the clearances from Kildonan and Strathnaver in 1813 and 1814 w e r e so notorious and are so m u c h discussed in both the scholarly and the popular literature (Richards 1970, 1973a, 1973b, 1 9 7 4 - 7 5 ; Fairhurst 1964; Sutherland 1 9 7 4 - 7 5 ; H u n t e r 1976; M a c k e n z i e 1946; G r i m b l e 1962; P r e b b l e 1963), it is often

Number of boats

Number of fishermen

1855

1881

1855·

1881

Brora

15

39

50

94

Golspie

14

27

35

60

Embo

16

42

50

80

Table 1. I n c r e a s e in boats and

fishermen,

1 8 5 5 - 1 8 8 1 (after Anson 1930:271, 2 7 4 )

• The 1855 number represents "fishermen and boys," whereas the 1881 number represents "fishermen"; the earlier number may consequently be slightly inflated relative to the later.

45

forgotten how widespread the evictions were throughout Sutherland. But Loch speaks of removing "the people of Strathbrora (the valley of the river Brora) and some from the neighboring parish of Loth to the new fishing settlement in Brora (Loch 1820:101), and Sutherland gives a stark eyewitness account of a "cleared" area in the immediate vicinity of Brora: Next morning we left Brora. After crossing the rocky trough in which the coal-tinged river flows, the road curves sympathetically with a tame pebbly beach; the sea on one hand, a ridge of mountains, swelling abruptly from the strand, on the other. It was from this district that many of the wanderers we saw at Cromarty had been ousted. All was silence and desolation. Blackened and roofless huts, still enveloped in smoke— articles of furniture cast away, as of no value to the houseless—and a few domestic fowls, scraping for food among hills of ashes, were the only objects that told us of man. A few days had sufficed to change a countryside, t e e m i n g with the cheeriest sounds of rural life, into a desert. . . . [1825:101] Somewhat surprisingly, I have never encountered a single oral tradition or folk memory of the evictions experienced by the ancestors of the current Gaelic speakers in Brora, Golspie, or Embo. But so notorious were the Kildonan and Strathnaver evictions that I have often heard from the fisherfolk, who know that their ancestors were Clearance victims, the notion that their people w e r e removed from Strathnaver or Kildonan. In fact, however, in the 1851 census only one resident in any of the three villages is listed as b o m in Kildonan (and none in Strathnaver). This was a forty-five-year-old woman, e n t e r e d simply u n d e r the label "householder," resident in Lower Brora. She was widowed and living alone, it is not clear w h e t h e r she was in any way connected with the fishing industry. Most of the 1851 fisherfolk had been born in one of the three local parishes, the major exception being an influx of Easter Ross fishers into Embo. By t h e 1880s, at any rate, the picture is one of a vigorous fishing population in Brora, Golspie, and Embo, evolved from evicted agriculturalists native to the local glens of Clyne, Golspie, and Dornoch parishes. However reluctant the beginnings, the Sutherland Estate's plans for the evicted came to fruition in a new occupation and way of life. It was a case of necessity carrying t h e day. People who had b e e n wholly agriculturalists necessarily became wholly fishers. Their only remaining connection with the land was the cultivation of essential potato plots, potatoes and fish forming the basis of their diet. People who had never known the sea now lived in the main on it and from it. T h e maximum development of the East Sutherland fishing industry had b e e n reached, however, by roughly the turn of the twentieth century. T h e n u m ber of registered fishing boats in Brora d r o p p e d 66 percent between 1881 and 1914; the corresponding drop in E m b o was 40 percent, and in Golspie 22 p e r cent. T h e World War I period intensified the decline of the fisheries through the

The East Sutherland 46

Fishing

Communities

loss of two major markets for Scottish herring, the German market and the Russian (O'Dell and Walton 1962:183-84). East Sutherland fisherfolk themselves offer various reasons for the falling off of fishing as a livelihood in the area. First and foremost they note that fish were simply growing scarcer and had seemingly changed their migration patterns. Beyond this some claim that the government commandeered boats during World War I and failed to give adequate compensation; others mention the heavy casualties suffered during the war and a major wave of emigration after it. The first and the last of these were certainly major factors. The East Sutherland fisheries were not the only ones to experience difficulties. Speaking primarily of the Moray coast fisheries, the anthropologists Chris Bäks and Els Postel-Coster (1977:24) note that fishing communities characterized by small boats and inshore fishing, on short trips and from small harbors, often vanished; remoteness from roads or markets was a further factor (and one particularly applicable to East Sutherland). There was an acute consciousness among the fisherfolk of East Sutherland that fishing was a precarious livelihood. The earnings might be good, even very good, from time to time; but bad seasons seem to have been commoner than good ones, and of course the fisherman never knew in advance whether his labors would produce a profit or not. Fisherfolk and non-fisherfolk alike stress this point: My father used to go away to the fishings. . . . The herring fishing. And he would be away all winter, and—and my mother was left to bring us up, y' know. And it was all right if you had a good fishing, y' know, he would make money, but quite often, and oftener than not, he used to come home and he would have very little to show for it. . . . [Brora bilingual, 1974] They [the fisherfolk] weren't very well-to-do. And a lot of people, even my own father, worked for [name of employer], and he hadn't a very good wage, but he had it steady, you know? It's when the sea behaved that they could, you know, make it, but they weren't well-to-do. [Golspie monolingual, 1 1978] There was a general feeling among the parents of current Gaelic speakers that fishing was a low-yield, high-risk enterprise, and that their sons would be welladvised to try to find some other means of making a living: Investigator: When you were a boy [that is, before World War I], did your father speak about your going to the sea and encourage you to look forward to going to sea? Golspie bilingual 1 [who in fact spent most of his life at sea]: No. ' Since all speakers of ESG also speak English, "monolingual" automatically means "English monolingual."

47

He didn't want me to go to sea. . . . As a rule they didn't want you to go to sea. "Go and get a job." Golspie bilingual 2 [his wife]: The work was too hard, Nancy. If you could earn your living— Golspie bilingual 1:—elsewhere— Golspie bilingual 2:—at any other work— Golspie bilingual 1:—work at all, they didn't want you to go to sea. No, I can't think there was anybody ever encouraged to go to sea. That I ever heard of, y' know, a young fellow. By their parents. . . . A lot of them had to go to sea, of course—like, dire necessity. But their parents never encouraged them to go. [1976] As traditional social patterns began to yield in eastern Sutherland, so that a wider range of opportunities was open to the offspring of the fisherfolk, young people were quick to take advantage of the situation. They became golf professionals, gardeners, policemen, and so forth, though often enough they had to leave the district to do so. Even for those who stayed behind, however, jobs in the mill, the distillery, the coal pit, local shops, local offices, and local hotels gradually became available. Only about half of the male Gaelic-English bilinguals with whom I worked in the 1960s had actually fished for a living, and a number of them briefly at that. Very few of the women bilinguals had actually carried fish through the district for door-to-door sale, but about a third of them had joined the seasonal migration to herring-fishing stations as gutters or packers in the years before they married. What all of the East Sutherland bilinguals had in common, however, was a childhood in households intensely involved with fishing. Children had a real economic role in such households, helping to bait the lines for white fishing, to clean and untangle the lines after use, to gather periwinkles for sale, and collecting pine cones for smoking fish, besides which they had, of course, a number of household tasks unrelated to fishing. Though few of these children grew up to become full-time fisherfolk, they had been not spectators but participants in the fishing industry as youngsters and in that sense belonged very much to the fishing communities, despite the fact that these communities were shrinking at the time and were on the verge of dissolution.

Gaelic in East Sutherland

before and after the

Clearances

Just as the Clearances in Sutherland made a notable change in the occupations of a large part of the population, so they made a notable change in the linguistic balance within the population, especially in the east, where the bulk of the new sheep farms were created. This becomes very clear in comparing the two Statistical Accounts. In 1793 language was not even a subject of discussion in Clyne, Golspie, and Dornoch parishes, from which we can infer that the linguistic situation was stable along much the same lines as in the sixteenth century: the general population was almost universally Gaelic-speaking, while the aristocracy The East Sutherland Fishing Communities 48

was English-speaking, with the clergy and some others of an intermediate position conversant with both languages. We know from the Reverend Donald Sage's reminiscences of his schoolboy days in Dornoch in the earliest years of the nineteenth century (1975, orig. 1889) that there were then some English monolinguals among the skilled craftsmen in that town; but this is characteristic of Domoch as a royal burgh and an ecclesiastical center, and it is evident from Sage's memoirs as a whole that Gaelic was the everyday language of eastern Sutherland at the opening of the nineteenth century. By the time of the \'SA in 1841, the situation had changed markedly. The ministers of all three of the parishes with which we are concerned felt called upon to comment on linguistic matters. All noted recent changes. Those changes were uniformly in the direction of the expansion of English at the expense of Gaelic, and the ministers were in complete agreement as to the causes: the introduction of schools and the arrival of a significant English-speaking class from the south of the country. These last were, of course, the sheep farmers who came to occupy the newly created farms, "tenants of skill and capital," as the Golspie minister calls them (Statistical Account 1841, 15:35). Although the Clearances brought an influx of relatively well-to-do English speakers from the south, they also sent a wave of Gaelic speakers, numerically much larger than the English-speaking group, to the coasts. This concentration of a large number of speakers in certain tightly clustered locations might theoretically have reinforced Gaelic, and in a sense this did happen. The new fishing communities themselves were (with the exception of Helmsdale) very strongly Gaelic-speaking. But their allegiance to Gaelic, despite their relatively large numbers, did nothing to enhance its position in the east coast villages. The newly created fisherfolk were for the most part destitute when they arrived at their allotments. Their homes had been burned, and often little was salvaged: "Those who could not get their effects removed in time to a safe distance had it [sic] burnt before their very eyes" (Celtic Magazine 1884, 9:62). Some were evicted more than once and consequently suffered still greater loss (Celtic Magazine 1884, 9:63; Sage 1975:204). The famous geologist Hugh Miller, who knew the common man's Sutherland through personal experience both before and after the Clearances, said of the east coast evictees among whom he spent parts of two years: They are in such a state, that their very means of living are sources, not of comfort, but of distress to them. When the fishing and their crops are comparatively abundant, they live on the bleak edge of want; while failure in either plunges them into a state of intense suffering. [1890:414] If the wave of Gaelic speakers who were removed to the east coast had been people of substance and standing, the position of Gaelic in East Sutherland might have been strengthened by their arrival. But the fact that these newcomers, conspicuously poverty-stricken even by the standards of the early nineteenth cen-

49

tury, w e r e Gaelic speakers only reinforced a social division explicitly recognized by two of t h e ministers in the .YSA: Gaelic was the language of the "common p e o p l e " and of the "labouring classes"; it was the language one gave u p if seeking social a d v a n c e m e n t :

T h e language usually spoken among the labouring classes is Gaelic; but owing to the more general intercourse with the south country, and the increase of education, it has certainly lost ground since the date of t h e f o r m e r report [the OSA of 1793], and, as most of the young people now a t t e n d school and receive the rudiments of education, it bids fair to be altogether unknown at no very distant period. [Siafisficfl/ Account 1841, 15:156]

T h u s t h e Clyne minister in 1840—the date of composition of his report. T h e most striking feature of this report is that the minister goes so far as to predict t h e ultimate extinction of Gaelic—and that at "no very distant" date. In this prediction he is joined by the Dornoch minister:

T h e vernacular language is still the Gaelic. . . . This language has, however, lost ground considerably during the last twenty-five years, owing to the influx into the parish, from various parts of the kingdom, of persons who speak the English language, but especially to the introduction of schools, first Gaelic and then English, into every district of the parish. T h e predilection for the Gaelic language is, however, still manifest, from the well-known facts, that the common people prefer to use it in their ordinary intercourse, and that larger congregations attend publicworship during the Gaelic services than during the English. Nevertheless, the English is making rapid encroachments on our ancient language; and it is not improbable that, in the course of sixty or seventy years, the latter may be extinct. [Sfafisfica/ Account 1841, 15:7]

H e r e again Gaelic is linked to the working class, but it is suggested that even a m o n g that group Gaelic speech may disappear in seventy years' time. T h e Dornoch minister's report is dated 1834, though the NSA was not p u b l i s h e d until 1841. By 1894 or 1904, according to his prediction, Gaelic might well have disappeared from the local scene. This remarkable prediction calls for explanation. How did a language so apparently stable as to provoke no comment in 1793 c o m e to be the subject of a prediction of extinction only forty years later? And given some grounds for making such a prediction, what p r e v e n t e d it from being realized? Much of the social history necessary to an understanding of the first

The East Sutherland 50

Fishing

Communities

question was p r e s e n t e d in the first chapter. W h e n Gaelic finally began to give way in East Sutherland at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the change in t h e positions of the region's two languages, Gaelic and English, showed itself almost exclusively in t e r m s of linguistic demography: the n u m b e r of people speaking only Gaelic declined sharply, the n u m b e r speaking Gaelic and English, or only English, rose sharply. This came about partly by way of in-migration of English speakers, but also by way of increasing bilingualism within the indigenous population. Most other indicators of what one linguist calls "language power" (Mackey 1973:5) did not change: they continued to favor English as they had for m o r e than two centuries. T h e monolingual English-speaking minority of eastern Sutherland was the most mobile segment of the society, controlled t h e economic life of the area, and represented the dominant culture of t h e nation. T h e relative status of the two languages also showed no change. Although Gaelic had b e e n spoken by an overwhelming majority of the local population, it had long b e e n t h e lower-status language: the nation's government, the nation's courts, the nation s universities, even most of the nation's schools, conducted their business in English. It might b e said that suddenly, around the beginning of the ninet e e n t h century, Britain came to Sutherland. This was true in education, in economic life, and in communications. For thirty years before and after the turn of t h e n i n e t e e n t h century, education on a genuinely popular scale was p r o m o t e d in Sutherland by societies based almost entirely in the Lowlands. The booming sheep-farming industry expanded vigorously into the Highlands, displacing the indigenous population in the early years of the century. Road and bridge building, again in the early years of the nineteenth century, "opened" eastern Sutherland: a r e m o t e and difficult northern country was made accessible from and to the south. So long as the Gaelic speakers of eastern Sutherland had remained isolated within a region w h e r e the indigenous culture prevailed, they were able to resist—or, m o r e accurately, to ignore—the superior prestige of English. O n c e t h e , region was o p e n e d — i n education, economics, and communications—to t h e wider society, the legacy of divided Scotland made itself irresistibly felt, and Gaelic, the language of the "wild Highlanders," gave way before t h e national cultural ascendancy of English. English seemed to come suddenly to eastern Sutherland, but the climate which led to its rapid adoption had been centuries in the making. In terms of possible routes toward language death, it would seem that a language which has been demographically highly stable for several centuries may experience a sudden "tip," after which the demographic tide flows strongly in favor of some other language. In eastern Sutherland the end of a protective isolation precipitated this tip locally, exposing Gaelic speakers to t h e forces which had greatly favored English nationally for several hundred years. Both the Dornoch and the Clyne ministers' NSA reports associated the continuing use of Gaelic with t h e lower classes. English, as a prestige language, p e r m e a t e d East Sutherland society from the top down; the aristocracy was t h e original model, with the well-to-do, the "gentry," and the well-educated, t h e "in-

51

telligentsia," following in their wake, as the sole members of the local society in touch with wider British society. From the time of the Clearances on, the gentry were in any case frequently English-monolingual incomers to the area. But the alien, non-Celtic element had actually a long history in the most important of the East Sutherland villages, the royal burgh of Dornoch. Η. M. MacKay, in his history of early Dornoch, notes the absence of local clan names in the medieval period: In going over Charters and records of the period with which we are dealing, one is struck with the total absence of what we might call distinctively Highland names. Even such names as Sutherland and Mackay are not to be met with, shewing that the old city had few dealings with the surrounding clans. [1920:29] Domoch, along with Dunrobin (seat of the Sutherland family), was a major point of entry for "outside" influences into the eastern part of the county. Its prestige as the site of a cathedral and of the law courts for the county, and its status as a royal burgh, made it a favored place of residence for the relatively well-to-do and the relatively well educated of the region. The Dornoch Grammar School was endowed in 1641 (Campbell 1920:160), and so anglicizing was the atmosphere of the burgh that even prior to that date the burgh was an acceptable destination for the Gaelic chieftains' children who were to be sent, according to the Statutes of Iona, to "Lowland" schools (Campbell 1950:49). Historically Dornoch was as much a site of de Moravia power as Dunrobin: Bishop Gilbert de Moravia made Dornoch the seat of his diocese in the early thirteenth century, and Murray, the anglicized form of the de Moravia name, was as prevalent in medieval Domoch as the Highland clan names were absent: "Murray was then, as perhaps it is still, the predominant name" (MacKay 1920:30). Over the centuries, Dunrobin and Dornoch were never to be wholly absorbed by the Celtic culture which surrounded them. English was in use more, and earlier, at these two locations than anywhere else in the county. When the tip to English occurred, the masses were following the lead provided by the elite of these two sites. Society in eastern Sutherland was highly stratified, and it remained so until very recently. A well-educated man of local ancestry offers the following description of early twentieth-century East Sutherland: Well, at the top was the castle, of course. And all the tremendously important people who stayed there [as guests]. . . . Practically everybody in Golspie had to do with the Estate, and the castle. It was a tremendous enterprise. They employed hundreds of people. . . . Very few families in Golspie, you'll find, that didn't work at the castle. . . . Gardeners, chauffeurs, forestry people. You see, this was it, as far as Golspie was concerned. So at the top, . . . well, the greatest landowner

The East Sutherland Fishing 52

Communities

in Europe. T h e Duke. 2 And then, underneath him, there were various stages of middle-class people. There were people who had lodges, and that sort of thing, to which they came in the summer, mostly, for, you know, the fishing, and the shooting, and all that sort of thing. . . . And then, underneath, came t h e — t h e farmers. They were very important people. . . . That formed a tremendous society in itself. I mean, [they] used to go to one another's houses on a Sunday, . . . and spend the whole day. . . . Then there were one or two people like lawyers, one or two lawyers, and the doctors, of course. . . . And then, underneath that, . . . I suppose you had the tradesmen, you know, the more prosperous tradesmen, and people who ran grocer shops and all that sort o f thing, and then you came down probably to the ordinary working people, who were farm laborers, and fisherfolk, and that sort of thing. . . . W e all knew our place. We had our position in life, and everybody accepted it. [Brora monolingual, 1978] In subsequent discussion of this outline, the speaker offered two refinements: he told of an experience which indicated that farm laborers ranked socially above fisherfolk,

and he identified the itinerant tinkers, who had no permanent hous-

ing, as the absolute bottom of the local social hierarchy. The chief difference between this twentieth-century description and the nineteenth-century scene, as nearly as one can grasp it from various accounts, is that the middle class was by the early twentieth century considerably larger than it had been: there were more of the prosperous tradesmen and farmers and their like, and the laboring poor made up a smaller percentage of the whole. To say this is also to say that, by the twentieth century, Gaelic speakers made up a smaller proportion of the whole. T h e connection between membership in the working class and the use of Gaelic, noted by two of the east Sutherland ministers in the NSA, remained strong. As English pressed in from the top of the social hierarchy and spread steadily downward, Gaelic retreated to the bottom of the social hierarchy and gradually became the hallmark of the rural poor—the crofters—and the "urban" poor—the fishers. T h e linguistic tenacity of these two groups was great enough to prevent the Dornoch minister's prediction from coming true; or, to put it another way, their social separateness was sufficient to allow them to remain distinctive in speech, as in way of life, into the twentieth century. It would have been interesting to study the East Sutherland crofting community's social and linguistic distance from the mainstream, but for this I arrived too late. W h e n I reached the area in the early 1960s, I succeeded in locating only three 1

T h e Leveson-Gowers held three substantial English estates (in Yorkshire, Salop, and Staffordshire), and their Sutherland estates consisted of between

eight

hundred thousand and one million acres. As late as 1883 the Sutherland family still held the largest acreage in Britain, about 1 , 3 3 2 , 0 0 0 acres (Richards 1973a:6, 9, 13).

53

crofters, widely separated geographically and all with disabilities of age, who were still reasonably fluent in Gaelic. T h e rural poor had in their linguistic habits preserved Gaelic well past its predicted demise in East Sutherland, but only by half a century. It falls then to the offspring of the urban poor, who were strikingly distinct from the rest of the urban population despite their proximity, to demonstrate the ultimate linguistic tenacity possible under the conditions prevailing in eastern Sutherland. Assuming good life expectancies for the youngest

fluent

speakers currently alive, the descendants of the East Sutherland fisherfolk will carry E S G into the twenty-first century. This group is thus linguistically at least half a century out of step with the surrounding population. A half-century lag in something as basic as speech habits suggests a strong separate social identity for this group. That is indeed the case.

The Fisherfolk

as an Ethnic

Croup

T h e distinctiveness of the fisherfolk in eastern Sutherland did not originally reside in their use of Gaelic. When they were first settled on the coast, in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, much of the rest of the population was Gaelic-speaking, too. Although it is possible that their Gaelic differed slightly from that of the established coastal residents, it seems more likely that the differences found in the 1960s between their Gaelic and that of the East Sutherland crofters (Dorian 1978a: 1 4 5 - 4 7 ) came into existence after (and as a result of) their being set down in certain particular locations as a new occupational group. T h e ultimate basis for the developing fisherfolk ethnicity was precisely the fact that they were

fisherfolk—the

only segment of the coastal population

which lived by fishing the sea full-time. From this, and undoubtedly also from their "refugee" status, the rest of the distinguishing ethnic features arose: residential segregation, endogamy, distinctive occupation, and, of course, ultimately also distinctive language. George De Vos s definition applies: An ethnic group is a self-perceived group of people who hold in common a set of traditions not shared by others with whom they are in contact. Such traditions typically include "folk" religious beliefs and practices, language, a sense of historical continuity, and common ancestry or place of origin. . . . Endogamy is usual. . . . [1975:9]

T h e fisherfolk in Brora, Golspie, and E m b o were probably cleared from a variety of nearby locations, though the bulk of each village group may well have been from a single location. But they all had in common an involuntary removal from the land, with its attendant hardships, both emotional and material, and the subsequent involuntary adoption of a new occupation. In this common experience and in their original rural Gaelic character lay their unity of "heritage." It seems certain that they were perceived, and perceived themselves,

The East Sutherland Fishing Communities 54

as a group from the beginning. They were settled in areas which were allotted " especially to them and were set to following an occupation intended especially for them. T h e few family names which predominate in the fisherfolk population of the 1851 census are largely the same names which the fisher descendants of the three villages bear today, testifying to the endogamy characteristic of the group over the years. An account of their emergence as fisherfolk has already been given, but the other features of their distinctiveness deserve attention as well. T h e r e was, for example, the matter of their virtual segregation in terms of residence. In each parish the fisherfolk lived apart in tight little clusters of houses, and in each parish this area was dubbed "Fishertown." In Brora the area was also, and more politely, known as Lower Brora. It was a flat shelf oC land at the mouth of the river Brora; the river, despite its dangerous bar and its narrowness, served as a harbor for the fishing boats. A short but fairly steep hill separated Lower Brora from Upper Brora, where virtually no fishermen lived. By the time of the 1851 census this pattern was set: only three fishermen, of whom only one was local (the other two were natives of the Moray coast), lived in the upper village; eleven men who were not fishermen, versus twenty-four who were, lived in Lower Brora. In E m b o , wholly a fishing village, only the presence of a single tailor disturbed the pattern of residential segregation in 1851; all other occupationally classified residents of the village were

fisherfolk.3

E m b o was, and is, physically isolated. A zone of moorland, pasturage, and fields, belonging to a farm and a number of crofts, separates E m b o from Dornoch to the southwest, and croftland and farmland isolate the village on all other landward sides as well. In Golspie the fishing people were to be found on two streets at the west end of the village, Church Street and Shore Street, with some overflow into the western section of Main Street. The "West E n d " is synonymous with "Fishertown" in Golspie, as "Lower Brora" is synonymous with "Fishertown" in Brora. There was some interposing of other occupations in the western section of Golspie's Main Street, where in the 1851 census under "Fishertown,

eight non-fishermen and thirteen fishermen appear as heads of house-

hold. The Golspie West E n d would thus seem to be less dominated by

fisherfolk

in 1851 than the fishing districts of Clyne and Dornoch parishes were, but the situation is disguised somewhat there by the fact that young-adult sons who were presumably also fishing are not listed as "fishermen," whereas they are in Brora. It is, however, the case that in Golspie the physical proximity of fishers and nonfishers was greater; there was neither the barrier of a steep hill, as at Brora, nor the barrier of agricultural and pastoral land, as at Embo. Still, the West End/East E n d distinction was perceived as very strong, at least in the present century: "What we called 'Fishertown' was the West End, and there was that division" (Golspie monolingual, 1976). T h e same woman tells a story of being invited to a fisherman's house on the Morayshire coast and the surprise she felt at the absence of residential segregation there: 3

Three widows with no listed occupation constitute the unknown element.

55

. . . this girl [in Nairn] . . . invited me to come to her house for my supper one night. And she said, "My father's a fisherman, and my brother." . . . What a surprise I got! . . . You see, I was expecting to go to a community. Like what I was used to. . . . Her house was among other people's houses. If the fisherfolk lived by themselves, they also married among themselves. At the time of the 1851 census, the fisherfolk in any one village might be from a number of original locations. Embo in particular had a large contingent from other places, notably fifteen incomers from Ross-shire, and more than half of the Embo fisherfolk of that time were not born in Dornoch parish. The pattern in Embo is primarily one of local men bringing in wives from elsewhere: twenty of the twenty-eight fisherfolk from outside Dornoch parish fall into that group. In Brora the only large outside group in 1851 was a sizable contingent bom in Golspie (nineteen out of fifty-five); twenty-four of the fisherfolk were locally bom. Golspie was the most homogeneous at that time, with 80 percent of the fisherfolk bom locally. It would seem from the testimony of the oldest people alive in these villages in the 1960s that the populations of the three "Fishertowns" had become quite locally stable by the end of the nineteenth century, with Brora fisherfolk marrving primarily among themselves, and Golspie and Embo fisherfolk doing the same. The fishing populations were fairly large by then (Embo had a population of 546 in 1901),1 and the choice of possible spouses was consequently relatively wide. There were certainly cross-village marriages among the three fisher populations, but they were not an everyday occurrence. Even among the relatively large group of "outsiders'" in the Brora fisherfolk population of 1851, only six couples represented cross-village marriages; all the rest were hus^and-andwife teams in which both partners were bom in the same village but had moved to Brora. Only Embo, with its contingent of Ross-shire wives, showed a high proportion of cross-village marriages in 1851. Most informants regarded crossvillage fisherfolk marriages as a phenomenon which had increased as the twentieth century progressed. As for marriages outside the fishing communities, they were exceedingly rare. Early in the present century there was a distinctly unfavorable attitude among the general population toward marriages with fisherfolk: Brora monolingual 1: . . . sometimes they [crofting people and fishing people] did marry. But it would be a very secret kind of wedding. Brora monolingual 2 [her daughter]: Not blessed by the parents of the person from the country, I'm sure. The pattern of endogamous marriage led to a dense web of interrelationships in the fishing communities. Third-, second-, and even first-cousin marriages 4

Population figure is by the courtesy of the General Register Office for Scotland.

The East Sutherland 56

Fishing

Communities

were widespread, 5 and as a result of the marriage density people were and are sometimes multiply connected with one another; one E m b o woman is aunt-bymarriage, sister-in-law, and second cousin to another E m b o woman. A very few family names appeared in each of the fishing communities. Today Golspie and Brora fisher descendants share the names Sutherland, MacRae, and MacDonald, with Jack and Dempster as minority names in Brora. E m b o was sometimes known as "MacKav village," and indeed in 1964 over half of its approximately one hundred Gaelic speakers still bore the name MacKav. Fräser and Ross account for most of the rest, with Cumming and Grant as minority names. 6 Because the pool of favored given names was also rather small, large numbers of contemporaneous people had the same given and family names. The result was that for all ordinary purposes official names were abandoned and a system of "by-names" was introduced (or rather continued, since this would seem to be ancient Celtic practice) to distinguish one William MacKav or John Sutherland from another. If a particular John Sutherland had a conspicuous paunch, for example, he might be dubbed "Johnny Tubbie," or just "Tubbie." His son Alec might then be called "Alec Johnny Tubbie," or "Alec Tubbie." Since a great many of the by-names were and are offensive, they came to serve a social bonding purpose: people refrained from using the by-names of relatives or friends, whereas they used the offensive by-names of individuals toward whom they were less friendly. In order to use the by-names without breaching social etiquette in a very serious way, it is necessary to know the entire network of social relationships in the community: who is related to whom, and who is friendly with whom. English monolinguals with a long local history usually do know these things; the by-names can be exploited by them to express social distance from the fisherfolk (and vice versa, since the bynaming practice has carried over to the English-speaking population, where bynames are common although there is little need for them in a population with many different surnames). English monolinguals who are not locally born often have no sense of which by-names are offensive to whom, and further they often mistake by-names for actual family names and cause great offense by using them in direct address. The by-naming system, in origin a rather natural result of marked endogamy, has become a social reference system exploited by both populations, bilinguals and monolinguals, to mark network boundaries." Thanks to their occupation the fisherfolk had a somewhat different diet

5

It should be noted that they w e r e also not at all uncommon outside the

fishing

communities. s

It is worthy of note that the three c o m m o n e s t names in Golspie and Brora are the same, but the three commonest names in E m b o are altogether different. This reflects Embo's history as part of a separate small estate and correlates with significant dialect differences between C o l s p i e and Brora on the one hand and E m b o on the other.

7

S e e Dorian 1970a and 1970b for a detailed account of the system and an analysis of its functions.

57

f r o m t h e rest of t h e p o p u l a t i o n . Not only did they eat conspicuously m o r e fish than others, b u t they also cooked fish dishes which w e r e a specialty a m o n g t h e m selves, such things as cinne

chnapaich

("crappit heids," fish heads stuffed w i t h

o a t m e a l and onion) a n d säbhs (a fish soup m a d e with flounder). Potatoes w e r e t h e o t h e r staple of t h e fisherfolk diet, and "tatties and h e r r i n g " was a f r e q u e n t meal. M e a t was not a regular dish, b u t s o m e vegetables w e r e h o m e g r o w n and m o r e e n t e r e d t h e diet t h r o u g h b a r t e r : t h e fishsvives traveled great distances t h r o u g h t h e c o u n t r y s i d e selling fish from large creels on their backs, and as they sold off t h e fish they r e c e i v e d p r o d u c e in r e t u r n — p e r h a p s t u r n i p s or carrots or cabbage; o a t m e a l , potatoes, crowdv (a kind of cottage cheese), b u t t e r , eggs, and s o m e t i m e s apples w e r e also a c c e p t e d in exchange for fish. Two kinds of seaweed w e r e also e a t e n : t h e leaf of t h e d u l s e and t h e root of a s e a w e e d called in Gaelic slat, usually translated by t h e English w o r d "tangle." T h e s e a w e e d s w e r e not staples, however, b u t w e r e e a t e n occasionally for variety. Periwinkles w e r e also e a t e n , t h o u g h seemingly m o r e f r o m necessity in hard times than from choice. Most of t h e periwinkles g a t h e r e d locally by fisher c h i l d r e n (an i m p o r t a n t subsidiary source of i n c o m e for fisher families) w e r e not c o n s u m e d locally, b u t w e r e sent away to s o u t h e r n British markets, w h e r e periwinkles w e r e popular. O t h e r local people, if they ate s e a w e e d or periwinkles at all, certainly did so e v e n less f r e q u e n t l y than the

fisherfolk.

In breadstuffs t h e r e s e e m s to have b e e n no difference b e t w e e n

what t h e fisher families ate and t h e standard local diet; most local w o m e n b a k e d barley scones, oat cakes, and wheat-flour b r e a d . T h e distinctiveness of t h e

fisher

diet t h u s resided partly in its relative m o n o t o n y (fish, potatoes, and oatmeal in a fairly steady round), and partly in t h e p r e p a r a t i o n of certain special dishes like those m e n t i o n e d above. T h e variety

of fishes e a t e n was certainly also g r e a t e r than

a m o n g t h e general p o p u l a c e , since t h e fishermen s o m e t i m e s took h o m e for family c o n s u m p t i o n certain kinds of fish for which t h e r e was no ready market. Prawns, ironically, are a case in point: luxury food now, they w e r e unsalable then and w e r e taken h o m e in small quantities for t h e fisherman's own family; most of t h e prawn catch, h o w e v e r , was t h r o w n back into t h e sea. In clothing, too, t h e fisherfolk w e r e distinctive. T h e m e n in particular had what a m o u n t e d to a

fisherman's

uniform: a vachting-style cap with a h a r d

b r i m ; a heavy, h o m e - k n i t , h i g h - n e c k e d jersey, always navy blue; navy b l u e trousers of a special heavy material (whose n a m e no o n e can now r e m e m b e r ) , with t h e pockets set into t h e front instead of t h e side. Investigator: So if you saw two m e n at a distance, you would k n o w straightaway if o n e of t h e m was a fisherman. Golspie bilingual: Yes, w e w o u l d say, "O, 's e maraich' that's a k

fisherman']."

tha sin [ O h ,

[Golspie bilingual, 1976] 8

T h e interview in which this interchange takes place is printed in part in Tocher

(1978) 28:251-52.

The East Sutherland

58

Fishing

Communities

The fisherwomen are best r e m e m b e r e d for their shawls, usually black, which seem to have been the chief distinguishing element of their dress. Otherwise they dressed much like other women, except that for certain important tasks (gathering cockles as bait, gathering seaweed as fertilizer, and walking through the country side with their creels) they wore canvas shoes much like today's tennis shoes. As was noted above, the fisherfolk were not unique in speaking Gaelic at the e n d of t h e nineteenth century; the crofters did so as well, and many Estate workers and farm laborers, and even some craftsmen and tradesmen in the villages. But t h e fisherfolk were u n i q u e in the slowness with which they added English to their linguistic repertory. Adult Gaelic monolingualism lingered among t h e fisherfolk long after it had disappeared elsewhere in the village populations; and Gaelic preschool monolingualism was particularly evident, most especially in E m b o , w h e r e the last instances date from the 1940s. Many living ESG speakers have tales to tell of their early tribulations in trying to deal with the English language, emotionally and temporally a second language for them: T h e r e were ten of us in the family, y know. . . . And the first five of us had no English when we went to school. We could understand it, but we couldn't speak it. And I remember, we had a wee doggie, once, and telling you I had poor English, and the dog had followed me to the shop for messages. And the man said, [shopkeeper's name], . . . "Whose d o g s that?" H e didn't ask me, he asked somebody else. But I turned round and I said, "That's a dog of me." And of course h e always kept that up, that much, after I was grown up, he would say, "Oh, here's Dog-ofine coming." . . . Well, that's the kind of English I had. [Golspie bilingual, 1976] For at least a century, some form of linguistic lag has been characteristic of the fisherfolk. At first the fishing communities were conspicuous for their lack of English w h e n other segments of the population had become bilingual; as a result, their Gaelic was adjudged exceptionally pure in an era when admixture of English loanwords was becoming common. For example, Adam G u n n , assessing the adulteration of Sutherlandshire Gaelic, makes a specific exception of two of the east coast fishing communities when he examines the three subdialects of the county: Comparing these three sub-dialects then, it will be granted that the language of the people of Μachair-C.hat, as the low-lying east coast of Sutherland is called, is less pure than that of the Reay Country; and the dialect of the latter is less p u r e than that of Assynt. We may except one or two fishing communities from this comparison; for example, Embo, and Brora, whose natives can express themselves in fairly good idiomatic Gaelic. [Gunn and MacKay 1897:177]

59

In the process of going from Gaelic monolingualism to English monolingualism, the fishing communities have consistently lagged behind: they became bilingual belatedly, and now remain bilingual anachronistically. T h e actual ethnic loading of Gaelic-English bilingualism—the fact that being able to speak Gaelic identifies one inescapably as part of the fisherfolk community—is a very recent phenomenon, since until the 1970s there were still a few crofters who spoke Gaelic. But there has long b e e n a linguistic component to fisherfolk ethnic identity: at one time or another the fisherfolk have been characterized by less adulterated Gaelic, by no English, or by imperfect English, just as now they are characterized by Gaelic-English bilingualism. It is interesting that an ethnicity which once resided as much or more in other factors (especially occupation, but also residence and marriage patterns, dress, and diet, as we have seen) has now shifted almost wholly to language. Occupation, dress, diet, and marriage patterns are no longer distinctive; residential segregation survives vestigially in Brora and Golspie and quite strongly in E m b o ; but in all three villages language is probably the strongest current marker of ethnic identity. On the current scene, to b e a Gaelic speaker is to b e "of the fisherfolk." But for a long time past, to be a linguistic laggard in one of the senses noted above—monolingual in Gaelic when the majority had b e c o m e bilingual, imperfectly proficient in English when the majority had b e c o m e fully proficient—was likewise to be a "fisher." In this view it is simply that the lag, an enduring ethnic marker, has now taken a new form: bilingualism in Gaelic and English among the fisherfolk when the majority has become monolingual in English. F o r sociolinguistic theory it is of interest that the ethnic marker in this case has been not any particular language or dialect as such, but rather a persistent lag in linguistic habits. In the popular local view the subtleties of the changing nature of the linguistic lag are largely overlooked, however, and a crude equation between fisherfolk identity and the use of Gaelic goes back far beyond any realistic basis for such an equation. 9 Although the fisherfolk of East Sutherland lived in segregated or ghettoized areas, they played a vital interactive role in the district as a whole. Their discrete economic role complemented the other economic roles of East Sutherland society; they bent their efforts full-time to supplying one of the basic lowcost items of the local diet. They were economic specialists, and their domain was all the produce of the sea. Aside from providing a number of kinds of fresh fish, every fisher family had a smoking shed, where they produced smoked fish for local consumption; these "smokies" were highly prized in the area, and certain women enjoyed local renown for the exceptionally fine smoked fish which they sold. Beyond this, some men also fished for lobster and sold their catches to the local hotels. T h e women of the fishing communities were in constant contact with the other segments of the local population through their role as door-to-door * Dorian 1980a offers a fuller exposition of the evolution of the lag and its local interpretation.

The East Sutherland Fishing Communities 60

saleswomen. Each woman had her own beat, some in the villages, some in the country districts. Many women took the train or bus daily, with their creels, to inland areas (Rogart, Lairg) or to coastal communities without a fisher population (Dornoch, Bonar Bridge). In the country districts very little money changed hands; rather fish was exchanged for produce, each occupational group supplying the other with items from its own sphere of activity. T h e ethnic identity of the fisherfolk was not weakened but sustained by their interaction with the rest of the population, since that interaction was always based on their distinctive economic role: T h e existence of a cultural division of labor contributes to the devQlopment of distinctive ethnic identity in each of . . . two cultural groups. Actors come to categorize themselves and others according to the range of roles each may be expected to play. They are aided in this categorization by the presence of visible signs—distinctive life-styles, language, or religious practices—which are seen to characterize both groups. [ H e c h t e r 1975:40] T h e fisherfolk of eastern Sutherland were an ethnic group coexisting in stable fashion with other groups, interacting along certain prescribed lines, in this case economic, while remaining strictly apart in occupation, residence, and marriage: Stable inter-ethnic relations presuppose . . .

a structuring of interac-

tion: a set of prescriptions governing situations of contact, and allowing for articulation in some sectors or domains of activity, and a set of proscriptions on social situations preventing inter-ethnic interaction in other sectors, and thus insulating parts of the cultures from confrontation and modification. [Barth 1969:16] Such a "structuring of interaction," as the present section has attempted to show, was highly developed in turn-of-the-century East Sutherland.

"Fisher" as a Stigmatized Ethnic Identity A "fisher" was a term of abuse, there's no question about that. [Brora monolingual, 1978] T h e upper village looked down on the Lower Brora people. . . . T h e r e was always animosity between them. . . . T h e y looked on us as a race apart. [Brora bilingual, 1974] Well, the country people thought they were superior to the

fisher-

people. [Brora monolingual, b o m outside Sutherland, 1978] W e were no class. It gave you a sort of inferiority. [Embo bilingual, 1971]

61

Really I think the Dornoch people looked down on the Embo people, and that was the cause of all the trouble. [Embo monolingual, born outside Sutherland, 1978] The verbatim quotations above come both from monolingual English speakers and from Gaelic-English bilinguals, making it clear that both groups were agreed on the poor standing of the fisherfolk. Only the itinerant tinkers stood lower in the local social order, and they were, of course, not a permanent part of the local population. The near inevitability with which a subordinate ethnic group takes on low status has been noted by Glazer and Moynihan (1975:14): "In a situation of mixed ethnic groups where one group is dominant, which is to say that its norms are seen as normal not just for it, but for others also, there follows an almost automatic consignment of other groups to inferior status." In East Sutherland, as the area underwent modernization and even urbanization on a small scale during the nineteenth century, a general anglicization took place as well. A process begun by the sixteenth century, if not earlier, gained enormous momentum, and soon the crofters and the fisherfolk were virtually the only segments of the population still Gaelic in language and to some extent in lore. Even the crofters were clearly moving toward the linguistic mainstream by the beginning of the twentieth century; only the fisherfolk kept to themselves and to their traditional Gaelic ways.10 In this sense the "fisher" identity was a relic of an older Celtic identity, the latter itself stigmatized in Britain for many centuries past (as described in chapter 1). Beyond this, the "fisher" label encompassed another stigma, at least superficially an occupational one, which adhered to the entire fisherfolk population. In terms of both the national stigma "Gael" and the local stigma "fisher," the fisherfolk were a subordinate ethnic group, and their fate was in line with the Glazer and Moynihan prediction. Locally in present-day East Sutherland people are preoccupied to a far greater extent with the latter stigma than with the former; that is, the handicap is seen to be essentially a fisherfolk identity, with a Gaelic mother tongue important chiefly in establishing that identity. When fisherfolk migrated to other parts of Britain, however, the situation was reversed. In Lowland and English towns they were stigmatized as Highland Gaels (the prevailing epithet is "teuchter," with connotations of crudity, backwardness, and a bumpkin simplicity, among other things); their fisherfolk identity was not apparent outside the local setting. The nature of the fisherfolk stigma—in the sense of a disqualification from full social acceptance (Goffman 1963:preface)—is neither a physical blemish nor a blemish of individual character, but what Goffman calls "the tribal stigma of [for example] race, nation, and religion, these being stigma [sic] that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family" (1963:4). A fisher was stigmatized because he was a fisher; his descendants are 10

An example of t h e latter is family n a m i n g traditions, preserved among t h e East Sutherland fisherfolk much as described in Walker (1974:138-43).

The East Sutherland Fishing 62

Communities

stigmatized, much more weakly, because they are "of the fisherfolk." This kind of stigma is inescapable. In the village life of eastern Sutherland there was in the days before World War I no real "passing," since every individual was likely to know every other individual. T h e only effective escape was emigration, and in fact t h e fisherfolk emigrated in great numbers. In a survey of ten representative families, I found that better than 50 percent of the children who lived to adulthood (thirty out of fifty-four) had left Sutherland, twenty-three for overseas and seven for other parts of Britain. In one case, seven out of eight children had emigrated; in two other cases, five out of seven and five out of eight surviving children had left Sutherland for English-speaking Britain or for overseas. For those who remained at home, the stigma led to segregation of a degree most often associated with highly visible racial features. T h e residential segregation of the fisherfolk was paralleled by a strict social separation, suspended in the schoolroom and in commercial encounters, but otherwise generally observed: At school, you could be friendly, if you were in the same class, . . . but, y see, they played their games in their own corner, and the rest played t h e m in their corner. Y' know? And I suppose if we would meet [playing] on the shore . . . — b u t , y' see, they—they had their big shore, and we had our shore. [Golspie monolingual, 1976] T h e social segregation of the children was not accidental, but watched over and enforced by the parents: I r e m e m b e r mothers saying, " W h e r e were you? What were you playing with that fisher for? . . . Can you not play with decent people?" [Golspie monolingual, 1978] In the most revealing interchange I recorded, an elderly Brora resident, a monolingual English speaker originally from outside Sutherland, spoke in 1978 of the gratifying social changes she had seen in her day, only to be reminded by a daughter, herself now a gray-haired woman, that this had not always been the mother's attitude: Brora monolingual 1: And at the present day they [sic] are no such thing as country people and fisher people. They are all one. And that's a very good thing, and I'm very pleased to say that I lived to see that day. Whereas when I was married very young and didn't know very much about country or fisher people, it annoyed me to see the differe n c e b e t w e e n the people. You would b e ashamed to be seen standing speaking to a fisher. Brora monolingual 2 [her daughter]: But yet, Mum, you wouldna let us stand and speak to them, either. And you wouldn't let us go down Lower Brora.

63

Even now, after the descendants of the fisherfolk have long since taken to other occupations (and despite the assertion of the elderly speaker quoted directly above), vestiges of the old segregation persist. Speaking of her own 1978 experience, a monolingual English-speaking Embo resident reports: They don't mix. The Domoch men don't mix well with the Embos," even in [name of workplace]. . . . They don't intermingle. . . . I mean, I've seen them, Embos sitting in groups, Embos sitting in groups, and then perhaps we have one or two who live in Dornoch and they're in another little group. In bygone years the issue was not whether the workers would mingle, but whether the fishers would get the job at all: See, they wouldn't look at a fisher girl in a shop, years ago. They wouldn't have one inside their door. They wouldn't get a job. See? . . . And the [other] girls would get office jobs, and—and shop jobs, but they never got one. [Golspie monolingual, 1978] Church was also the scene of strict s e g r e g a t i o n j l n 1976 I recorded a long interview with a Golspie monolingual who painted a picture of the most absolute social segregation between fishers and nonfishers. Yet it developed that her family had attended the Free Presbyterian church, which not only was the church attended by the majority of the fishers but was actually located in the heart of Golspie's "Fishertown." In the light of all she had told me, I asked whether her family had not minded attending the same church as the fishers. She rejected this idea emphatically. Only much later in the interview did it become clear that there were two separate services, one in Gaelic attended by all the fisherfolk, and one in English attended by the rest of the Free Church adherents. Though worshiping in the same church, the two groups never overlapped. In the Dornoch Free Church attended by virtually all of the Embo fisherfolk, such of the Dornoch villagers, incomers, or country people as still spoke Gaelic did attend the same service as the fisherfolk, but the seating was segregated: E m b o bilingual 1: The Domochs sat on the other side, far away. We sat there [gesture], and they were on the other side of the church. Isn't it funny! E m b o bilingual 2 [her husband]: Yeh, even in church they was segregated. E m b o bilingual 1: Yes, they were. Honest to God, they were. You'd never see them sitting beside us. [1978] 11

The use of a plural formed from a placename occurs widely in East Sutherland English, on the model of a similar Gaelic construction.

The East Sutherland 64

Fishing

Communities

Inevitably, the social segregation was accompanied by discrimination. The status "fisher" called forth exclusionary behaviors on the part of the nonfishers: thus the exclusion of fisher girls from certain jobs, instanced above. A Golspie monolingual tells an anecdote of the sudden interest of fisher boys in school when the local teacher was replaced by an incomer who was not affected by the local attitudes: Y' know, I remember a friend of ours, and she was teaching in the school, and . . . there was one class she took over. . . . She was relieving in the school. And there was a row [of fisher boys] at the back. And, oh, . . . there was hands up from the front rows, and there was never any response [from the back], so she thought, "Well, I'll have to bring them into the class." And she started, with the result, they got interested. In their lessons. They were left [out], previous—with the previous teacher. And she said that when they came round, for [volunteers for] the potato picking, the headmaster came in, expecting to see a show of hands from the back seat. Not a hand up. Y' see, she had taken an interest. She was an east coast Aberdeenshire woman, y see, not a local. [Golspie monolingual, 1976] Asked whether she thought that the fisher children of her own school days were treated differently from the rest in school, this woman replied, "Yes, I did. I did. . . . As much as to say, You'll leave school when you're fourteen. What's the good of concentrating on you?"' Fisherfolk were, of course, normally excluded as marriage partners, or even temporary romantic partners, by the rest of the population. Their endogamy was guaranteed by their social exclusion: It was just that kind of feeling that was among the children when they were in school. And it lived with them . . . from their parents. Their parents taught them, "Well, you mustn't go with a fisher." [Brora monolingual, 1978] Many people trace a gradual improvement in the status of the fisherfolk by the slow fading away of this prohibition on marriage between fishers and others. The first such intermarriages seem to have begun just after the first World War, at a time when fishing was losing its economic viability and fisherfolk in increasing numbers were entering into other jobs. Very likely the entire system of social segregation was beginning to weaken around that time, and the intermarriages heralded a new and less restrictive era for the fisherfolk. The children of these marriages are certainly far less stigmatized than their fisher parent, and they marry freely with any segment of the population. If it is not entirely forgotten that they are, in part, "of the fisherfolk," it is generally overlooked. Prejudices which we ourselves do not share are always unfathomable.

65

In the erroneous belief that there must have been some compelling and statable reason for the bias against the fisherfolk, I spent many hours, over a six-year period, trying to elicit such a reason. I succeeded in gathering a formidable array of complaints about the fisherfolk: they spoke Gaelic, they didn't speak decent English, they sold from door to door, they were pitifully poor, they were inadequately clad, they had a fishy smell about them from their association with fish, the fisher men (as opposed to the women) were lazy, they were often improvident, they had huge families, they often missed school, they purchased staples in ridiculously small quantities, they didn't always pay what they owed, they were superstitious, some of them weren't very clean, and some of them were verminous. Even as they spoke, however, most English monolinguals mentioned that a great many of these things were also true of other individuals or groups against whom there was no prejudice, or that the trait was not typical of very many of the fisherfolk. In short, as in many another case of prejudice, the source of the feeling against the stigmatized group does not lie in some genuinely objectionable behavior or trait of that group. It adheres to the status itself: to be a fisher is undesirable, quite without regard to how the individual conducts his life within that status. Behaviors which display the fact that the the actor is a member of the stigmatized group come to be avoided under these circumstances. Even in intimate settings like the East Sutherland villages, avoidance of overtly "fisher" behavior is an adaptive strategy because of the increasing proportion of outsiders who have come to the area (10 percent of the population of Sutherland was bom outside the county in 1911; 20 percent by 1920 [Campbell 1920:37, 107]; 40 percent in 1961);12 these incomers, most of whom come to the more populous east coast, are unable initially to distinguish fishers and nonfishers without some selfidentifying behavior on the part of the former, and they can be at least partially won over before their indoctrination into the local social system is complete. The presence of a large body of incomers was more than once mentioned as a factor in the gradual passing of the exclusion of the fisherfolk from full social acceptance in East Sutherland; for example, an Embo monolingual observes: "I believe in the old days . . . it was O h , the Embo fishers! But it's getting less and less, as more people [from outside] come into Dornoch (1978)." As the fishing declined and the number of active fishermen with it, so that fisher children were numerically in the minority and were for the most part destined for some other livelihood, residual behaviors which connected the young people with the fisherfolk were painful to them: I remember, I used to feel so-o-o ashamed, of having to go and sell fish to my classmates, y' know, to their homes. . . . The only day I liked in the week was Sunday and Monday. Because the boats didn't go out. 12

The 1961 figure is courtesy of the General Register Office for Scotland.

The East Sutherland

66

Fishing

Communities

. . . And therefore there was no herring came on a Monday. [Brora bilingual, 1974] Since Gaelic had b e c o m e one of the behaviors which allowed the labeling of individuals as fishers, there was a tendency to abandon Gaelic along with o t h e r "fisher" behaviors. As the same woman said: "I think, myself, as the children from Lower Brora got older, they . . . were ashamed to speak the Gaelic, in case they would b e classed as a—a fisher" (1974). T h e existence of fishing communities with a strong economic base and a remarkable degree of social separateness from t h e rest of t h e population was crucial in fostering Gaelic and maintaining the language long after it had died out otherwise in the villages and had begun to die even in the isolated crofting areas. In the most urbanized settings of the county, t h e centers w h e r e English p e n e t r a t e d relatively early and from which English spread into t h e surrounding countryside, Gaelic flourished among this single e t h n i c group and b e c a m e one of the hallmarks of their identity. That identity was stigmatized, however, and Gaelic—itself a stigmatized and stigmatizing language in t h e national setting—gained no lasting strength from the connection. T h e very exclusiveness of the association with the fisherfolk who had preserved it worked against the survival of the language in the long run. As one student of ethnicity has pointed out: To be "eligible" for incorporation [merger into another group which maintains its identity], the group to be merged . . . will probably be required to demonstrate its acceptability by modifying its behavior in advance so as increasingly to assume the modal attributes of m e m b e r s of t h e incorporating group. [Horowitz 1975:124] Among the modifications of behavior required of the East Sutherland fisherfolk was t h e a b a n d o n m e n t of their distinctive m o t h e r tongue in favor of t h e English used exclusively and universally among the dominant group. It will perhaps put the stigmatization of the East Sutherland fisherfolk in broader perspective to note that fisherfolk in many parts of the world are reported to b e of low status in their wider communities. In a single volume devoted to maritime populations, fisherfolk in areas as widely separated as India, Southeast Asia, and Africa are identified, respectively, as "low caste," "denigrated if not despised," and "backward" (Smith 1977: 104, 8, 79). I have been told by a teacher in a coastal Maine school that lobstermen and their families are generally looked down on in h e r area. Perhaps the common denominator in such cases is relative economic backwardness. No segment of t h e population in East Sutherland would deny that t h e fisherfolk played a valuable role in the local economy. Fisherfolk not only procured a basic, low-cost food, but prepared it (by gutting and smoking t h e fish) and marketed it (by selling from door to door). Fishers and non-fishers alike pro-

67

fess mystification as to why this s p h e r e of activity should be despised. T h e r e is even a routine form given locally to p u z z l e m e n t over the mystery: the fact that t h e first two disciples called by Jesus o f Nazareth w e r e fishers is invoked by both fishers and non-fishers, as a legitimation of fishing as an occupation:

D u n n o w h e r e t h e smear c a m e , at all. And that's where Jesus went, among t h e fishers o f m e n . Wasn't it? [ B r o r a monolingual, 1978] T h e y took t h e fish, and t h e y ate it, and it was . . . money w e w e r e getting honestly. B u t it [animosity] was definitely there. . . . And we used to say to t h e m , "It's t h e fishers that followed Jesus first." Y' know? W e always used to c o m e back with this one. [ B r o r a bilingual, 1974] T h e situation is irrational: an economically and dietetically important activity is n o n e t h e l e s s poorly e s t e e m e d . In t h e case o f t h e fisherfolk of East Sutherland, it may be that t h e origins o f the stigma are to b e found in t h e i r beginnings as C l e a r a n c e refugees of the most e x t r e m e poverty, while its c o n t i n u a n c e is to b e explained by the fact that they n e v e r wholly s u c c e e d e d (so long as t h e y fished for a living) in breaking out o f t h e i r position as t h e poorest s e g m e n t o f t h e population. O n c e established, of course, a severely stigmatized position p e r p e t u a t e s itself readily. It has s o m e of t h e force of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since m e m b e r s o f the stigmatized group do not have easy access to o t h e r occupational or social roles.

Summary and

Conclusions

T h e fisherfolk o f t h e eastern S u t h e r l a n d coast can profitably b e viewed in t e r m s o f ecological n i c h e theory. At t h e b e g i n n i n g of the nineteenth century, with t h e expansion o f s h e e p farming into t h e Highlands, land b e c a m e an even scarcer r e s o u r c e than it had b e e n in t h e e i g h t e e n t h century. In the competition for land, t h e smallholding tenants of the great estates w e r e the losers; 13 t h e y w e r e d e p r i v e d o f all but t h e most undesirable lands, and even these w e r e apportioned in lots o f a size to p r e c l u d e their use as an a d e q u a t e income-generating r e s o u r c e . At t h e same t i m e a c o n c e r t e d effort was m a d e to move the landless into an econ o m i c n i c h e which was virtually unoccupied:

fishing.

Fish were viewed by t h e

S u t h e r l a n d E s t a t e planners as an i n c o m e - g e n e r a t i n g resource of the highest potential; t h e c h a l l e n g e t h e planners faced was to induce a reluctant population to view this n i c h e as they did, that is, as a satisfactory substitute for a niche which was no longer available. S u c h an analysis r e p r e s e n t s a rather strict application of the ecological n i c h e theory, in accord with t h e formulations of T h o m a s 13

Love

The small tenants did, insofar as they were able, make some effort to resist the Clearances—that is, to "compete" for the land (Richards 1973b).

The East Sutherland Fishing Communities 68

(1977); in this view "competition is perhaps the fundamental process underlying the structure and functioning of ecological communities" (1977:33), as in the original biological model. Both the outcome of the unequal competition for land and the move into a new economic niche were controlled by the Sutherland Estate. The Estate determined that smallholding leases were not to be renewed, and prepared the reception areas for the dispossessed. Without the almost inexhaustible fortune of the Stafford family, the fisheries could not have come into existence, and the niche would have remained vacant. Local curing stations and fishing settlements had to be created where none had existed before, adequate harborage had to be provided, and access to markets had to be made possible by improved shipping and new roads. It is ironic under these circumstances that Loch excoriated the people of eastern Sutherland for "never [having] thought of putting out a boat, to avail themselves of the gifts which nature had so bountifully placed immediately within their reach" (Loch 1820:134). Far more than simply "putting out a boat" was required, as the Estate's ledgers soon showed. The enormous wealth of the Staffords gave them the power, in the nineteenth-century British world, to effect changes on a major scale. In Sutherland they single-handedly created a large occupational group, the fisherfolk (and, of course, simultaneously a smaller but infinitely more powerful one: the sheep farmers). The people who filled the fisher occupational status prepared for them by the Estate had no natural "fit" with that status: they had not developed it gradually, by an expansion or extension of prior economic activities, and they had neither desire nor special aptitude for it. It was the Estate planners who perceived an unfilled economic niche and set about filling it. Given no option, the new fishers developed the requisite expertise for exploiting the only niche made available to them. They became skillful harvesters of the sea and economic specialists in exactly the way the Estate had envisioned. 14 On the local level they were both providers and purveyors, on a year-round basis, of an important lowcost item in the diet; on the national level they were cogs in the wheel of the seasonal herring-fishing industry. The nineteenth century was a period of sudden change in eastern Sutherland, most of it promoted by the House of Sutherland. Aside from the creation of the fishing communities, requiring a vast outlay of capital, the Stafford family greatly modernized the coal mines and developed a brewery, salt works, and 14

This did not happen as smoothly and steadily as the Estate had expected, however. There were fishing failures in the 1820s, in 1836-37, and in 1839, for example (Richards 1973a:223, 246. 250), and in 1841 Loch admitted that he and his advisers had seriously miscalculated the fisheries: they had misunderstood the 'migratory habits of the fish", and had overestimated the demand for fish. They had especially failed to predict the consequences of the abolition of slavery upon the West Indian market for fish. [Richards 1973a:255]

69

brick and tile works at Brora (Richards 1973a:226); but more importantly for the region as a whole, the Estate played a major role in the opening of the county: Another major pillar of the improvement policy was communications. Cheaper transport, wider markets and the easier penetration of new influences were central elements in Loch's thinking. In the early nineteenth century land-owners with substantial government aid made large efforts to push roads into and through the Highlands. The House of Sutherland built many miles of roads without parliamentary assistance. Loch told [the Earl of] Shaftesbury that the Stafford family had spent £79,414 on roads between 1811 and 1843. This added greatly to other capital expenditure on harbours, the promotion of shipping and postal services, sheep-drains, great reclamation schemes and building construction. [Richards 1973a.229] One of the things that Sutherland was opened to was the total national commitment to the English language and culture, the unquestioned conviction that English was, and rightfully so, the only language which counted. There had been very few English monolinguals in eastern Sutherland previously; locked away in an inaccessible corner of Scotland, the people of Sutherland had maintained their Gaelic language and culture as a matter of course. During the Clearance period all this changed. As of the beginning of the nineteenth century, the wider British society began to impinge sharply on Gaelic eastern Sutherland. The most notable embodiment of this was the rising power of the sheep farmers, wealthy men, monolingual in English and without sympathy or understanding for the indigenous Celtic culture. "Divided Scotland" came to be mirrored by a "divided" eastern Sutherland, where a native Celtic population was looked down upon by a now rather substantial dominant class representing a different culture. The newly improved communications system, the newly available education, the newly arrived, affluent English monoglots—all these things brought about so sudden a linguistic tip in favor of English that extinction was predicted in the near future for a language secure enough to evoke no comment at all only forty-one years earlier. The tip was sudden only in the East Sutherland context, however, and not in the national context, where the forces and attitudes which led to the tip had long been felt. When this linguistic tip occurred, however, it did not take place evenly throughout the population. The crofters constituted one laggard group and the fishers another; of the two, the fishers will be the more resistant, holding out against the linguistic changeover for at least a half-century. In both cases, crofters and fishers, the linguistic lag owes a great deal to a social separateness originally associated with a distinctive occupation. And in the case of the fishers (but not the crofters) the social separateness was accompanied by a severe social stigma which reinforced it powerfully. The source of the stigma is obscure, though, as noted above, stigmatization seems to be a common fate among fisher populations. The East Sutherland 70

Fishing

Communities

In any case the stigma was sufficiently strong to show castelike features: membership in the group was automatic by birth, and up to World War I mobility out of the group was possible only through emigration. Accordingly, endogamy was a necessity. As with the castes of India, the group was associated with a particular occupation. One need only compare a description of Indian castes (e.g., Lewis 1976:190-94) to note certain similarities, 15 although it need hardly be said that the stigmatization was not so extreme as that of the lower Indian castes. And, of course, the society of eastern Sutherland was not characterized by a caste system, despite the fact that the highest social group (the hereditary aristocracy) and the two lowest groups (the fishers and the tinkers) were essentially "closed" rather than "open" groups in terms of membership and mobility. Perhaps the best example of the role of such a social separateness in maintaining a distinctive language is provided by the Old Order Amish and Mennonites in the United States. In a study of the education of Amish children, Hostetler and Huntington quote from an Amish man's assessment of German and English in Amish life, written for a publication called Blackboard Bulletin in 1969: As Old Order Amish, we associate German with church services and our home life—the religious and deeply moral part of our lives. German in a sense represents all that we have for centuries been trying to hold— our heritage as a nonconformed people, pilgrims in an alien land. It represents the old, the tried, and proven, the sacred way. The English language, by contrast, we associate with the business world, society, worldliness. English in a sense represents everything outside our church and community, the forces that have become dangerous because they make inroads into our churches and lure people from the faith. Therefore, the English language, though acknowledged all right in its place, becomes suspect when associated with the lure of the world. [Hostetler and Huntington 1971:48] This viewpoint has resulted in the successful maintenance of a distinctive language ("Pennsylvania Dutch") for over two hundred years in a country where many immigrant groups have given up their native languages within two or three generations. There is no weakening of Pennsylvania Dutch today among these religious separatists (Anderson and Martin 1976; Huffines forthcoming), although the years since World War I have seen the rapid weakening of the Pennsylvania Dutch mother tongue among the nonseparatist ethnic Germans of Pennsylvania (Seifert 1971:42; Huffines forthcoming; Dorian 1978e). By staying inside their communities except for necessary commercial contacts, the Old Order Amish and

" I follow Berreman (1960- 61) in believing that although the Indian caste system has notable unique features, castelike phenomena can appropriately be recognized in other social systems.

71

Mennonites have managed to maintain their own culture and its language. An Embo bilingual, asked to explain why Gaelic was dying out in the village in the 1970s when it had been vigorous there fifty years before, gave an explanation in terms that reflect a similar pattern for the fisherfolk: The work was all in the village, then. They didn't have to go out of the village to do—it might be—the sort of livelihood that was in it. But the living was in the village, poor as it was; the living was in the village. They didn't have to go outside the village. But then, the fishing went, the people went. The ones that were left, there was nothing for them here. They had to go laboring, to the Forestry, to the sailing [with the merchant navy]. They had to be speaking English. There you have what I think was in it. The living was in the village, then. . . . That was keeping them together. [1974; translated from the Gaelic] Although the Amish wish to hold the world at bay, whereas the fisherfolk made no such conscious decision, the effect of the social separateness was much the same. So long as the people lived, worked, and married among themselves, maintenance of their own home language followed. For the fisherfolk, the collapse of the economic base of their community life led inexorably to a gradual integration with the rest of the community, linguistically as well as economically. That this was a relatively happy resolution can be seen by comparing the East Sutherland fisherfolk with other marginal and stigmatized economic groups who did not succeed in integrating with the larger community when the basis of their livelihood disappeared (Macmillan and Leighton 1952). One can regret, and bitterly, the loss of this unique local dialect of Gaelic. To anyone who cherishes the singular riches of the Celtic cultural heritage preserved in the Gaelic language, it must seem a pity, and an unnecessary and wasteful loss, that Britain has not known how to accommodate its cultural minorities. But given the social, economic, and linguistic climate of eastern Sutherland in the early decades of the twentieth century, it is surely fortunate that after the collapse of the east coast fisheries it proved possible for the fisherfolk to merge into the general population as they did. For a stigmatized group, the alternatives are likely to be even worse than loss of identity and language. It is sometimes supposed that physical isolation is required for groups to maintain a separate language or dialect (cf. Fishman 1971:315), and that rural populations hidden away in mountain valleys are consequently most likely to swim against the linguistic tide. But social separateness can provide a kind of isolation which is perfectly capable of maintaining distinctive speech forms—the more so when a socially separate group is also stigmatized. For example, close investigation of a North Indian village where intercaste contacts were frequent revealed no fewer than six linguistic groups or subgroups, established on the basis of phonological features. Although occupational and commercial intercaste contacts ran throughout the village, informal friendship contacts appeared to be an

The East Sutherland Fishing 72

Communities

important limiting factor in the sharing of linguistic features. These informal friendship contacts were restricted, and they aligned themselves much as linguistic groups or subgroups aligned themselves (Gumperz 1958). Similarly, except in Embo, the East Sutherland fisherfolk lived at no great distance from the rest of the population. This was especially true in Golspie, where the "West End" merged imperceptibly with the "East End" of the village; yet the Golspie fisherfolk were no less able to maintain their Gaelic than the Lower Brora fisherfolk, who were physically separated from the upper village by a short but steep hill. Through the door-to-door salesmanship of the fisher women, as well as through schooling for the children and the regular shopping of the family, there was constant contact with the larger community. But as in the North Indian village studied by Gumperz, friendships before World War I were essentially an intragroup matter, not an intergroup one; so, of course, were marriages. This is to make again the point so trenchantly made by Fredrik Barth: Ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of social interaction and acceptance, but are quite to the contrary often the very foundations on which embracing social systems are built. . . . Cultural differences can persist despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence. [1969:10] Physical isolation kept eastern Sutherland Gaelic up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. From early in that century until early in the following century, social isolation kept the fisherfolk Gaelic—a separate social network of friendship and marriage that did not preclude frequent contact in more public domains. Social separateness can be as effective as physical separateness in promoting language maintenance, and each in turn played a role in the survival of Gaelic in East Sutherland.

73

3 East Sutherland Perspective

in

Sociolinguistic

EEESEEl^

Language

Allocation

W h e r e t w o or m o r e l a n g u a g e s o r d i a l e c t s c o m e i n t o c o n t a c t , it often h a p p e n s that e a c h o f t h e l a n g u a g e v a r i e t i e s in u s e b e c o m e s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h c e r t a i n s p h e r e s o f a c t i v i t y a l m o s t to t h e e x c l u s i o n o f t h e o t h e r v a r i e t y or v a r i e t i e s . T h i s m a y h a p p e n in t h e life o f t h e individual b i l i n g u a l , o r it m a y h a p p e n

throughout

t h e s o c i e t y . In t h e f o r m e r c a s e , o n e m i g h t find a p h y s i c i s t w h o u s e d o n l y E n g l i s h or R u s s i a n to d i s c u s s his p r o f e s s i o n a l a c t i v i t i e s a n d f i n d i n g s , b u t s o m e o t h e r lang u a g e , a n d n e v e r E n g l i s h o r R u s s i a n , in i n t e r a c t i n g w i t h his wife a n d c h i l d r e n at h o m e . In t h e l a t t e r c a s e , an e n t i r e c o m m u n i t y m a y h a v e a tacit a g r e e m e n t that o n e o f t h e i r s p e e c h f o r m s will b e e x c l u d e d from a c e r t a i n s p h e r e o f activity. An e x a m p l e of this c o m e s from G e r m a n Switzerland, w h e r e a young singer ventures to d e p a r t f r o m t h e s o c i e t a l c o n v e n t i o n w h i c h e x c l u d e s S w i s s G e r m a n d i a l e c t from s i n g i n g , e x c e p t f o r a few· a r c h a i c folk t u n e s . O n t h e j a c k e t o f his r e c o r d h e w r i t e s : S i n g e n ist . . . n o c h . . . [ p r o b l e m a t i s c h e r ] , w e n n e s in d e r u r e i g e n e n Muttersprache,

also

in

Mundart,

geschehen

soll.

. . .

Eigentlich

m e r k w ü r d i g : W a r u m s o l l t e n in d e r S p r a c h e , d i e w i r t ä g l i c h b r a u c h e n , in d e r w i r s o g a r ( h i e u n d da) d e n k e n , n i c h t a u c h L i e d e r m ö g l i c h s e i n ? A k t u e l l e L i e d e r , d i e sich m i t D i n g e n b e s c h ä f t i g e n , d i e u n s h e u t e b e wegen?1

1

Dieter Wiesmann, Momoll,

East Sutherland 74

Phonag Records P1001.

in Sociolinguistic

Perspective

In acknowledgment of this process of linguistic compartmentalization, domains' of language use are recognized. Just how many domains exist, and what they are, must be established for any given speech community. Where a single domain "religion' might be adequate for one speech community, for example, another might use two different speech forms in connection with religion, one in the liturgical context and another in the catechetical context. Still another speech community might have a very much wider sphere of activity subsumed under the rubric "religion" than we are accustomed to; all dramatic productions, all parades and processions, and all healing activities might fall into the single general domain "religion, along with worship serv ices and some sort of catechetical activity. In the early years of the twentieth century, the domains which were significant for the East Sutherland fisherfolk, in terms of distinct language choices correlated with distinct spheres of activity, were home, work, religion, recreation. national secular institutions (including school for the children and political parties, the military, the police, and the courts for adults), local public life, and the medium of print. Gaelic was strongly associated with the first three domains; English with the last three. In some cases the compartmentalization was complete: English had no place at all in the home 1 or in religion, and Caelic no place at all in the sphere of national secular institutions. In other cases the compartmentalization was partial. For the men, the work sphere was wholly Caelic during the white-fishing seasons at home, and largely but not wholly Gaelic during the herring-fishing season (there was contact with wider markets and with middlemen in the vast herring-fishing industry which required that a fisherman use English). For the women, the work sphere was always tripartite linguistically: that part of the work which was performed among other local fisherfolk (for example, gathering bait, baiting the lines, smoking fish) called for Gaelic only; that part which required individual movement away from the local fishing community (selling the fish) called for English only, or predominantly; that part which required group movement away from the local fishing community ("going to the herring" as gutters and packers! called for both Gaelic and English, since the women traveled and lived in local Gaelic-speaking units (crews of two gutters and a packer) but worked alongside Gaelic and English speakers from many parts of Scotland.

2

See Fishman 1972b:247-49 for a brief account of the history of the concept.

1

The following is a dialogue in which I evoked only impatience when I questioned the total sway of Caelic in one bilingual's family in view of the fact that so many of his siblings had already attended the English-language school: Investigator: Oh, you were one of the youngest children. Golspie bilingual: Yes, one of the youngest. Investigator: So among your brothers and sisters what language did you speak? Golspie bilingual: All Gaelic. What language did you think we would speak?

75

In the case of the work domain, setting interacts with domain to constrain language choice. Insofar as work was performed in a setting where other members of the local fishing community predominated, it called for ESG speech. Other settings called for English or for code switching according to interlocutor. Leisure activity was a domain similarly sensitive to setting. Among adults, any leisure activity which took place within a "fishertown" called for Gaelic, but only two leisure events outside the "fishertowns" did so. The two were ceilidhs, evening entertainments largely musical in character, where Gaelic singing was not only permitted but encouraged and Gaelic was frequently spoken by the master of ceremonies; and provincial mods, regional competitions in Gaelic singing and recitation sponsored by a national organization which fostered Gaelic. Among children, play activities within the bounds of the "fishertowns" were likewise usually in Gaelic (though English rhymes and sayings were often woven into the games); on the school playground they might or might not be, according to the latitude allowed the children by the teachers in charge. Yet another factor, beyond domain and setting, operated to select, or restrict, the language to be used: the interlocutor. A fisher speaking to another fisher, most especially someone older than him- or herself, would feel constrained to speak Gaelic. Within families dyadic constraints were often apparent along generational lines. A grandparent might expect, and insist upon, Gaelic from a grandchild: Investigator: Would you say, when you were living with your granny, that you were quite a good speaker then? Brora semi-speaker: 1 Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, she—she wouldn't let me off with anything that wasn't right. Y' know? She corrected me all the time. Because they couldn't speak the English, at all. It's—it's Gaelic all the time. Y' know? Investigator: So you had to answer in Gaelic. Brora semi-speaker: Yes. Yes. [1976] In many families after World War I, the parents spoke Gaelic to each other and to their own parents and siblings, but spoke English to their children and expected English in return. (See the section on language loyalty below for a discussion of this development.) Within the ranks of current fluent speakers, many report that their choice of language, or that of someone else whom they have observed, is strongly governed by the interlocutor: Investigator: Well, lots of the children spoke English after they'd gone to school. Golspie bilingual: Of course they did. But we spoke Gaelic at home. Always. Without a break. At the time that I was going to school we never spoke English at all, at home. All Gaelic. [1972] 4

See page 107 below for a definition of

semi-speaker.

East Sutherland 76

Perspective

in Sociolinguistic

. . . it's always Gaelic. E v e r y b o d y would b e looking: "What's that fellow saying?" But C a n d myself, that's a n o t h e r fellow, I can't speak to C in English. But j u s t — I can't do it. [ E m b o bilingual, 1974; translated from his Gaelic] Well, look at t h e like of Τ ing away, as I said, to Μ

Ν

now. H e could b e speak-

[his wife] in English, and w h e n e v e r he

turns r o u n d to me, say, . . . h e just starts speaking Gaelic. [ E m b o bilingual, 1972] It is evident in the first of these two E m b o quotations that t h e interlocutor factor has outweighed t h e setting factor: the context was r e p e a t e d business t e l e p h o n e calls to a fellow Gaelic speaker, m a d e in the English-language setting in which the bilingual works. Although his monolingual colleagues stare, he finds it impossible to use English in speaking to this interlocutor, an older man whose m o t h e r came from t h e same village as the speaker who is q u o t e d . This bilinguals practice of making t e l e p h o n e calls in Gaelic w h e n t h e recipient is an interlocutor who habitually evokes Gaelic speech from him highlights the final major factor in language choice for East Sutherland bilinguals: function. T h e bilinguals characteristically reserve one or t h e other language for certain specific functions, and this man is unusual in regarding telephoning as a legitimate function for Gaelic. 5 Below is an English translation of a 1974 dialogue in which a n o t h e r E m b o Gaelic speaker tells of his bilingual wife's helpless reaction to a Gaelic p h o n e call from this man: E m b o bilingual 1: That's what I'm saying, w h e n you p h o n e d — w h e n you p h o n e d from t h e Dornoch school that time, do you r e m e m b e r ? It's my lass h e r e w h o went to t h e phone, b u t she said, "I don't know what that fellow is saying!" You w e r e speaking t h e Gaelic, d o you remember? E m b o bilingual 2: Yes, I r e m e m b e r that. That was w h e n t h e minister died. E m b o bilingual 1: She sent m e to t h e phone: "What w e r e you saying?' Do you see, [it's] comical, right enough, somebody speaking t h e Gaelic on t h e p h o n e . Some functions are either r e s e r v e d to Gaelic or at least p r e f e r r e d in Gaelic. An instance of the f o r m e r is t h e joint shopping trip, w h e r e prospective purchases are always, among bilinguals, discussed in Gaelic, for t h e obvious reason that j u d g 5

Telephoning could also be considered a question of channel (Hymes 1974:10). For ESG a concept of function is probably more useful than one of channel, however, Riven the very narrow range of channel differentiation in a community where Gaelic is never used for writing and seldom for reading; whereas a concept of function can be proposed to cover a variety of uses of Gaelic, as in the situations described here.

77

ments can be rendered and decisions made in linguistic privacy (all the shopkeepers being English monolinguals). An instance of the latter is the telling of jokes: But as I said to you before, if you were speaking Gaelic—well, vou would enjoy it better. If there was other ones in company that understood it. Because you could say something that would make the company laugh. Because, you know, it's got that much about it, that if you were telling a joke, you'd enjoy it far better than telling it in English. [Brora bilingual, 1972] Here it is evident that there is a solidarity function to the use of Gaelic, too: Gaelic serves as a social bond among the people who use it mutually. 6 The interaction of all these factors can be complex. It is not always the case that only a single function is represented at one time, for example; and it may be that the setting "requires" one language choice while the interlocutor "requires" another. Bilingual members of the fishing communities sometimes feel caught in a linguistic double bind, where any linguistic choice they may make is wrong from someone's point of view. The bilingual quoted below was in an English-language setting, in conversation with an interlocutor who demanded Gaelic from her. The setting impinged strongly on her conversation in the person of an eavesdropper who represented the monolingual English-speaking community. She needed to express solidarity with her conversation partner, but she was keenly aware that in this English-language setting her Gaelic conversation would be negatively valued: Brora bilingual: If you didn't understand it, and us two are talking the Gaelic, you would stand with your mouth open and you would say, "What on earth are they talking about? . . . That's just pure ignorance." Now I'll just give you an instance. This morning I was in the Co-op shop, and this man, he's very, very deaf, . . . and he was speaking to me in Gaelic [about the lack of a minister at the church]. Well, the manager 6

Speakers of Pennsylvania D u t c h also claim a special h u m o r o u s property for their language: You can say t h e thing in Pennsylvania G e r m a n , you could say it in English, to b e funny; in Pennsylvania G e r m a n it's ten times funnier, saying t h e same thing, than it is in English. [Berks C o u n t y bilingual, 1976] Although this h u m o r o u s character is greatly valued and serves a strong social b o n d i n g purpose, among the Pennsylvania D u t c h as a m o n g East Sutherlanders, it is notable that claims for any special expressiveness, or for a special effectiveness in sincerity, credibility, and t h e like, are m u c h less often made. Weinreich (1964:95) noted that "obsolescent languages . . . easily develop comic associations." Michael Silverstein suggests (personal communication) that ethnic h u m o r in the obsolescent language becomes, in ghettoized situations, t h e equivalent of, or r e p l a c e m e n t for, h u m o r at t h e expense of ethnics.

East Sutherland 78

in Sociolinguistic

Perspective

was standing listening. And I said to him [the deaf man], "Look here," I said, "don't be speaking like that," I said, "that man doesn't understand you." And he said, "Och," he says, "de an diubhar? ['What difference (does that make)?']" . . . And I said to the manager, "Och," I said, "we just have a chat of our own." "Och," he says, "you can go on with it." Investigator. So he didn't mind? Brora bilingual: He didn't mind, but, you know, I felt it. 'Cause that man was standing, and he would have been thinking to himself, "Well, what's the [indecipherable word] gabaraid ['gibberish'] is this they've got?" So there's where you've got to be very careful. [1972]

The topic about which the bilinguals were speaking was one which might encourage the use of Gaelic, since throughout all their early lives religion was reserved to Gaelic (although no Gaelic is currently used at their church). But, much more importantly, they were both "of the fisherfolk," and the interlocutor factor as well as the social solidarity function inclined them to use Gaelic. Nonetheless, the setting was one associated with English, and the uninvited participant in their conversation was an audience who required English. One bilingual felt constrained to switch codes, but not the other. The former deferred to the latter, but not without the stress which is so often associated with a no-win situation. An interlocutor constraint almost universally obeyed in East Sutherland is that any number of Gaelic-English bilinguals will defer linguistically to even a single English monolingual who joins them by switching to his code. In the days of strict social segregation this constraint—if indeed it operated then—would have come into play relatively seldom. But in more recent years, with Gaelic speakers interacting increasingly with English monolinguals, the effect of this interlocutor deference to monolinguals has been very noticeable. As the population of Gaelic speakers has shrunk proportionately, and as the bilinguals' own family networks have come to include English monolinguals, the amount of Gaelic spoken by the remaining bilinguals has been curtailed sharply by their conscientious observance of this interlocutor etiquette. There is some discussion of the habit among the bilinguals themselves. They are rather puzzled, and occasionally resentful, that they feel constrained to shift to English even in interactions where they are in the majority, but they point to the English monolingual's suspicious attitude toward any conversation he cannot understand:

If we were talking the Gaelic, of course, they would wonder what we were speaking about. They would think that we were speaking about themselves. [Brora bilingual, 1972]

Where a monolingual who objected to Gaelic was not defined as an interlocutor, however, the bilingual group might resist pressure to switch:

79

A very funny incident happened to me in the Sutherland Arms Hotel bar one night. There's a crowd of us there, and we all spoke Gaelic, and this fellow came across and says, "Stop that—speaking that foreign language. It's not—you know it's not mannerly to speak a language where people can't understand you." This is a Gaelic area," I told him. "And the native language of this place is Gaelic. That's your misfortune you don't understand it. That we're speaking our native language. It's you who's out of order, not us," I told him. That sent him back to where he was. . . . [Golspie bilingual, 1972] The man who told this story was something of an exception on the local scene, a strong-minded Gaelic loyalist who also knew rather more about Gaelic culture and history than do most speakers of ESG. It is doubtful that many East Sutherland bilinguals would have taken so defiant a stand; but most would probably have agreed that a group of bilinguals among themselves, even in a public setting, had no need to yield to a monolingual's pressure for English. Interesting in the East Sutherland context is the weakness of the topic factor in code choice. Some topics weakly favor the use of Gaelic, notably technical subjects connected with fisherfolk life (the preparing of certain foods, the making of certain fishing gear); but certainly these subjects are also discussed in English with resort to Gaelic loanwords. No topic requires English, no matter how remote from East Sutherland life or how "modem" and technological. East Sutherland Gaelic speakers today are a far cry from the linguistic purists whose unadulterated Gaelic was praised by Gunn in 1897 (see p. 59 above). Rather they resort freely to English loanwords, but then adapt them radically to Gaelic morphology, morphophonology, and phonology. Any topic can thus be tackled "in Gaelic," though the Gaelic may contain a great many modified English lexical items.7 Men in particular range widely in their Gaelic conversations, discussing national politics and international affairs as freely as local events. ESG and the Schools The schools' policies toward Gaelic were one of the social factors discussed in chapter 1, and it seems desirable to include some discussion of the school domain in the present chapter by way of bringing that subject into a more particular, local focus. In terms of language choice the situation was a simple one during the childhood of most surviving bilinguals: Gaelic had no place in the school domain. Embo bilingual 1: Well, it's a case, you didn't want to go to school. Y' see, you went with a grudge to school. Because, I mean, what was 7

See below in this chapter for a fuller discussion of this subject under "Code Switching and Interference."

East Sutherland in Sociolinguistic

80

Perspective

t h e u s e ? You w e n t to school a n d you w e r e j u s t sitting t h e r e , a n d you c o u l d — w e l l , you c o u l d n ' t b e taught

a n y t h i n g until you l e a r n t E n g l i s h .

. . . T h e y b r o u g h t in t h e E n g l i s h t e a c h e r s to Gaelic pupils. So t h e r e you were. . . . E m b o bilingual 2 [ h e r h u s b a n d ] : You w e r e n ' t allowed t o talk—talk Gaelic in t h e classroom. [1976] I n v e s t i g a t o r : You said w h e n you w e n t to school you d i d n ' t speak any English. G o l s p i e bilingual: No, not a w o r d of English. I n v e s t i g a t o r : And t h e t e a c h e r d i d n ' t c a r e for t h a t ? G o l s p i e bilingual: Well, s h e d i d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d it. And s h e s h o u t e d at all of us fellows that spoke n o t h i n g b u t t h e Gaelic, "Stop that g i b b e r ish!" [1972] Brora bilingual: You see, you w e r e n ' t e n c o u r a g e d to speak it in t h e school, at all. You know, vou w e r e n ' t . T h e y w e r e — t h e y w e r e d o w n on you, y' know. S h e u s e d to call it a " h e a t h e n i s h language," y' know, t h e t e a c h e r . [1974]" An i n a p p r o p r i a t e l a n g u a g e choice in t h e school d o m a i n e x p o s e d t h e Gaelic-dominant or G a e l i c - m o n o l i n g u a l school b e g i n n e r to not o n e b u t two sources of

ridicule

or d i s a p p r o b a t i o n . T h e t e a c h e r and any E n g l i s h - s p e a k i n g classmates r e p r e s e n t e d o n e d i s a p p r o v i n g a u d i e n c e ; t h e adults and o l d e r siblings at h o m e might r e p r e s e n t a n o t h e r . A p r e s e n t - d a y s e m i - s p e a k e r w h o was G a e l i c - d o m i n a n t w h e n s h e w e n t to school tried to explain s o m e t h i n g to t h e t e a c h e r in Gaelic on h e r first d a y at school. W h i l e in this case t h e t e a c h e r a p p a r e n t l y d i d not m a k e a fuss, t h e child's family

ridiculed h e r : I n v e s t i g a t o r : D i d you feel bad [ w h e n t h e t e a c h e r d i d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d you]? Brora bilingual: No. But I did at h o m e , b e c a u s e t h e y w e r e — a l l m y — m y cousins a n d my a u n t i e s w e r e laughing. At m e , y' know, for going to school, and t h e first day in school, a n d speaking Gaelic to t h e t e a c h e r . [1974]

An iron-clad sociolinguistic r u l e existed in t h e c o m m u n i t y half a c e n t u r y ago exc l u d i n g Gaelic f r o m t h e school d o m a i n , and this child had s o m e h o w arrived at school w i t h o u t assimilating it. I g n o r a n c e of sociolinguistic rules is e v e r y bit as d a m a g i n g to one's s t a n d i n g as ignorance of g r a m m a t i c a l rules, a n d t h e child paid for h e r i g n o r a n c e at h o m e although not, in this case, at school.

* The first two quotations are from speakers who were in their seventies at the time of the recording. The third speaker was more than a decade younger but had met the same hostility to Gaelic at school.

81

The most immediate effect of the schools' prohibition of Gaelic was to create an English-only domain within those physical bounds, but the exclusion of Gaelic in school spilled over into people's lives and behaviors in one or two other ways. The most direct was teacher interference in the home domain. Faced with monolingual Gaelic speakers in the infant class, a teacher might actually visit the home and attempt to change the parents' linguistic behavior with the child:' Golspie bilingual: The teacher said—she came along to my mother, and she . . . asked my mother, how many more was there to go to school. My mother said, "Five. There's still five of them." "Oh, well," she says, "teach them Gaelic if you want to, but please teach them English before they go to school. Because I've got to have them a year before I can start to teach them anything, by the time I get them taught to speak English." . . . Now that half, in our family, could hardly speak any Gaelic. . . . Y' know, they can . . . understand it, . . . but they could never carry on a conversation. . . . Investigator: So it spoilt them for Gaelic, really? Golspie bilingual: Yes, it spoilt them. Yes, it—it really did. In the case of a strictly local-currency language of low prestige, lacking any institutional support whatever, the home domain is clearly crucial to the continuity of the language. The teacher couched her request in terms of additive bilingualism (Lambert 1977:19), English as well as Gaelic, but the result was replacite bilingualism, English instead of Gaelic. This is not a surprising result considering the relative standing of the two languages and the strong official support for English in the wider community. A second way in which the schools' exclusion of Gaelic made itself felt outside the school domain as such was by transmitting what seemed to the Gaelicspeaking population a message about the relative worth of Gaelic and other languages. Not only was Gaelic outlawed as a communicative medium within the school buildings, but it was also—except for two separate periods in Embo— omitted from the curriculum, despite the presence in the school population of a substantial number of native speakers. Today the descendants of those native speakers occasionally try to secure a place for Gaelic in the curriculum, but without success: . . . We were in fifth year in [high] school, finished our "highers," and we went to the headmaster. And I remember this distinctly. And said, "Now, next year we have a clear year. We want to learn Gaelic." He said, "No." Blatantly, "No. We aren't—it is not on the curriculum, you are 9

Denison (1971.167) reports a similar invasion of the home domain by the teacher in northeastern Alpine Italy (Sauris), where the local German and Italian dialects are threatened. The teacher requested the use of standard Italian in the home

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not learning it." . . . I can remember there was four or five of us, off our own bat. . . . And we went to the headmaster, and [headmaster's name] said no. "No, you can use your time far more usefully." . . . You see, he doesn't speak it. [Monolingual student of fisherfolk descent, 1974] It should be noted that these students had already completed their curricular requirements in other subjects. They wished to add Gaelic, not to substitute it for other subjects. Even so they were refused. Part of the headmaster's reason for refusal was the supposed low utility of Gaelic ("you can use your time far more usefully"). Local Gaelic speakers read a clear message about the general societal evaluation of Gaelic in such attitudes on the part of school officials. A Brora bilingual explained to me that she and her agemates had taken very little interest in Gaelic and no pride in their bilingualism: Investigator: And yet there's people that learn—spend eight or ten years trying to leam French or German. Brora bilingual: Yes. And it's all right. Strange. Even in the school. And they say, "Oh, well, they're in for languages." But not the Gaelic. So that lets you see that it must be a dying language. . . . If you were married and had a family the day, you wouldn't bother with it. . . . I wouldn't bother with it. Because I would say to myself, "Well, what's the use? It's not a school—it's not taught in the school." [1072] School support for French and German is understood to mean that these languages, spoken hundreds of miles away, are worthy objects of time and effort. By the same token, the total lack of school support for Gaelic is understood to mean that that language, the native language of many local inhabitants during this woman's youth, is not worth any expenditure of time and effort. This woman, in fact, raised three children with minimal exposure to Gaelic; none of them speaks Gaelic today. In the last bilingual generation, when the fishing was fading and fisher children had become a small minority in the Brora and Golspie schools, the school experience was often a linguistic watershed for the bilingual children. Although they might enter school with greater skills in Gaelic than in English, the situation was soon reversed. A pattern of language use according to the generation of the interlocutor tended to appear; in this pattern the schoolchildren spoke Gaelic to their parents and grandparents, but not to each other or to siblings, at least outside the home: Investigator: Now when you spoke to the older generation, to your parents, or your auntie, or your grandparents, it was all Gaelic you would speak? Brora bilingual: Yes.

83

Investigator: What about among your cousins, and your brother, the children your own age? Brora bilingual: Not very much, no. After we went to school, it—it sort of—y' know, we—we didn't speak so much. Among ourselves at home, we did. . . . [1974] This woman does not today speak Gaelic to her only sibling, a brother a little older than she, although she does use some Gaelic with relatives one or two decades older. She is a semi-speaker in terms of active Gaelic proficiency, but a virtually perfect passive bilingual; and she shows the trace of her childhood Gaelic dominance in an exceptionally good Gaelic accent, with complete mastery of one particularly difficult non-English phoneme (a voiced velarized lateral) which is often missing among semi-speakers. The school as an institution in Scotland represents the wider society rather than the local community, and it is responsive first and foremost to national values and objectives. The legitimacy of this stance is scarcely questioned, and it seems generally to have been an elite minority within the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland which has challenged the educational authorities, as in the protests of the Gaelic Society of Inverness against the failure to provide for Gaelic in the 1872 Scottish Education Act. There can be no doubt that the schools' failure to accommodate Gaelic and support it vigorously has been damaging to Gaelic in East Sutherland because it has been taken by the native speakers to stand for a low national as well as local regard for their language. In this they are in fact not mistaken, as was demonstrated in the first chapter of this book. The schools in East Sutherland can be seen to have played a negative role with regard to Gaelic on three levels: they excluded it as a medium of communication; they excluded it from the curriculum for the most part; and in taking both these actions they transmitted to the community at large a low assessment of the value and utility of the Gaelic language. The Verbal

Repertoire

Up to this point, language choice has been treated as if it were a dichotomous affair, the selection of either Gaelic or English. In a certain basic sense, this is true enough. The bilinguals of East Sutherland view language choice in precisely this way, and they present their linguistic dilemmas in terms of such global choices. In fact however, the range of linguistic varieties available in the villages of East Sutherland is much wider than this in two respects, both characteristic of nearly all speech communities. In the first place, two or more speech varieties ("accents" or "dialects") are known for each of the "languages" on the local scene; and in the second place, a number of styles or registers are available within each accent or dialect. What has globally been called "English," for example, takes at least the following forms in East Sutherland: RP ("received pronunciation," a standard accent which is prestigious throughout Britain); standard Highland English; East Sutherland in Sociolinguistic Perspective 84

the Scots-influenced East Sutherland English (with slightly different pronunciations in each village); and Gaelic-influenced versions of the last two forms of English.10 These varieties of English are all spoken by some natives of the area; in addition, there are incomers who speak other varieties (for example, the local standard of various parts of the Lowlands, the local standard of several parts of England). What has been called "Gaelic" thus far is considerably more unified. It represents the East Sutherland fisherfolk dialect of Gaelic, with clearly identifiable pronunciations for each fishing community and some lexical and syntactic markers according to village as well. While this is the only variety of Gaelic normally spoken by natives, other varieties are familiar to local speakers. These include: other regional dialects; a mildly normalized variety (that is, a Gaelic with marked regional features largely removed) used in some broadcasting; and an archaic variety used in religious contexts so long as Gaelic church services and prayer meetings survived. All but the last one of these English and Gaelic speech varieties are polystylistic; that is, one can locate styles within them which are appropriate to formality or informality, to vulgarity, to humor, to anger, and the like. Speakers differ in their ability to perform vividly in these styles, but they can certainly shift in the appropriate directions. The amount of institutional support for the various kinds of English and Gaelic available to local speakers is likely to affect choices from within the verbal repertoire because of the prestige which derives from institutional support. The prestige factor is tempered by the social bonding factor in interesting ways, however. If prestige were the only factor to affect code choice, everyone might well try to adopt RP since that variety of English has the high status which comes from use among the highest social stratum of Britain (regardless of place of origin), from a long history of use by BBC announcers, and from selection as the English variety to be taught to foreigners (Trudgill 1974b: 19). But RP is too far removed from the local norms; it is regarded as snobbish in the local context, although it is generally approved of for people of high position and power on the national scene, and for people who are expected to transcend the regional (national broadcasters, actors, intellectuals). Standard Highland English, on the other hand, is an acceptable objective, and while local young people are never exhorted to use RP, they may be admonished to rid their English of the Scots influences which are prominent in East Sutherland English (for example, contractions like wouldna, carina, the use of no for not) and to move in the general direction of the Highland standard. Many Highland notables are admired for their use of standard Highland English, whereas members of leading local families who have been away from the area and have acquired RP are suspect. In short, prestige is not an invariant commodity. What is desirable verbal behavior in a headmaster, at least 10

Standard Highland English has a quite "Gaelic" character in terms of its idiom and syntax and, to some extent, its phonology; the Gaelic substratum is readily apparent. The Gaelic-influenced version of standard Highland English in East Sutherland shows still stronger Gaelic character, and in phonology even more so than in idiom and syntax.

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if he comes from another part of the country, is not desirable in a lesser teacher recruited locally; for the latter, the social bonding value is expected to operate in such a way that he will prefer solidarity to unbecoming upward mobility. In this connection matched-guise techniques," though confirming in other parts of Britain the prestige of RP (Giles 1970, 1971), showed in bilingual Wales that Welshaccented English was upgraded relative to RP (Bourhis, Giles, and Tajfel 1973). Two of the authors of the Welsh matched-guise study note, in a later study with other collaborators, that the RP accent may prove disadvantageous in areas where the regional accent serves as a marker of ethnic or national identity. To the extent that it functions as a symbol of in-group loyalty and solidarity in such areas, the regional accent may be preferred to RP. [Elvan et al. 1978:123] Highland identity is transregional and may still be deemed ethnic; it would perhaps be hard to find objective features which are shared by all "Highland" regions, but in the essential sense of the self-perceived group, a Highland ethnicity persists. If RP has, or has had until recently, the institutional support of the broadcasting media, the major universities and "public" (that is, private) schools, and most high government officials, other varieties of standard English, including standard Highland English, have had the institutional support of local schools and local public officials. Increasingly now one hears the regional standards on radio and television. Two other varieties of English spoken in East Sutherland, Scotsinfluenced East Sutherland English and Gaelic-influenced East Sutherland English, are, however, without institutional support. The former seems to be less common among the children of my acquaintance than among adults, and it is perhaps yielding ground to standard Highland English (or something approaching it). The latter is less and less common, and its more marked features will probably disappear with the children of the current bilinguals (most of whom do not even now display them). East Sutherland Gaelic faces not only competition with English, the language favored overwhelmingly within the nation as a whole, but also competition with three other sorts of Gaelic, each perceived as more prestigious than the local dialect. Other regional dialects may not be liked more than the local dialect, but there is a general feeling that they are likely to be more "correct" than ESG. I found when I arrived in East Sutherland that most bilinguals were reluctant to work with me because of what they called their "bad" Gaelic. They

" In matched-guise testing the same speakers appear more than once on a tape recording, but using different languages or dialects; subjects judge the speech performances without realizing that some voices are matched guises.

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urged me to work with the Gaelic speakers in their midst who were incomers from other dialect areas, or to go to some other part of the country and get "the right Gaelic." When I did in fact, four years later, plan a brief spell of fieldwork in another dialect area farther south along the east coast, an Embo friend to whom I wrote of my plans responded (in a letter dated 16 January 1967): "I hope you'll enjoy your stay in East Inverness. It's most certain they will have a better class of Gaelic than us up Sutherland way." Yet some ambivalence is noticeable in local attitudes toward other regional dialects. ESG speakers often complain that speakers of even relatively nearby dialects are "no very plain," and describe their own speech with approbation as "plain" to understand. On the other hand, they apologize for not speaking "the right Gaelic," and usually defer to dialect speakers from other parts of the country in matters of grammar and even pronunciation and lexicon. These others, for their part, are often contemptuous of ESG, which is an unusual dialect and highly aberrant from the point of view of either textbook norms or western dialect norms. One English monolingual, whose mother was from Inverness-shire but whose father was born in Golspie, where she herself was brought up, volunteered that her mother had been a Gaelic speaker. After some discussion of her mother s background, her father s linguistic status came up:

Investigator: And your father had no Gaelic, then? Golspie monolingual: No. My father s people didn't have it.—Well, they just had the little Gaelic like what [name of a fluent Golspie Gaelic speaker's got, Mrs. Μ It was not a very good Gaelic. You know. . . . And he could speak a little bit, not-—my mother always said that his Gaelic wasn't good. You know? Because she was a good speaker, you see. Very good. [1978]

This woman first denied that her father had any Gaelic at all, then amended her statement to say that he had "the little Gaelic" of a local woman known to the monolingual to be fully fluent in Gaelic. East Sutherland Gaelic is not "good Gaelic" and therefore does not quite count. The speaker indicated that her parents had conversed in Gaelic when they wanted to keep secrets from the children; that is, her father was fluent enough at least for ordinary conversation. Complete outsiders are sometimes tolerant, but more often not. One Hebridean Gaelic speaker told me it "made his teeth hurt" to hear Gaelic spoken as it was in East Sutherland. He stated that he could not have undertaken a description of ESG as I did because he had not enough tolerance for the dialect. A truly standardized Gaelic does not exist, but there is a generally accepted textbook norm for the written language. It is no one's native language, but many teachers adopt it for classroom use, rendering it in the pronunciation of their native dialect. Both of the teachers who taught Gaelic at Embo school dur-

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ing two different periods espoused this normalized Gaelic. One Embo bilingual remembers the first period: 12 You had to speak it as it was written down. . . . In the proper manner. . . . I think she gave up in the finish, because you always came back to what you were [used to]. . . . You'd conform to a certain extent, but then—because you see no point in it, really, when you already could communicate in it. [1978] This teacher had the reputation of having been excessively strict and punitive, but even so it would appear that she did not succeed in inculcating textbook norms among ESG-speaking children. The next Gaelic-speaking teacher at Embo school also espoused standard-language norms. An Embo bilingual remembers being taught that since she was female, her name in Gaelic could not really begin with mac, which means 'son', but should begin with nie daughter'. She found this preposterous and alienating: "/ma'kSvi:/ ['MacKay'] is my name and it couldn't be anything else." This second Gaelic-speaking teacher at the Embo school was a native of the southernmost part of eastern Sutherland and had spoken a Gaelic dialect not too different from Embo Gaelic all his young life. But he readily admitted that he had changed his speech in the direction of the textbook norm through studying Gaelic at university, and when I knew him as a man near retirement age, he did not consider himself a speaker of eastern Sutherlandshire Gaelic as such. He was highly sympathetic to ESG, but could not help presenting, in the schoolroom setting, a Gaelic more nearly approximating the standard language. 13 Although these two were the only state-supported schoolteachers giving Gaelic instruction locally,14 Gaelic has been taught in the area quite frequently over the years by free-lancers who trained singers for the mods and by adulteducation teachers offering short-term instruction in night classes. A number of native speakers of ESG have tried attending these classes, but few have persevered. The difficulties range from excessively grammatical presentations which are above the heads of native speakers illiterate in Gaelic to arrogant teachers' refusal to accept local forms, as appears in the following account: 12

In this period Gaelic was taught one hour a week, to boys only. The girls were taught knitting during that hour.

13

The dilemma involved in trying to provide institutional support for a subordinate language in an area where a nonstandard variety of it is spoken appears here. If the standard language is taught, the children are alienated. If the nonstandard variety is taught, the parents may be alienated (see Dorian 1978e).

14

During the same two periods at the Embo school there were other teachers employed there who did not speak (or teach) Gaelic. In the second of the two periods Gaelic was not taught regularly but was introduced sporadically; in the month or two immediately before the provincial Gaelic mod, classroom time was devoted to teaching Gaelic songs.

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Well, we went to that class. And he was teaching Gaelic to us. Well, we didn't need to go, because we had our own Gaelic. But we went, to learn for the choir, for the mod. And he said to me the question, he asked me, he said to me [in English], "Go and wash your face." I said, "/ri s kion t*1 3i:/." "That's not in the language," he said [in English]. I said, "It is in the language. It's in my language, and if it weren't, I wouldn't say it." H e said. O h , [f cigi]," something about [t* eigi]. I said, "It's not, not [f 1 cjgi], but /ri s Id an t* 3i:/. And if you're not pleased with that, go and take your own Gaelic." And I rose. . . . [Golspie bilingual, 1968; translated from the Gaelic] One ESG semi-speaker who has persevered with night classes recalls a golden era when a native Sutherlander who was very tolerant of ESG gave the classes; but this was unusual. Most often her teachers (and there have been many, as she has gone to a variety of classes over the years) have forbidden the use of ESG in class, as did the one she describes here: Brora bilingual: Everything has to be grammatically correct. Y' know? . . . If I—I read over a sentence to her, and my—my own Gaelic is bound to crop up, y' know? And she just stops me at once. And tells me the proper way to say it. And it's—it—to me, it sounds foolish, y' know? You feel—y' know?—that you're—you're—it's . . . not right. Well, not in your estimation, y' know. Investigator: . . . And what does she say when you speak the Sutherland Gaelic? Brora bilingual: " . . . I can't accept that. It's all right when you're speaking to some of your cronies, but I can't accept that. You have to adhere to the book." [1976] According to this woman, most other Brora ESG speakers who have tried the classes have given up rather than try to learn to speak a Gaelic which is unnatural to them and "sounds foolish" coming out of their mouths. They recognize the prestige of this kind of Gaelic but do not aspire to speak it. This is, of course, the attitude of many dialect speakers toward a standard form of their language. They can adopt the standard form for play-acting purposes on a short-term basis, but would feel uncomfortable with it on any longer-term basis. In one discussion of black children's standard and nonstandard speech behavior, a black American mother remarked: "I've noticed that when the children play school outside, they talk like they're supposed to in school; and when they stop playing school, they don't" (quoted in Hymes 1974:96). Solidarity within the community requires that the local speech form be maintained by community members. To abandon the local speech form is an act of linguistic disloyalty with general dissociative socioeconomic overtones. Such behavior does occur, rather frequently in fact, but it takes the form of abandoning Gaelic for English rather than abandoning ESG for

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some more prestigious form of Gaelic. This behavior will be dealt with below in the discussion of language loyalty. The conservative, rather archaic Gaelic associated with religion has higher prestige among ESG speakers than other regional dialects or textbook Gaelic. Their experience of it began as children, and although they understood it onlv poorly in the childhood years, comprehension grew with exposure. None of the ministers who served in the local parishes in living memory was from eastern Sutherland. This added the difficulty that the "church Gaelic" was always rendered in a strange accent, but, again, familiarity lent understanding. The fisherpeople were noted for their strict religious observance in the early years of this century, and church attendance was universal. The precentor, who lined out the psalms for group singing, was often recruited from the fishing community for the Gaelic service, and many fishermen served as elders over the years. These men had a considerable active command of church Gaelic. So did many others in the fishing communities because of the widespread practice of holding family worship in the home once or twice a day. The language of the metrical version of the Gaelic psalms was highly familiar to everyone, and many men could use that language and various other biblical turns of phrase to good effect in leading prayer within the family. There are still men alive today who can do so, especially in Embo. Most young boys were taught the art of precenting in classes given by lay leaders of one kind or another. This was the extent of Gaelic literacy for many men, although some carried over what they learned of the Gaelic writing system to other types of written Gaelic and were able to make out newspaper columns in Gaelic (which were still common earlier in the present century ). Church Gaelic, despite the fact that the minister was invariably an outsider, was rendered by the fisherfolk themselves in a purely East Sutherland accent. Its lexicon and idiom were very different from everyday ESG, however, even in freely productive use; in passive use (repeating the psalms, reading Bible verses) the grammar was also markedly different. If the concept of diglossia (Ferguson 1959) were to be invoked for the East Sutherland fisherfolk, it could be used appropriately only in this connection, but the Η (high) language (church Gaelic) would have a much more limited role than is usual in a diglossic setting. Of the four varieties of Gaelic familiar to ESG speakers, church Gaelic had the strongest institutional support, since it was espoused by the church and used in all religious behavior, whether in church or in the home. Textbook Gaelic had the support of the night-class teachers and of the rare schoolteachers who included Gaelic in the curriculum; as a "book language," it had standing among the fisherfolk but was not imitated. Other regional dialects had no particular institutional support, but they were still ranked as superior to the purely local dialect, which not only had no institutional support but was actively discouraged, at least in the schools (globally, as "Gaelic" in its local form) and by night-class teachers (specifically, as an undesirable form of Gaelic). Claims about the intelligibility or unintelligibility of other forms of Gaelic are to some extent reflective of attitudes toward those forms. Although a East Sutherland 90

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number of people acknowledged that church Gaelic was opaque to them as children, they stressed that it was heard so often, and that psalms and Bible passages were repeated so often, that one could not help but understand it even when the minister's accent was exotic: He [a minister from the Hebrides] didn't have the same Gaelic as us. But we were used to him, then. Because I mean, after all, I mean it was sort of repetition work, more. I mean, y' see, you get so used to it. . . . [Embo bilingual, 1978] Where other forms of Gaelic are concerned, most ESG speakers report that they have great difficulty in making them out. This is especially true of women. A good many women had considerable exposure to other regional dialects while migrating around the coasts with the herring fishery. Typically they claim that they barely understood the Hebridean fisher girls, especially those from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, or even that they simply did not understand them at all: Investigator: Were you speaking the Gaelic with the girls [at the gutting station]? Brora bilingual: No, no, they were Stornoway girls, they were so hard to understand. They wouldn't understand us, and we weren't understanding them. They would say [in Gaelic], "What? What? What are vou saying?" [1968; translated from the Gaelic] Another Brora woman claimed, less drastically, "If you'd catch the first word the Stornoway girls said, you could follow, hut if you didn't get the first word, you're gone. You're just lost." Still another Brora woman reported that she was unable to understand not only the Gaelic speech of a group of popular singers from Lewis on television, but even the Gaelic church services broadcast by the BBC. Now when there's a Gaelic program on the television, and I don't know whether you've seen it or not, that [name of singers]. Now when they're talking the Gaelic—I'm only speaking for my own self—I don't understand one word they say. I like the singing, the music, but not that language. 'Cause I don't understand it. It's a great pity, that, isn't it? And then, there's a Gaelic service on a Sunday. On the wireless. I don't understand it. [1972] Most East Sutherlandshire women have the great handicap of total Gaelic illiteracy, which prevents them from relating the variety of dialect forms in a systematic way to a written model. Low literacy or illiteracy among men gives much the same result: "I listen to it [the Gaelic on the wireless], but I just can't understand it too good. Just a wee bit different from ours, so you've got to be pretty sharp to pick it up" (Embo bilingual, 1972). As with church Gaelic, years of experience

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can improve one's chances of understanding even Lewis Gaelic, widely considered the most difficult dialect by East Sutherlanders (though it should be noted that there is a tendency to dub any particularly unintelligible dialect "Stomoway Gaelic"). One man who in nearly twenty years of residence in Glasgow interacted regularly, several times a week, with Lewis people, noted both the difficulty and the possibility of overcoming it: When I was meeting them [Lewis people] first, I didn't know one word they were saying. But give me a half an hour, three quarters, then it was coming. . . . But the first word or two, they might have been speaking Pakistani. . . . But after that, it was just like me and Κ [a fellow Emboman], . . . just the same thing. [Embo bilingual, 1974; translated from the Gaelic] It is an article of faith among Gaelic intellectuals that all dialects of Scottish Gaelic are mutually intelligible, and I have encountered considerable resistance when I have suggested that some western dialects, or the textbook norm, might not be understood by a good many speakers of ESG. It is true that East Sutherlanders who are literate in Gaelic can usually manage reasonably well with other dialects, and that people with extensive experience of other dialects, like the last speaker quoted, learn fairly rapidly to do so. It is equally true, however, that East Sutherlanders of fairly circumscribed experience (both men and women), and females illiterate in Gaelic in particular, have great difficulty, and sometimes fail entirely, in communicating across Gaelic dialect boundaries. A Brora semi-speaker, certainly a perfect passive bilingual in ESG, told a poignant story of spending a full half-hour at the bedside of a hospitalized Gaelic monolingual from Lewis who had been longing for someone to speak Gaelic with; he understood her Gaelic perfectly, but she was unable to understand him at all, try though she might. I was myself present when a Hebridean Gaelic speaker tried to conduct a Gaelic interview with a fully fluent female ESG bilingual; she was completely unable to understand him, though delighted to be interviewed, and he was obliged to ask me to conduct the interview, in his stead, in ESG. It is well known that attitudes toward other speech forms affect one's ability to understand them (Wolff 1959; Haugen 1966). The varieties of Gaelic which are unintelligible to some East Sutherlanders are not looked down on by ESG speakers, however—quite the contrary, they are regarded as better than ESG. Part of the answer must be a simple lack of experience and an expectation of lack of success in understanding. Part must also be genuine structural differences, especially those arising from the use of phonemes (the velarized n, the palatalized r) and grammatical categories (the morphological genitive, the conjugating objects of gerunds) unknown or only vestigially present in ESG. It is commonplace in second-language learning, for example, that learning to put in elements of the target language which have no counterpart in the native language is much harder than learning to leave out native-language elements which have no

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counterpart in the target language (Wilkins 1972:194); and E S G speakers are in this position vis-ä-vis virtually all healthier dialects of Gaelic and vis-ä-vis the textbook language, since the p h o n e m e inventory, the lexicon, and the grammar of E S G would all have to b e described as reduced by comparison. 1 5 This means that speakers of other dialects find it significantly easier to understand

ESG

speakers than E S G speakers find it to understand t h e m . In any event, one result o f the relatively low intelligibility of other forms of Gaelic for E S G speakers is that the support value which might derive from the use o f Gaelic by prestige sources like television and radio is limited. T h e Gaelic heard from such sources is simply too different from E S G to have much reinforcement value for speakers of the local dialect. F o r some, television and radio use of Gaelic only underscores the limited currency of their own form of Gaelic. F o r such speakers, "real" Gaelic is to be found in books, in the broadcasting media, and in o t h e r locations, whereas E S G is "just our Gaelic."

East Sutherland

Bilingualism

Active East Sutherland bilingualism involves, almost exclusively on the current scene, only three of the speech varieties within the verbal repertoire: E S G and Gaelic-influenced East Sutherland English and/or Gaelic-influenced standard Highland English. Twenty years ago or more another variety of G a e l i c — church G a e l i c — w o u l d also have b e e n involved, but although church Gaelic can b e said to remain a part of most people's passive bilingualism, it belongs to the active bilingualism o f very few. At the time when church Gaelic was still fairly widely used, it would clearly have b e e n incorrect to suggest any diglossic relationship b e t w e e n C a e l i c and English among the

fisherfolk

such that English

served as the "high" language and Gaelic as the "low" language (as in Fishman's 1967 adaptation o f Ferguson 1959), since a " h i g h e r " use of language than the religious use could scarcely be found for this group. To my way of thinking, this adapted diglossic model does not apply well even today, when this extremely "high" use of Gaelic has almost vanished from active use. Despite the tendencies toward language compartmentalization noted above, there is still not the "high"/ "low" specialization by language which would warrant comparison with t h e classic diglossic specialization by function sketched out by Ferguson as typical of the four linguistic c o m m u n i t i e s he described. Until less than ten years ago, for example, Gaelic was still used for sermons in one local church. News broadcasts are currently made in Gaelic (although not, to be sure, in E S G ) as well as in English. Folk literature (including, for example, local-patriotic songs and o b s c e n e songs) 15

In part the "reduced" state of ESG is surely historical, the result of the longstanding separateness of the dialect: lack of dialect material or descriptions before the end of the nineteenth century makes it impossible to say to what extent this is the case, however. Certainly one or two of the more surprising grammatical deviations were characteristic of eastern Sutherlandshire Caelic in general at the turn of the present century (Robertson 1901-3).

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exists in both ESG and East Sutherland English. Instructions to workmen can be given in both local speech forms, depending only on the linguistic capabilities of the receiver, not on the functional prestige of the speech form. In both ESG and East Sutherland English, a formal style of speech can be mustered for circumstances where it is appropriate, say in expressing condolences; this would seem to merit the "high" label. That is to say, both languages have "high" uses and "low" uses, whether seen from the community perspective or from the point of view of a single bilingual's verbal behavior. It strikes me that the diglossia model is often much too readily invoked in descriptions of bilingual communities, and this is certainly the case in studies of communities where Scottish Gaelic is in use (see MacKinnon 1977 and criticism of it along these lines in Dorian 1978c, see also Williamson and Van Eerde 1980). Seen from the society-wide point of view, present-day East Sutherland bilingualism is transitional, or unstable. It is only the last stage of a general transition from nearly universal monolingualism in Gaelic to nearly universal monolingualism in English. Preceding the transition period were at least three centuries of stable stratified societal bilingualism in eastern Sutherland. During those centuries the mass of the people were monolingual in Gaelic; the aristocracy (and probably some of its associates) monolingual in English; and the clergy and some functionaries of one kind or another formed a small bilingual bridge within the local society. On the basis of evidence from the two Statistical Accounts, it can be assumed that the transition period began during the first half of the nineteenth century. It will close with the death of ESG in the early decades of the twentyfirst century, when (assuming healthy life expectancies) even the youngest of today's semi-speakers will be disappearing from the scene. The stable period of societal bilingualism was characterized by two groups each monolingual in a different language, with only a small number of people actually bilingual. East Sutherland has at no time in at least its post-Viking history espoused widespread individual bilingualism, nor is this the case now. Within the local society there are no rewards for Gaelic-English bilingualism, either in economic terms or in terms of social approval; in fact the reverse is the case. The expectation has been, from the time of the new Statistical Account onward, that those who learned English would give up Gaelic, or that their children would. The operative model has always been replacive, rather than additive, bilingualism. 16 In this context, bilingual skills are not, on the whole, a matter of pride or satisfaction. Indeed, within the fishing communities one hears more about flaws in verbal performance arising from bilingualism than one hears about proficiency in bilingual attainments, despite the fact that those attainments are considerable. Among them are conspicuous excellence in spontaneous Gaelic16

This is t r u e not just for Sutherland but for Scotland in general. The possibility of additive bilingualism has lately b e e n seriously b r o a c h e d in two political contexts, the party platform of t h e Scottish Nationalist Party and the language policies of the W e s t e r n Isles Region. This marks a d e p a r t u r e from t h e political policies of at least five previous centuries.

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English translation for t h e benefit of English monolinguals, and equal excellence in English-Gaelic translation for t h e benefit of Gaelic-dominant audiences; ability to understand, and in some cases to use, the conservative, rather archaic religious speech variety of both linguistic traditions; control of two partially overlapping traditions of verbal performance, including, for instance, a small repertory of both serious and comic song and a rich repertory' of proverbial lore, jokes, insults and curses, and by-naming, all in both languages; and, a m o n g some m e m b e r s of the bilingual population, t h e ability to read both languages. The four linguistic skills of understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Gaelic were r e p r e s e n t e d to very different extents among the Gaelic-English bilinguals of East Sutherland in the period between 1963 and 1978. T h e n u m b e r of people who understood E S G in addition to English was fairly large, perhaps almost double the n u m b e r who spoke it; I make that estimate on the basis of both self-reports and my own experience with the families of active bilinguals. T h e n u m b e r of those who read Gaelic was very much smaller than the n u m b e r who spoke it (though larger than the n u m b e r who professed to be able to read, thanks to some quasi-literacy through experience with the Bible and psalm singing). ESG is never written, and therefore any approach to literacy was over t h e h u r d l e of a largely unfamiliar form of Gaelic. Reading the Bible was possible for many because of familiarity, whereas reading a newspaper column in Gaelic was almost impossible because of t h e unfamiliar lexicon and grammar. T h e ability to read and write English was universal, of course. T h e ability to write a connected paragraph or an entire letter in Gaelic was limited to a very' few, though most of those who could read could also write isolated words or phrases with greater or lesser accuracy. During the period of my fieldwork in East Sutherland, I administered tests of Gaelic proficiency, but not English proficiency, to Gaelic-English bilinguals, and no tests of dominance. Despite the skewed and limited n a t u r e of this testing, I venture, on the basis of long-term participant-observation in the fishing communities, some remarks on these subjects. Proficiency I take to be a matter of observable linguistic skills, such that there are noticeable differences b e t w e e n the size of the Gaelic lexicon and that of the English lexicon, or in the range of subordination structures in t h e two languages, and the like. Dominance I take to be a somewhat less obvious matter, since it includes attitudes toward t h e two languages. Uriel VVeinreich, in his classic study of bilingualism, suggested that a language was dominant simply "by virture of the speaker's greater proficiency in it" (1964:75), but he modified this stand later in the same book in developing the concept of "dominance configuration." U n d e r that rubric h e took a more complex and surely more realistic view: ' T h e dominance of a language for a bilingual individual can only be i n t e r p r e t e d as a specific configuration or syndrome of characteristics on which t h e language is rated" (Weinreich 1964:79). T h e characteristics he considered w e r e relative proficiency, visual m o d e of use, first learning, emotional involvement, usefulness in communication, function in social advance, and literary-cultural value (1964:80). Not all of these are unambiguous; after all,

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the usefulness of a language in communication depends on whom you want to communicate with. Furthermore, some of the characteristics Weinreich considered may matter more to a given individual or speech community than others. For example, I find that ESG speakers, including semi-speakers, lay great stress on the claims of Gaelic to mother-tongue status because it was the first-learned language or even just the dominant language in the home. During the 1960s there were still Gaelic-English bilinguals in eastern Sutherland whose proficiency in ESG was noticeably greater than their proficiency in English. The number of such speakers known to me personally was very small (probably three out of approximately forty fluent speakers), but I heard about others; all were natives of Embo. In the case I knew best, interviews in Gaelic produced more response, and more fluent response, than interviews in English; some English words were mispronounced (by local as well as national standards), but no ESG words. Aside from such rare cases, most fluent bilinguals were clearly more proficient in English than in Gaelic in terms of vocabulary size, and some morphological and syntactic structures readily produced in English were produced with difficulty or not at all in ESG (for example, high ordinals and double verb complements such as "to try to make someone do something"). In ordinary conversation, however, people's English and Gaelic were to a considerable extent translation-matches for each other; that is, the same structures appeared whichever language was used.1" Semi-speakers, by definition, are more proficient in English than in Gaelic by any measure. When it comes to dominance, the situation is reversed: among fluent bilinguals, even in the 1970s, more are dominant in Gaelic than in English. In making this judgment, I am weighting some of Weinreich s characteristics more heavily than others, notably first learning and, especially, emotional involvement. I have already indicated the importance of first learning to the speakers themselves. Their emotional involvement with Gaelic appears not only in their explicit statements of fondness and preference for Gaelic, but in observable linguistic behaviors, most particularly the tendency to slip into Gaelic (even when speaking to an English-dominant bilingual like the present writer) whenever speaking of matters important or stressful to themselves. Gaelic is the language many of these bilinguals are comfortable in, despite their facility in English. Again this behavior is commonest in Embo, but it is not unknown in the few intact Gaelic-speaking households in Golspie. 18 This is not to say that there are no "balanced bilinguals" in the bilingual group. There are indeed a number of people in all three fishing communities who seem to move effortlessly between their languages, switching 17

This phenomenon became particularly apparent to me in a 1978 experiment: after many hours of oral-history· recording in English with a bilingual Golspie couple, I undertook a Gaelic oral-history interview with them. The result was an uncanny echo in Gaelic of the phraseology, idioms, and favorite expressions I was so familiar with from transcribing hundreds of pages of their English.

18

"Intact" here means at least two people, both fluent bilinguals, residing together without English monolinguals present.

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from Gaelic to English, or vice versa, with no apparent strain. Some such people report very matter-of-factly that they will speak in whichever language they are spoken to in; it is a matter of indifference to them which language it is, so that they allow themselves to be guided above all by the linguistic behavior of the other person. If a conversation partner initiates Gaelic, then it will be Gaelic; if English, then they will speak in English. Other bilinguals with great facility in both languages express complete comfort with either language so long as they are speaking to an interlocutor with whom they habitually speak that particular language. If for some reason (usually the presence of an English monolingual) they are forced to use English with someone to whom they normally speak in Gaelic, however, they feel great strain. One man who stated that he thought in Gaelic expressed this difficulty . Investigator: Is it difficult for you to be thinking in Gaelic and putting out words in English when you're speaking to your wife [an English monolingual]? Embo bilingual: No, not to my wife. But it is to Κ [a fellow bilingual from the same village]. If I had anything to say to Κ in English, it would be difficult. But not to her. Investigator: Because you know she doesn't have Gaelic. Embo bilingual: I know she doesn't have Gaelic. But if I were to speak for a half an hour to Κ , I would be tired, in English. But I would be speaking to him for two hours in the Gaelic and it wouldn't— it wouldn't make a difference. [1974; translated from the Gaelic] Up to this point my remarks on bilingualism among the East Sutherland fisherfolk have been based on my own observation and on interviews in which linguistic behavior and linguistic attitudes were discussed in depth. Late in my investigation of the bilingual communities I introduced a third technique for the assessment of bilingual skills (and other matters, such as language loyalty), namely, self-report by means of questionnaires. There were two reasons for the use of questionnaires: they had been used in a number of other studies of bilingual Celtic communities (Dressier and Wodak-Leodolter 1977; MacKinnon 1977; Lewis 1975; Dorian forthcoming), and East Sutherland data derived from questionnaires might therefore be more directly comparable with data from these other studies; and the relative ease and speed of distribution and collection of questionnaires allowed for a larger sample than I had reached with the in-depth techniques used previously. There were some unanticipated benefits from this undertaking. Chief among them was the insight gained into the hazards of the questionnaire technique. Since I had known and observed many of the respondents repeatedly over a fifteen-year period, I was often in a position to gauge the accuracy (or lack of it) of their questionnaire responses. Further, the difficulties of the questionnaire task for an unsophisticated population became apparent. Finally, I experienced first-hand the problem of constructing questions which mean

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the same thing to both the designer of the questionnaire and the respondents. Because questionnaire data are so common in the social sciences, and because it may be unusual for the investigator to know the actual behavior of many of the respondents intimately before asking for their self-reports in a questionnaire, I think it important to discuss in some detail the issue of gathering data through questionnaires and the results of the East Sutherland questionnaires. Because I have a good many reservations about the validity of questionnaire data, I prefer to do this in an appendix rather than in the main body of the book. For all further reference to questionnaire data on East Sutherland, therefore, see the appendix. Since my presentation of language behavior in East Sutherland has frequently been buttressed in this chapter by quotations representing another form of "self-report" from the bilingual population, some justification is needed for an apparently uncritical acceptance of interview self-reports, while questionnaire self-reports are banished to an appendix. The most serious drawback of the questionnaire self-report, as compared with the interview self-report, is its lack of depth. It requires only the briefest of responses, with no supporting material. In an interview, on the other hand, the speaker is routinely asked to expand on his response, to give illustrative material or to explain the reasons for his opinion. From the relevance of illustrations and explanations, and the readiness (or lack of it) with which they are produced, the interviewer can make some estimate of the validity of the response or the reasonableness of the opinion. What is true of the single response is exponentially true of multiple responses. Two interv iews which converge, in the sense that the basic sentiments are similar and the illustrations or explanations make the same general point, are consequently very much more persuasive than two questionnaire responses which converge.

Code

Snitching

and

Interference

Within the bilingual communities themselves there is considerable selff criticism of Gaelic speech performance (and, to a much lesser degree, of English speech performance) on grounds of code switching and interference. A few individuals are notorious for their mix of codes; they are said to speak darn' leth Gäidhlig, dam' leth Beurl' ['half Gaelic, half English ], and are strongly criticized for failure to finish a sentence in the language in which they began it. In my own interactions with East Sutherland bilinguals, I have observed relatively little code switching—nothing remotely approaching the single-sentence switches which are reported for some Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States, for example (Timm 1975:482; Ma and Herasimchuk 1971:359). Most of the switches made without a change in interlocutors, in my experience, have consisted of the insertion in a Gaelic sentence of a stock phrase like "very good," or "that s right, often followed immediately by the equivalent phrase (usually a caique) in Gaelic. In conversations with me, a mistake in Gaelic on my part, or some other verbal or

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n o n v e r b a l behavior, s o m e t i m e s apparently r e m i n d e d a bilingual that h e or she was c o n v e r s i n g with an E n g l i s h - d o m i n a n t interlocutor a n d p r e c i p i t a t e d a switch. And s o m e t i m e s a switch d e p e n d e d on t h e n a t u r e of t h e material b e i n g discussed; for e x a m p l e , w h e n r e f e r e n c e is m a d e to t h e activities of English monolinguals in t h e family of a bilingual, a brief switch to English may occur. Switching is less a general c o m m u n i t y - w i d e behavior, however, than a characteristic of certain individuals w h o acquire a reputation for it: T h e r e ' s a w o m a n down t h e r e at t h e e n d of t h e street, she starts off w i t h t h e Gaelic. I a n s w e r h e r back; but in t h e m i d d l e of it. t h e n s h e starts t h e English, so English then I've got to a n s w e r back. [Brora bilingual, 1972] I n t e r e s t i n g h e r e is t h e d e g r e e to which t h e speaker feels c o n s t r a i n e d by h e r int e r l o c u t o r s code switching; she switches herself in r e s p o n s e to e v e r y c h a n g e on t h e part of h e r conversation partner. A n u m b e r of p e o p l e say that they will speak as t h e y a r e spoken to, e v e n if it involves switching in m i d - s t r e a m . O t h e r s , of course, will march on in t h e language in which t h e conversation was b e g u n a n d will resist a switch tentatively initiated by t h e conversation partner. W h e n Gaelic is t h e language that is p e r s e v e r e d in, t h e reasons may range from a d e s i r e to k e e p t h e conversation private (that is, unintelligible to n e a r b y English speakers) to a resistance to a s u s p e c t e d language disloyalty on t h e part of t h e conversation partn e r (see t h e next section of this chapter). F a r and away t h e greatest part of all code switching in t h e verbal p e r f o r m a n c e of E S G speakers is t h e result of a c h a n g e in interlocutors. A conversation b e g u n in Gaelic· will instantly be switched to English if a monolingual joins t h e g r o u p . A conversation b e g u n in English may c h a n g e to Gaelic if an o l d e r p e r s o n w i t h w h o m each of two y o u n g e r bilinguals habitually speaks Gaelic joins t h e g r o u p , even though t h e two younger bilinguals may seldom speak Gaelic to each other. U n d e r these circumstances t h e switch may e v e n take place in mids e n t e n c e . O n e Gaelic s p e a k e r w h o had spent years in d o m e s t i c service in a h o u s e w h e r e Gaelic was not a c c e p t a b l e for public use could switch in t h e twinkling of an e y e if an English monolingual a p p r o a c h e d . In earlier days c o d e switching might occur by reason of i n a d e q u a t e E n glish. A struggling "bilingual" might start off bravely in English b u t switch back to Gaelic w h e n e v e r h e struck a w o r d or p h r a s e which h e did not k n o w in English: O n e old lady, . . . s h e was from E m b o , and she had very, very p o o r English. And she was selling cockles, and this lady asked her, " H o w d o you cook t h e m ? " "Well, you put t h e m first in a bürn maoth t h e n they'll sgeith out all t h e gainmheach."'9

bhläth,

and

[Golspie bilingual, 1976]

" Burn maoth bhläth lukewarm water; sgeith spew ; gainmheach

sand'.

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This kind of switching is not really distinguishable from lexical "interference," of which there is a great deal in present-day East Sutherland linguistic behavior. Now, however, most of the lexical movement runs from English into Gaelic, rather than the other way around; there is certainly some Gaelic-to-English movement, too, but the commoner phenomenon is English words used in Gaelic speech. When English words appear in Gaelic, they may be dealt with in either of two ways. They may be retained as strictly English words, with English morphology and morphophonology; or they may be adapted to Gaelic morphology and morphophonology in such a way that they are treated as if they were Gaelic words. The second of these two strategies is much the commoner overall, and it is hard to say at times whether an English word should simply be considered a bona fide loanword in Gaelic or an instance of interference. Although such a classic treatment of lexical interference as Weinreich's (1964:47-62) simply discusses loanwords as one of several types of lexical interference (along with, for example, loan translations or creations, hybrid compounds and semantic extension), the question arises of how long after its introduction a loanword remains an instance of interference. Some English words are so thoroughly ingrained in ESG that the bilingual has no apparent sense of using a loanword: /anKal/ 'uncle', /anTi/ 'aunt', /k'asin/ 'cousin', and /sto:ri/ 'story' are examples. Other words are consciously borrowed, either for want of an equivalent word in Gaelic or for their especially good fit and effect. Quite often these conscious borrowings are preceded by lead-in phrases which serve to announce their use: Agus bhris a' ghloine, anns 'anothri chaoban, no b' urrain dhomh chantuinn "smithereens" [ And the glass broke, into several pieces, or I could say "smithereens'"]. [Golspie bilingual, 1968] Here the English word is carefully introduced, and its English plural morphology is retained, as well as the very un-Gaelic stress on the ultimate syllable. But in the same story, a minute or two later, the speaker used the word poilioschan [Ip'alisxan] 'police', and in that case there was no lead-in, the plural allomorph is Gaelic -chan, and the stress is on the first syllable in conformity with Gaelic stress rules. It is clear that the first case is one of interference, but in the second case one might argue that the word was borrowed from English long since and has been so thoroughly re-formed that it no longer constitutes interference, any more than the use of the word jaunty constitutes French interference in English. The great majority of English loanwords in Gaelic, whether loanwords of very long standing or loans that are used on the spur of the moment by an individual bilingual, are well integrated into Gaelic in terms not only of phonology (though not phonotactics) but also of morphophonology, of derivational and grammatical morphology, and of syntax. In a particularly striking example, a Gaelic speaker said to her sister, /wack1 a dost1, yi:n/ 'Watch the toast, Jean.' English watch picked up a verb-making derivational morpheme; the initial /th/ of /thosth/ 'toast' was

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voiced in the presence of the preceding definite article as required by Gaelic syntax and morphophonology; and although the English form of the sister's name was used, /Ji:n/, it was subjected to initial consonant mutation as required in the Gaelic vocative. Despite the fact that this short sentence contains only one entirely Gaelic word (the definite article), it is a thoroughly Gaelic performance. If English lexical items treated according to well-established patterns of phonological and morphological integration are discounted, then interference from English is minimal in ESG, although it varies from person to person and from setting to setting. On the other hand, in the broader sense of the sheer appearance of words of recognizably English origin, interference in present-day ESG is vast. English idiom is also carried over into Gaelic, although it is not rampant. The use of recognizably English loanwords in Gaelic is currently a touchy matter in East Sutherland. English monolinguals, rather than giving credit to the bilinguals for command of two languages, frequently mock the bilinguals' Gaelic because of the English loanwords which they can perceive embedded in it. Remarks like "What sort of Gaelic is that?" or "I could speak that Gaelic myself!" are common. The bilinguals are self-conscious about the matter of loanwords and frequently check each other for the use of an English word, as when one Embo bilingual corrected his wife's borrowing of tiun 'tune' to port, the Gaelic equivalent. Precisely because everyone uses such loanwords, and because there is considerable self-consciousness about it, the number of loanwords in a verbal performance seems to have become a marker of degree of formality in ESG. In a relaxed and casual performance, the number of lexical borrowings will rise (most of them, as usual, well integrated into the Gaelic framework). On the other hand, the more formal the performance—for example, established narrative routines reproduced for tape recording—the lower the number of lexical borrowings and the greater the likelihood that some of those which appear will be accompanied by lead-in phrases like "as we would say." In one such tape-recorded narrative, a speaker even replaced the usual ESG [Ip'olis] or [Ip^lisxan] by luchd an lagh 'law people', elegant Gaelic but otherwise foreign to the lips of any East Sutherlander of my acquaintance. In dealing with the phenomenon of Gaelic interference in East Sutherland forms of English, it must be remembered that both the local East Sutherland English and standard Highland English show a strong Gaelic substratum effect, though East Sutherland English is also heavily influenced by Scots. The idiomatic use of "in it" (Gaelic ann) is a case in point (for example, "There was no radio or television in it in my young days"), and so is "it's" plus pronoun and relative clause introduced by "that" (for example, "It's you that should be thankful you weren't caught"). Consequently the interference of ESG in bilinguals' English is primarily noticeable in the form of a Gaelic accent and in lexical interference (Gaelic loanwords, and for some speakers a good many Gaelic interjections). Some occasional loan translation occurs (for example, to "put" potatoes—Gaelic cuir—rather than to "plant"), and some Gaelic idiom appears (to "go on" fire rather than to "catch"

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fire); syntactic influence can also be found: for example, the use of progressive forms of verbs like "see" and "believe," or the use of the demonstrative "that" without inflection for number (for example, "that cabbages"). As with English lexicon in Gaelic, there are accepted patterns for the integration of Gaelic loanwords in English. The English sibilant plural is regularly applied to Gaelic nouns used in an English sentence, for example. As in bilingual communities generally, the amount of English interference in a person s Gaelic, or Gaelic interference in a person's English, varies with the linguistic background of the interlocutor: In speaking to a unilingual, the bilingual often tends to limit interference and to eliminate even habitualized borrowings from his speech. . . . But when the other interlocutor is also bilingual, the requirements of intelligibility and status assertion are drastically reduced. Under such circumstances, there is hardly any limit to interference. . . . [Weinreich 1964:81] Two Gaelic speakers engaged in conversation together, whether in Gaelic or in English, will show on the whole more interference from the other language than either will show in conversation with a monolingual.

Language

Loyalty

Scotland has, as chapter 1 showed, a long history of suppression (in the strongest form) and discouragement (in milder forms) of Gaelic. Anti-Gaelic attitudes in Sutherland go back at least to the time of Sir Robert Gordon's letter of advice to his nephew, the prospective thirteenth Earl of Sutherland, in the early seventeenth century. By the 1840s a newly "opened" eastern Sutherland had begun so profound a flight from Gaelic that the extinction of the language in the area could be foreseen. The fisherfolk were relatively slow to succumb to the pressures favoring a shift to English. Their separate work sphere reduced the economic pressure to master and adopt English, and their separate social sphere left them in a predominantly Gaelic subculture of their own. They were on the one hand "protected" from English, and on the other hand "prevented" from it, depending on the point of view. And of course there were people within the fishing communities who represented each of those points of view: those who were content to be left to their traditional ways, including the Gaelic language, and those who were eager for access to the wider society, which required English. In any language shift, some individuals will be in the vanguard, some will hold a middle ground, and some will lag behind. Where the subordinate language is associated with a stigmatized group, language choices are inevitably highly charged. Anyone who adopts the dominant language will be viewed as something of a traitor to his

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original group. A Norwegian investigator, working in an increasingly norwegianized Coast-Lappish area of Norway where Lapps are the stigmatized group, found that Lapps could enter into intimate relationships with resident Norwegian incomers, but at a cost: Within the local area, a Lapp might establish such a relation with a Norwegian. Those who have a perfect command of Norwegian, and a Norwegian physiognomy, have the best chances of doing this, especially if they are willing to cut themselves off from intimate interaction other Lapps. [Eidheim 1969:54; italics added]

with

Mobility out of the stigmatized group requires dissociation from that group. Adoption of the dominant language is one of the dissociative behaviors most obvious to the original group and consequently bitterly resented by them. In eastern Sutherland the choice of English by a person of fisherfolk background is labeled "pride," and the bitterest accusation one E S C speaker can level at another is that he is "too proud" to speak Gaelic. 2 " The offense is greatest if the person is spoken to in Gaelic but replies in English. An elderly Golspie bilingual waxed indignant over the failure of fisher descendants a generation younger than she to answer in Gaelic when addressed in Gaelic, but in a rare burst of candor she recognized that she had been guilty of the same "pride" when she was a young woman: Why aren t they speaking what I would call the Gaelic: "the mother tongue"? Which they were born with. It's the first thing that went into their mouths, and why would they be so proud and not speak it? — I was a little proud myself, when I was younger. Because I wasn't going along with the fisherfolk west. I was always with the non-fishers, and Gaelic wasn't spoken. It was always the English. [Golspie bilingual, 1968; translated from the Gaelic] Bilinguals explicitly connect "pride" with the local extinction of Gaelic: "People today are too proud. Pride has a lot to do with it. That's how I'm saying it's a dying language" (Brora bilingual, 1972). This analysis recognizes the stigmatizing effect of Gaelic speech in East Sutherland, and the increasing tendency, in a local society which has allowed for much greater social mobility over the last sixty years, to opt for the widely favored language in one's repertoire. On the whole, East Sutherland bilinguals are most critical of the lanIn B e r k s County, Pennsylvania, where Pennsylvania Dutch is being given up in favor of English, there is a direct analogue: the person of Dutch background who uses English excessively is called "hochmidig"

and is said to b e trying to b e "styl-

ish." Both are terms of sharp reproach.

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guage choices of the age groups closest to their own and are severely intolerant of linguistic disloyalty among their peers. Where some dislike exists between individuals, it is not uncommon for language disloyalty to be charged against the other person whether or not the speaker has any real knowledge of the other person's language habits. I have known two staunch language loyalists each to suggest that the other was guilty of a "proud" abandonment of Gaelic. Willingness to use Gaelic, on the other hand, especially in public, is a sign of social solidarity among members of the former fishing communities and is vigorously approved of." Coexisting with resentment of disloyalty to Gaelic among their own age group and others near in age, and with their own vein of language-loyal speech behavior, is a largely negative attitude where the transmission of Gaelic to the succeeding generation is concerned. It is not acceptable to behave as though one did not know Gaelic oneself, but it is acceptable to do nothing to see that one's children know it. No pride in being a Gaelic speaker was inculcated in the current bilinguals. They were not praised for their Gaelic or urged to speak it, it was simply something they automatically acquired through living in Gaelic-speaking homes in the "fishertowns." When they came to have children of their own, they adopted pragmatic attitudes. One woman who made no effort to teach her children Gaelic said: "They couldn't get through the world with Gaelic. That's what we thou[ght]—took for granted. The Gaelic's no use to you through the world" (Brora bilingual 1974). Another, taxed with raising monolingual children, said simply: "It wouldn't be of any interest to them" (Brora bilingual, 1972). This last woman takes a realistic view of her modem-day surroundings and assesses the value of her two languages accordingly: See, when you go to the shops, here, or when you meet people on the road, and they don't understand, well, you've got to speak the language they understand and that's the English. There's more English in this parish now than there is of Gaelic, and before we were bom it was more Gaelic than English. See, times have changed. People's changed with it. A very common pattern consisted of parents speaking Gaelic between themselves 21

These evaluations of language behavior are universal in Gaelic-speaking Scotland, where the bonding value of Gaelic vies with the mobility value of English. In a report on the Hebridean situation, one investigator wrote: If a Gaelic speaker chooses to speak English in a village situation where there are no officials present or other cues which make English-speaking appropriate, this indicates that he considers himself a cut above everyone else. "I went to help Calum pull his tractor out of the mud, and Malina was there with her husband. She was speaking English. Oh, I says to myself, lady, you're not for this place. You don't belong to this village." [Parman 1972:136]

East Sutherland in Sociolingutstic 104

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but addressing their children in English. T h e result quite often was that t h e children w e r e passively bilingual in varying degrees (some of them even perfect passive bilinguals). 22 A few o f the children clearly wished to dissociate t h e m s e l v e s from their fisherfolk background and urged their parents not to speak Gaelic at all, but most merely ignored the second language in their environment and opted for English exclusively. Parents and children agreed on the positive value o f E n glish and the negative value of Gaelic for the rising generation. T h e h o m e is the last bastion o f a subordinate language in competition with a dominant official language of wider currency. An impending shift has in effect arrived, even though a fairly sizable n u m b e r of speakers may b e left, if those speakers have failed to transmit the language to their children, so that no r e p l a c e m e n t generation is available when the parent generation dies away." T h e pattern of the shift is almost monotonously the same in diverse settings: the language of wider currency is recognized as the language of upward mobility, and as soon as the linguistic c o m p e t e n c e of the parents permits, it is introduced into the home. F r o m northern Norway: P e o p l e in the Lappish fjord community, with their aspirations directed towards participation in the public network as it is defined by Norwegians, do what they can to present themselves as full-fledged participants. Vlany families have even made the drastic decision to prevent their children from learning Lappish. [ E i d h e i m 1969:55] F r o m northern Italy: T h e functions of Italian in Sauris are in the main eminently Η [high]. . . . T h e c h i e f apparent breach in this Η pattern is the now wide-spread use o f Italian [instead of Friulian or G e r m a n ] by parents in the h o m e to their children o f pre-school and school age.

. . . T h e reason given by

informants for this use of Italian is in almost all cases the desire to ease the path of their children at school; a few have mentioned t h e general 22

The same pattern is reported in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where a man who succeeded in becoming a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch as an adult noted that his home exposure to the language resulted only in passive bilingualism: "I could not speak Dutch in grade school. I could understand it only because it was spoken at home. But not to me. We were never spoken to in Dutch at home" (1976).

" Timm (forthcoming) reports that this is the case in Brittany. The number of speakers is still quite high—about 665,000 people—but most of them are over forty and are not transmitting Breton to their children. Basing her opinion on multiple interviews in forty or more communities within the theoretically Breton-speaking area, Timm anticipates that what she calls '"grassroots' Breton" (that is, Breton used as a home language rather than Breton learned as a classroom language) will disappear within sixty to seventy years.

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usefulness of Italian as c o m p a r e d with t h e other languages. . . . [Denison 1971:166-67] Only w h e r e t h e decision to shift to English in t h e h o m e was too early or too late, in terms of t h e norms for the particular fishing c o m m u n i t y w h e r e it occurred, did it attract sharp criticism. O n e woman who was frequently heard to tell her son not to speak Gaelic because it would spoil his English, at a time when all the children in that village w e r e Gaelic speakers, was t h e object of much r e s e n t m e n t . On t h e o t h e r hand, in the same village, a family which allowed its children to arrive at school without English, at a t i m e w h e n all the other children were bilingual at school age, was equally subject to criticism. Evidently neither language disloyalty nor language loyalty as such is regarded as the important issue, but conformity to t h e linguistic norm. Note that this is language loyalty with regard to the transmission of Gaelic; language loyalty with regard to the use of Gaelic by known bilinguals is regarded as a separate issue. T h e kinds of decisions East Sutherland fisherfolk parents w e r e making about language use and language transmission in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s must have b e e n very much the kinds m a d e by non-fisherfolk parents at the time of the iVSA reports. This is in keeping with the linguistic lag characteristic of the fisherfolk: by t h e time a shift was u n d e r way a m o n g t h e m in the 1920s, it was virtually c o m p l e t e a m o n g o t h e r segments of the village populations. T h e r e is nothing surprising in the fact that some individuals in the fishing communities m a d e an early decision in favor of English, or in the fact that most kept pace with their community as a whole in moving from Gaelic to English. Neither is t h e r e anything very surprising in the fact that many Gaelie-dominant bilinguals continued to choose to use mostly Gaelic themselves while they chose not to transmit Gaelic to their children; they were raised with Gaelic themselves, but recognized that times had changed and that their children would be operating in t h e open world of modern-day Britain rather than in the closed world of the fishing communities. 1 1 But t h e r e is one group of individuals who do evoke surprise and recjuire some explanation: the semi-speakers. " It is c o m m o n e n o u g h for the nativ e speakers of a dying language to state that they value their m o t h e r tongue greatly, while doing nothing to e n s u r e its survival— that is, while failing to pass it on to their children. Because of this "acquiescence" in t h e d e a t h of t h e language on t h e part of t h e speakers who alone could foster a succeeding generation of native speakers, some scholars have spoken of language suicide r a t h e r than language d e a t h (Denison 1977, see also G r e e n e 1972). T h e attitude b e h i n d such terminology, however, is akin to Ryan s notion of "blaming the victim (Ryan 1976). "Suicide suggests morally r e p r e h e n s i b l e and socially i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e behavior. Although it certainly h a p p e n s that groups in a position of p o w e r give u p their own language for that of a n o t h e r (for example, t h e N o r m a n s in F r a n c e and ultimately in England as well), this is relatively rare. Most commonly, as in East S u t h e r l a n d , a g r o u p u n d e r g o e s a long period d u r i n g which its language is actively d e v a l u e d , while speakers of that language are p e n alized socially and economically, before m e m b e r s of t h e group see fit to withhold that language from their own children.

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I'nlike the older Gaelic-dominant bilinguals, the semi-speakers are not fully proficient in Gaelic. T h e y speak it with varying degrees of less than full fluency, and their grammar (and usually also their phonology) is markedly aberrant in terms of the

fluent-speaker

norm. Semi-speakers may be distinguished

from fully fluent speakers of any age by the presence of deviations in their Gaelic which are explicitly labeled "mistakes" by the fully fluent speakers. That is, the speech community is aware of many (though not all) of the deficiencies in semispeaker speech performance. 2 5 Most semi-speakers are also relatively halting in delivery, or speak Gaelic in rather short bursts, or both; but it is not manner of delivery which distinguishes them, since semi-speakers of comparable grammatical ability may speak with very different degrees of confidence and "fluency." At the lower end of speaker skill, semi-speakers are distinguished from near-passive bilinguals by their ability to manipulate words in sentences. Near-passive bilinguals often know a gix>d many words or phrases, but cannot build sentences with them or alter them productively. Semi-speakers can, although the resultant sentences may be morphologically or syntactically askew to a greater or lesser extent. It seems perverse that a group of people whose control of E S G is imperfect, and whose agemates have for the most part opted for English only, should continue to use a stigmatized language of strictly local currency when they are fully proficient speakers of a language of wider currency. T h e r e are at least four identifiable factors which operate to produce the anomaly of the E S G semispeaker. T h e simplest, because it involves least in the way of active choice, is late birth-order in a large, relatively language-loyal family. Quite often the last two or three children among a large group of siblings will emerge as semi-speakers. It is not so much that the parents alter their language practices with these last children (although that can happen, too), as that the number of older siblings who have received English-language schooling begins to affect the amount of Gaelic spoken in the home, especially among the children themselves.® O t h e r factors presuppose more in the way of a conscious choosing of Gaelic among young potential speakers. T h e factor most frequently mentioned bv semi-speakers themselves is a strong attachment to some kinsperson other than the parents in the first or—especially—second ascending generation. It may b e older siblings or cousins or aunts or uncles of the parents who play the crucial role in this linguistic socialization, but more often than not it is the parents' parents. In one case, one daughter was frequently sent to stay for long periods with a grandmother who had very little English, while several of her siblings were 25

T h i s is an important criterion, because the "younger fluent speakers" in E m b o also deviate from the most conservative norms of the dialect, but their departures from the norm are relatively subtle and almost none of them are consciously noticed by fellow speakers of any age. T h e speech community does not recognize younger

fluent-speaker

speech performance, but it does recognize a semi-speaker

s p e e c h performance (although not, of course, in those terms). "

I have found this same situation to produce Pennsylvania Dutch semi-speakers in B e r k s County, Pennsylvania as well (see Dorian 1980b).

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sent to a far more bilingual grandmother; she became fluent as a child, and remains an exceedingly language-loyal semi-speaker, while the siblings who went to the other grandmother are not now Gaelic speakers. In another case, the younger of two daughters became a semi-speaker because of her greater attachment to the grandmother. I used to stay with my granny a lot, you see, this is the thing. And I—I suppose my granny and grandfather, they spoke Gaelic all the time. More so, I suppose—I suppose I heard my granny and grandfather more than my mother and father, really. . . . My sister's older, but funny enough, I think I—I probably knew more than she did. And 1 think it was because I lived with my granny so much. I was never out of my granny s. [Embo semi-speaker, 1974] Thanks to the strong cross-generational ties outside the nuclear family which are characteristic of the fishing communities, a number of semi-speakers appeared even in households where the parents did not seek to pass Gaelic on to the children. A third factor in the genesis of the semi-speaker is exile, temporary or even permanent. It seems that a period away from the home community, in the company of a few fellow exiles, can produce an allegiance to one's own community which may take the form of language loyalty: I remember when we were working away, when I was in Edinburgh and there were girls there from Brora, and we always went out and we spoke [Gaelic] together. You know, the three of us. Because, you know, we just liked speaking. [Brora semi-speaker, 1974] In permanent exile the emblematic value of the home language is even stronger. An Embo-born woman who has lived in London since she was seven years old clings tenaciously to her Highland fishing-village heritage: I think it's a privilege, really, to speak [Gaelic]. . . . it's a connection with the Highlands. And I just—well, Scotland to me is the place. . . . I just enjoy talking it. And I—the older I get, the more I want to keep it. You know, I don't want to lose it. I think the older I get, the more I speak it. [Embo semi-speaker, 1974] This last semi-speaker is the most improbable example of language loyalty in my experience. London is an environment which can hardly be called favorable to Gaelic, and although her parents are active Gaelic speakers, they originally followed the pattern of speaking Gaelic to each other but not to the children. The daughter had extremely strong ties to one grandmother and lived in the grandmother's household until she was seven, but after that age she saw East Sutherland 108

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her grandmother only once or twice a year for brief periods. Aside from crossgenerational linguistic socialization and exile, however, this woman exemplifies a fourth factor in the genesis of the semi-speaker: the inordinately inquisitive and gregariousjxy^oniility. Outgoing and curious as a child, she insisted on being part of all linguistic interactions in her environment, Gaelic or English. Her parents, and even her beloved grandmother, tended to switch to English when speaking to her, but she demanded that they use Gaelic to her, too, so that she could learn both languages. Her goal was access to any verbal communication: Investigator: Now, did your parents want you to learn Gaelic, or didn't they? Embo semi-speaker: They didn't, they didn't pay any attention to what I was speaking. . . . I was always saying to them, "What's that you're saying?" It was my nose [that is, curiosity]! [1974; translated from the Gaelic] That this drive to be included linguistically is a characteristic of one individual's personality and not inherent in the situation is borne out by the fact that this semi-speaker's cousin of the same age, who lived in her grandmother's household in East Sutherland exactly as long as she did (and was also devoted to the grandmother) and then in London under exactly the same circumstances as she (Gaelic consistently spoken between the parents, adult visitors to the home likewise Gaelic speakers), neither speaks nor understands Gaelic today.27 There is no way to identify a semi-speaker except by testing. Some people who claim some Gaelic control prove to be excellent passive bilinguals but cannot make an intelligible sentence from the considerable number of isolated words which they know. One individual who actually disclaimed Gaelic control proved, on testing, to be a semi-speaker of the same proficiency as some others who speak freely and gladly and who do claim Gaelic control. The factors identified here are based on what is common to the backgrounds of both the "claimers" and the "disclaimer" who showed testable semi-speaker proficiency. The one "disclaimer" in the sample makes little active use of her Gaelic but expresses great attachment to Gaelic and showed stable control of the language over a five-year testing period; that is, she is not losing the language at any observable rate. It should be noted that there is no predictive power to the factors identified here as important in the genesis of the semi-speaker. Exposure to a beloved Gaelicspeaking grandparent does not necessarily produce a semi-speaker, nor does exile 27

An exceptionally young semi-speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch in the Hamburg area of Berks County shows exactly the same personality characteristics; his mother's account of his acquisition of Pennsylvania Dutch parallels the London ESC semispeaker's account of her own acquisition almost perfectly. There may well be an exceptional affinity for language in these two semi-speakers, but the most crucial factors in their acquisition of the home language were their insistent curiosity and their demand for linguistic inclusion (see Dorian 1980b).

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from the community, although the more of the four factors that come into play the more likely it is that a semi-speaker will result. Most semi-speakers seem to have rather fixed networks of Gaelic interaction, such that they use the language with a certain group of older bilinguals, mostly or wholly their own kin. They do not volunteer Gaelic with bilinguals outside this network, and to my suggestion that some of the older people might be delighted to discover that they could speak Gaelic they responded skeptically. They said that the older people outside their own networks would continue to speak English to them because English had become the older people's normal language of communication with people of the younger generation. In this they were most likely correct. A few semi-speakers attend Gaelic classes or sing in a Gaelic choir or both. These individuals tend to make wider use of their Gaelic; they will, for example, attempt to speak to Gaelic speakers from other parts of the Highlands. Two semi-speakers who live in a household where fluent speakers are still available as models have become noticeably better speakers of Gaelic during the five years over which they were tested. They say that having their Gaelic examined has roused their interest and curiosity, so that they now take note of what the fluent speakers are saying and how they say it.

Summary and

Conclusions

The sociolinguistic perspective of this chapter has been dynamic where possible, static where necessary. Patterns of interaction between Gaelic and English, and the several varieties of each, have not been constant over the past seventy or eighty years but are ever-changing. In connection with some of the topics covered in this chapter, the patterns of change have been recoverable through observation and through in-depth interviewing of bilinguals and monolinguals o f various ages. T h e movement of the linguistic domain of religion from wholly Gaelic to largely English is easily traced, for example, and patterns of language loyalty across various age groups are recoverable not only through interviewing but also by observing language behaviors over two and sometimes three generations of a family. On the other hand, self-reports of patterns of code switching fifty years previously are thoroughly unreliable, and it is impossible to get a realistic sense of whether some language behaviors have become more or less prevalent (for example, whether it is more true now than formerly that the presence of a single English interlocutor causes a Gaelic-speaking group to switch to English). Because the dynamic picture, insofar as it is recoverable, is the rather familiar one of a limited-currency, low-prestige language yielding progressively to an expanding, wider-currency, high-prestige language, there may seem to be a certain inevitability about the outcome. I think it is important to recognize that this is not actually the case. The number of "local" languages which have been seriously threatened by a language of wider currency and have survived to become successful national languages in their own right is surprisingly large, and it

East Sutherland in Sociolinguistic Perspective 110

includes such currently well-established languages as Czech, Finnish, Turkish, and Latvian (see Ellis and mac a' Ghobhainn 1971). Most of the cases oflinguistic resurgence are associated with political movements, and it is not surprising that the major thrust to halt the decline of Welsh and of Scottish Gaelic has come from the respective Nationalist political parties of those regions (Mayo 1974; Edwards et aJ. 1968). For our purposes it is only necessary to recognize that there is nothing foreordained about the extinction of a local language in competition with a language of wider currency. For every seemingly "inevitable" element of the pattern, there is a countercase to be taken into account. I noted earlier, for example (see chapter 1), that a language can be excluded altogether from the nation's schools without being in any way threatened. Similarly, if it seems inevitable that the subordinate group will learn the language of the dominant group, while the dominant group remains arrogantly monolingual as the very sign of its superiority, this is also not universally the case: The fact that there are more Emenvo bilingual in Dene, than Denespeakers who are bilingual in Komunku is not associated with any feeling among the Emenyo that they are politically less important or that their language is inferior to Dene. Bilingualism is treated as a desirable accomplishment and their command of Dene makes them, if anything, superior to the Dene. [Salisbury 1962:4] Additive bilingualism is possible; institutional support can be forthcoming for "local" languages; demographicallv insignificant groups do sometimes opt to transmit their language to their children and to maintain the home domain for that language only. One wonders, in the East Sutherland case, what might have been the result if a modest but steady growth had taken place in the local fishing industry after World War I, rather than a decline. Prosperity is a reinforcing factor whose effect the fisherfolk never had an opportunity to feel. The sociolinguistic patterns revealed in this chapter, although no more inherently inevitable than the social and cultural patterns described in the first two chapters, are nonetheless the linguistic counterpart of those social and cultural patterns. Given those patterns, the only surprising thing about the sociolinguistic patterns treated here is that the triumph of English was not more rapid and more total. There are at least five aspects of linguistic behavior, in the areas described here, in which the dominance of English over Gaelic is less complete than might be anticipated. First, despite the association of English with modernity and technology and the public spheres of life, no topic connected with these aspects of life forces a choice of English. If the setting and the interlocutor permit, any topic, no matter how sophisticated or remote from local life, can be discussed in Gaelic. Closely related to this aspect of resistance to English dominance is the thoroughgoing integration of English lexical borrowings into Gaelic; this integration makes

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possible the use of Gaelic for all topics. A third aspect of the resilience of Gaelic is the absence of a true diglossic relationship, in Fishman's (1967) extended sense, between Gaelic and English. Gaelic can be used for Η purposes, and is; English can be used for L purposes, and is. English has not been allowed to usurp all of the higher-prestige functions in the local linguistic ecology, even though it is the higher-prestige language. Again, and fourth, code switching in East Sutherland has not become rampant, despite the fact that all Gaelic speakers also know English. Most of the code switching which occurs is the result of a change in interlocutors, rather than a change in topic or in the mood of the speaker. Finally, and most strikingly, a number of semi-speakers emerged from the very age groups in which Gaelic was largely abandoned, some of them acquiring their Gaelic verymuch by an act of will: Brora semi-speaker: I was trying, myself, picking up words, and I was trying then—between my mother and my father, they were speaking Gaelic, I was trying what—to understand what they were saying. They were always speaking Gaelic . . . Investigator [interrupting]: Didn't your parents want— Brora semi-speaker [interrupting]: I don't think [so], I don't think they wanted [to teach us Gaelic]. . . . They wanted to speak Gaelic so that we couldn't understand them. [1968; translated from the Gaelic] This woman's elderly mother confirmed that she and her husband had not intended to transmit Gaelic to their children; it was a cousin of the father's who played the crucial linguistic socialization role in this semi-speaker's life. The power of the factors identified above as instrumental in producing semi-speakers can be measured by the perversity of the result: a group of fully proficient English speakers who choose to go on speaking, imperfectly, a language which links them to a stigmatized group. It has seemed important, in summing up this chapter, to stress the counter-intuitive aspects of the material: that it is not necessarily the case that the local-currency, low-prestige language will succumb, and that there are areas in which ESG—even though it is succumbing—has shown surprising resistance. One tends to think that because something is so it must be so; and that a familiar pattern is a universal pattern; and that the road to linguistic extinction is one of unrelieved, though perhaps gradual, capitulation on all fronts. Once it is established that none of these things is necessarily true, however, it still must be acknowledged that ESG is a dying language, and that its sociolinguistic "profile" is generally in accord with that fact. Though the patterns of retreat seen here are not inevitable, they are typical. English has taken over more domains and has received virtually all the institutional support that is forthcoming in British society. Bilingualism has consistently been regarded as transitional, and transmission of Gaelic to new generations of speakers has ceased. Today's bilinguals are supe-

East Sutherland 112

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rior in English proficiency rather than in Gaelic proficiency, and the flow of loanwords runs heavily from English to Gaelic rather than vice versa. If ESG has approached extinction less precipitously than might have been expected, there are still many familiar features in the approach, and anyone who has ever worked in a community where a language was dying will find patterns he knows all too well in the description offered here.

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4 Language Change in Dying Fluent Speakers' Gaelic and Semi-Speakers' Gaelic

ESG:

GEEEEGGGGGGEEEEEEEG

The Proficiency Continuum of

Speakers

Where the death of a language is extremely rapid and occurs by way of the extinction of the people who use it, it may happen that the last speakers of that language are fully fluent and remain in perfect control of the phonology, lexicon, and grammar of their mother tongue. A classic example of precipitous language death and group extinction is offered by Yahi, a northern Califomian Indian language. In a period of about sixty years, the Yahi people moved from an isolated existence to extinction. Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi, learned to speak a modified English during the five years he spent among English speakers. But he was a man perhaps in his fifties when captured, and Yahi was firmly established as his primary language. Swadesh, giving a capsule history of the extinction of Yahi, reports that Ishi's "command of his own language was faultless" (1948:228). Where a language shift is taking place, however, so that a new language is gradually replacing the original language of a community, without the extinction of a people, it is common to find speakers of quite different ability among the residual population which still speaks the older tongue. Here, too, a classic example may be found among descriptions of American Indian groups. Bloomfield was struck by the varying abilities of Menomini Indians in the use of their own language. While one woman in her sixties spoke "a beautiful and highly idiomatic Menomini," a man of around forty spoke a Menomini which was "atrocious," with a small vocabulary and "barbarous" inflections. Of the latter Bloomfield says: "He may be said to speak no language tolerably. His case is not uncommon among younger men, even when they speak but little English. Perhaps it is due, in some indirect way, to the impact of the conquering language" (Bloomfield I927;437). Language 114

Change

in Dying

ESG

There are no bilinguals in East Sutherland who "speak no language tolerably," but there are some bilinguals who have neither the syntactic range of the best local monolingual English speakers nor that of the best and most proficient older-generation Gaelic speakers. If there had been a truly monolingual Gaelic generation available to me for comparison, the gap in Gaelic syntactic ability would probably have loomed still larger. There is some evidence that certain complex Gaelic constructions once in use are being forgotten by even the best of today's bilinguals. 1 And the community acknowledges the possibility of falling between linguistic stools with the rueful saying Chaill mi α Ghäidhlig agus cha d fliuatr mi a Bheuri'—Ί lost the Gaelic and I didn't get the English.' Although there are no Gaelic speakers in East Sutherland today whose English is anything less than fluent, there does exist an interesting group of English-dominant bilinguals whose Gaelic is conspicuously aberrant in terms of older-generation norms. These are the semi-speakers described in chapter 3. Although some departure from older-generation norms is probably normal in any speech community, the degree of aberrance among E S G semi-speakers is quite radical in some areas, as will appear below. It is not certain how widespread a phenomenon the semi-speaker is in language death settings. Working with dying Luiseno and Cupeno in California, Jane Hill found no semi-speakers: "You either speak fairly well or not at all" (personal communication). But it is evident in a number of reports on dying language communities that a semi-speaker group does exist. The chief sources for Krauss's Eyah Texts (1963-70) seem to have been semi-speakers, for example, and among other American Indian communities semi-speakers have also been found: among the Shoshoni (Miller 1971), among the Tübatulabal (Voegelin and Voegelin 1977), among the Gros Ventre (Salzmann 1969), and among the Wishram-Wasco (Michael Silverstein, personal communication). As the language dies, a group of imperfect speakers characteristically appears who have not had sufficiently intensive exposure to the home language, or who have been much more intensively exposed to some other language; and if they continue to use the home language at all, they use it in a form which is markedly different from the fluent-speaker norm. 1

High-numeral ordinal modifiers are a case in point; the difficulties with them are discussed in Dorian 1978a: 1 0 4 - 5 . Striking also was my experience in attempting to elicit sentences with possessive relatives (for example, "The woman in whose house it happened died"). The corresponding E S G structure would have to use a double prepositional relative: "The woman at whom was the house in which it happened died." The oldest of the speakers with whom I worked on these structures produced single prepositional relative sentences along lines more consonant with English than with Gaelic and struggled with her double prepositional relative sentences, getting them just plain wrong, until in desperation I provided an old-fashioned E S G model for one of the latter. As if suddenly remembering a pattern she had not used in years, she then spontaneously went back and corrected all her earlier sentences with no hesitation or difficulty, expressing great satisfaction with their revised form.

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In E m b o , t h e smallest and most isolated of the East Sutherland villages w h e r e E S G is still s p o k e n , t h e r e is even a group intermediate b e t w e e n the semispeakers and t h e oldest fluent speakers. T h e s e are younger fluent speakers who show certain d e p a r t u r e s from t h e most conservative n o r m s — f o r example, in the case system and in t h e formation of the passive (see Dorian 1973)—while still speaking a fluent, expressive, and versatile Gaelic. T h e differences b e t w e e n their Gaelic and that o f t h e most conservative older fluent speakers are actually fairly n u m e r o u s , but also fairly s u b t l e , and their departures from the conservative norm pass largely u n n o t i c e d in t h e speech community. This happens the m o r e easily b e c a u s e t h e o l d e r fluent speakers themselves show deviations from the most conservative n o r m , though at a lower frequency. That is, the "conservative n o r m " is an ideal, r e p r e s e n t i n g s p e e c h habits which w e r e considered " b e s t " by t h e speech c o m m u n i t y in t h e earliest years I worked there. No o n e perfectly e m b o d i e s that ideal at p r e s e n t , if i n d e e d a n y o n e ever did. To take a single example which will b e dealt with at g r e a t e r length below, the feminine pronoun replacement is considered the " r i g h t " r e p l a c e m e n t for feminine nouns by many conservative older fluent

speakers, and they use it very much more than younger fluent speakers

do. But t h e i r use o f it is well off the 100 percent level (see table 7 below), and they tolerate a masculine pronoun replacement readily in its stead. T h e r e are younger fluent speakers who n e v e r use the feminine pronoun r e p l a c e m e n t at all (have "lost" it), but t h e older fluent speakers are unlikely even to have noticed that fact, since t h e y t h e m s e l v e s often substitute the masculine pronoun for the feminine. Although t h e r e are structures they do not handle as easily as older fluent

speakers, younger fluent speakers clearly function superbly in G a e l i c in

terms of c o m m u n i c a t i v e efficacy, and a good many of them are Gaelic-dominant. It should b e stated that a fair bit o f the semi-speakers' grammatical deviance passes u n r e m a r k e d within the speech community as well. (This is especially true of m o r p h o p h o n e m i c deviations.) But the degree of deviance and its pervasiveness are, of c o u r s e , much higher in the speech of the semi-speakers, and in particular t h e i r habit o f analogical leveling in morphology has b e c o m e a linguistic s t e r e o t y p e (Dorian 1977a). T h e speech community is on the whole aware o f t h e e x i s t e n c e o f a semi-speaker E S G in a way that they are not aware of the younger fluent speakers and the changes in their Gaelic. This is natural and realistic, s i n c e t h e younger fluent speakers c o m m u n i c a t e altogether adequately in Gaelic, w h e r e a s e v e n t h e best of the semi-speakers make relatively restricted use o f their G a e l i c and show certain limitations on their communicative abilities in the language. 2 In B r o r a and Golspie t h e r e seems to b e no group equivalent to t h e E m b o younger-fluent-speaker group; speakers are the match either of the E m b o older-fluent-speaker group or o f the E m b o semi-speaker group. I have no sure explanation o f t h e wider spectrum of fluent speakers in E m b o , but possibly 2

See chapter 3 and the close of the Summary and Conclusions section of the present chapter.

Language Change in Dying ESG 116

Embo's greater isolation, smaller size, lower number of resident English speakers, and hence wider age range of Gaelic speakers, permit Embo Gaelic to show a wider range of differentiation with more intermediate stages of deviation from conserv ative norms, whereas the more abrupt curtailment of Gaelic in Brora and Golspie prevents this. In Brora the distinction between fluent speaker and semi-speaker is a gross and obvious one (to the linguist, though not always to the community; some semi-speakers play a largely passive role in conversation, which masks their weak control of Gaelic grammar). There is thus no difficulty in placing informants in the correct group. In Embo I distinguished between the two fluent-speaker groups on the basis of the syntactic differences in their Gaelic which I noted earlier (Dorian 1973). Since there is consensus in Embo as to where the distinction between fluent speaker and semi-speaker is to be made, at least among my informants from the village, and since my assessment coincides with the community's, there is no difficulty in determining where to mark off the two groups at that end of the spectrum. 3 The availability of a broad proficiency continuum among speakers of ESG provides an outstanding opportunity to identify, and follow, changes in the grammar of the dialect as it moves toward extinction. It is likely that some speakers have shown change in their control of Gaelic grammar over their lifetimes, since many of them spoke a great deal more Gaelic in their youth than they do now. Such changes are sometimes hinted at in their responses to complex grammatical material. But since I can test them only at the current end of their linguistic lives, realistic assessment of this kind of individual linguistic change is not possible. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible, and highly interesting, to test across the whole community of speakers by age groups and so obtain a profile of change in ESG along the entire proficiency continuum. The three groups of speakers recognized here are ordered by age within each of the villages; older fluent speakers are invariably older than semi-speakers, and in Embo the younger fluent speakers are intermediate in age between the other two groups. Thus, changes which appear across speaker groups within the proficiency continuum are also changes in "apparent time" (Labov 1966); although the test results were all gathered at the same period, they are organized (by means of the different speaker groups) so as to reflect the acquisition of Gaelic at successively later periods within the community of speakers.

Methods

of Testing along the Proficiency

Continuum

Since all speakers of ESG are bilingual, and since translation between Gaelic and English is a well-developed skill in the speech community, a straightforward method of testing for changes in Gaelic grammar suggested itself. From 3

The line falls, interestingly enough, between a brother and a sister only one year apart in age (see Dorian 1977a).

117

the relatively large pool of fluent speakers I chose four older fluent speakers (hereafter OFSs) and four younger fluent speakers (hereafter YFSs), the latter necessarily all from Embo, and presented each of the eight with the same set of English sentences for translation into Gaelic. The stimulus sentences were designed to include, when translated, a great many of the significant morphological and syntactic features of ESG. These were, in general, features which are important in any variety of Gaelic (such as the case system, the gender system, the independent and dependent verbal systems, relatives, tag questions, and so forth), although some features which are either especially strong in ESG or peculiar to the dialect were also stressed (such as diminutive formation and the use of pronominal versus pronominal-prepositional objects of verbal nouns). What I took to be the conservative norm with regard to such features was the usage of the oldest and best speakers with whom I worked in the 1960s. In choosing the eight fluent speakers and in designing the test sentences, it was useful to have had many years of experience in the community. Prior knowledge allowed exclusion of "contaminated" speakers (those who were liable to shift in the direction of "church Gaelic" or of other regional dialects) and the inclusion of the grammatical structures which seemed the most likely candidates for change across the proficiency continuum. In a number of cases I already had evidence of changing structures, either from earlier testing or from observation of speech use in the community. Knowledge of the local English also enabled me to write stimulus sentences couched in a form of English reasonably normal for the area. Of course it did not prove possible to interview the ideal testing population, 1 and, equally, the test sentences proved not always to be perfectly designed. Inadequacies in design ranged from including a few plural nouns for which the singular was never elicited (and with semi-speakers one never dares assume that the singular will be the "normal" singular; back-formation or some other analogical process may intervene), to failing to make sure that at least one representative verb occurred in all possible tenses, in independent and dependent form (rather than several different high-frequency verbs. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensiveness of the tests and because of the direct comparisons they made possible, the results were interesting and generally interpretable. Locating semi-speakers (hereafter SSs) for the lower reaches of the pro-

4

The most acute problem was that almost all of my most conserv ative OFS informants in Embo were dead before these tests were begun in 1974. The two OFSs from Embo who did serve as informants for these tests each had certain drawbacks. One had lived away from the community for many years and had returned to the village not many years before. The other lived in a household which included, among her own children, two SSs and a YFS; this womans Gaelic was not entirely free of the influence of her children s less conservative Gaelic. Though both Embo OFSs were consequently less conservative than the Brora and Golspie speakers of the same age group, they nonetheless represented successfully a more conservative Embo norm than the YFSs from the same village.

Language Change in Dying ESC 118

ficiencv continuum was more difficult. In a few cases I knew from early attempts to work with a supposed "speaker" of ESG that the person in question was not a fully proficient speaker, and so precisely those speakers who had been rejected as informants in my early years in East Sutherland were recruited as informants now. In several cases, fluent speakers had commented that someone's Gaelic was "comical ; these speakers were added to the list of potential SSs for interview as well. Some of the children of fluent speakers still alive, especially the children of fluent speakers who had told me that they had not tried to pass Gaelic on to their children, were recruited. And, finally, two siblings of SSs tested in 1974 and 1976 were themselves added to the test population in 1978, plus one or two "stray" informants met during door-to-door canvasses with the questionnaires described in the appendix. Initially I thought that the pool of SSs in East Sutherland might be quite small. I now believe that it is fair-sized. Many Gaelic-speaking households where Gaelic was not intentionally passed on to the children nonetheless produced SS children. And some of the last generation of children who went to school dominant in Gaelic failed to become fluent speakers, under the extreme pressure for English, but yet became SSs. By chance, all the SSs I located are from Brora or Embo, but I fully expect that Golspie has a SS population, too. Equally by chance, every single SS whom I located in 1974 and 1976 was female. In order to be sure that this was only chance, I made an effort to locate male SSs in 1978 and found three with no difficulty. There is thus no reason to believe that the SS phenomenon is sex-linked. 5 The four OFSs and the four YFSs who were tested with the original battery of 115 sentences in 1974 remained constant throughout the proficiencycontinuum testing in 1976, when a new battery of about 150 sentences was presented. In addition, two other YFSs were included for some of the testing because of my interest in the proficiency continuum within their own family: the mother was one of the OFSs in the study, a son was the youngest of the YFSs, two daughters were SSs, and another son was a largely passive bilingual who nevertheless completed some of the tests. A core of six SSs remained constant over the testing period 1974-78, but six others participated only in some sections of the testing according to their ability and availability. The translation task was, as I have indicated above, no problem at all for the fluent speakers. All of them are skilled translators, and all of them had done similar kinds of work with me before, during the years when I was working to discover the grammatical norms of the dialect. Quite often they expressed a real enjoyment in the task, saying, for example, that it was like being on a quiz show and being challenged to give an answer. My responses to the translations varied according to the personality and ability of the fluent speaker. If he or she was 5

I had considered this a possibility at one time because of the prominence of ties to a beloved grandmother in the linguistic autobiographies of female SSs. It seemed possible that boys might have a lesser tie to the grandparental generation and therefore less propensity to become SSs. But this proved not to be the case.

119

resilient and liked puzzles, I often pressed for the most conservative structure the speaker was capable of producing (if I was offered a less conserv ative structure first). If he or she was diffident, or easily confused, I usually accepted the first response given, or asked only casually for alternatives. In any case I wrote down all responses offered. All variants of structures under study were duly scored in analyzing the results. For seven or eight of the SSs interest in the testing was also high, and they relished the challenge to their Gaelic abilities. For a few of the SSs, however, the task was stressful and brought frustration in the cases where they had difficulty in expressing themselves in Gaelic. S'o elicitation of Gaelic could be completely without stress for some of the SSs, since they would inevitably bump up against such frustrations. Interviewing in Gaelic and elicitation of the lexicostatistical word list raised the same problem for such SSs. The test sentences were deliberately kept simple, for the most part, so as to make responses from all speakers possible. Where the relatively few test sentences of greater complexity were concerned, I repeatedly assured the SSs that I would be glad to have the sentence in any form in which they could say it and still keep the same meaning— that I was interested in all their ventures in expressing these sentences. SSs were both brave and ingenious in tackling such sentences. There were no refusals, although there were occasional failures when no way of saying the English sentence in Gaelic occurred to the SS. Typically failures of this kind occurred when the SS tried to find a direct translation equivalent for a word or structure without one, instead of simply asking himself how he would express that English meaning in Gaelic. 6 Where ignorance of vocabulary items kept the SSs from giving a response, I either simplified the lexicon slightly or supplied the citation form of the missing word. 7 Often a given SS made more than one attempt at a given sentence. Again I wrote down all variants and scored them all in analyzing the results. The advantage of presenting identical stimulus sentences to so many speakers along the proficiency continuum was that the responses were then directly comparable. If there was room for legitimate variation—that is, if there were several equally correct ways of saying the sentence in ESG—it normally showed up promptly among the eight fluent-speaker responses. In such cases I 6

One SS gave up once on an interrogative past tense, for example, because she could not find the (nonexistent) Gaelic equivalent for the English dummy-verb "do." On two other tests of the interrogative past tense, she pressed the Gaelic verb dean "make do" into service, but on one occasion she broke out of this equivalence pattern and supplied a reasonably correct Gaelic form.

' For example, the word "build" caused some SSs difficulty in the sentence "He built a church for the village"; I substituted "put up," and there were no further difficulties And for the sentence "Come away in, both of you!" I wrote down whatever was first offered spontaneously, but sometimes then supplied Gaelic dithis pair, both' to see whether the SS could use it, and if so, how well he would integrate it into the grammar of the sentence.

Language Change in Dying

120

ESG

usually asked for "other ways of saying that" and took down all the variations. But since I knew the dialect well before writing the test sentences, I was able for the most part to edit out excessive variability in advance and thereby obtain generally similar parameters of response from the fluent speakers. Under these conditions genuine patterns of change emerge quite clearly when speaker responses are compared by age group, and SS departures from the fluent-speaker norm are particularly conspicuous. The SSs whose responses are evaluated here are not all of the same proficiency by any means. Three of them in particular are fairly strong speakers as SSs go, and six others are quite weak in their grammar; one is of intermediate ability, and two of the "speakers" who participated in a few of the test sets were scarcely more than passive bilinguals. Often developments in the grammar of E S G can be discussed globally for the SS group as a whole, but where necessary I will distinguish between the more proficient (usually the four more skillful speakers) and the less proficient (usually the other eight). Or, more often, only the results for the near-passive bilinguals need be distinguished from the results for the rest of the group. The material gathered by way of the translation tests was quite extensive; a full treatment of the entire range of results would certainly more than double the bulk of this book. Consequently the treatment here must be selective. This chapter will deal in some detail with patterns of conservation and change in the grammatical categories of the nominal and verbal systems of E S C : gender, case, and number in the noun phrase, and tense, number, and voice in the verb phrase. Such a choice of emphasis follows naturally from the concerns of earlier studies in which I considered certain of these categories, but (except in one case) without systematic inclusion of data from the SSs: case and voice in Dorian 1973, gender in Dorian 1976, the vocative case in Dorian 1978d, and number (in nouns only) in Dorian 1978b. Because it seems often to be the case that isolated lexical items survive long after all productive use of a language has disappeared in a community, I also include and discuss the results of a lexical test administered to the same set of speakers. The grammatical categories of E S G are signaled in part by devices entirely familiar to speakers of Indo-European languages, such as suffixation and internal vowel modification. The commonest noun plural allomorph, for example, is a suffix /-an/, but there are also noun plurals formed by internal vowel modification (for example, /mak k / 'son', plural /mikb/). Suppletion also appears to a small extent in the expression of both nominal and verbal grammatical categories. There are two peculiarly Celtic devices which play a role in expressing the grammatical categories of E S G , however, one of them a very major role. These are the initial and final consonant mutations. Since they are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and since they are important to most of the grammatical categories in question and are a major locus of change in the dialect, the next section will offer a brief exposition of their nature and workings.

121

The Consonant Mutations of ESG T h e r e are two initial mutations in Scottish G a e l i c (cf. Dorian 1 9 7 8 a : 6 7 - 7 7 ) . E a c h consists o f a series o f r e p l a c e m e n t s o f t h e initial consonant in t h e root o f a word (chiefly words o f the classes noun, adjective, and verb). Historically the r e p l a c e m e n t s are t h e result o f sandhi. Synchronicallv they sometimes have major grammatical significance, but often they are obligatory without carrying any grammatical m e a n i n g . O n e and t h e same mutation, for example, operates as the sole signal of t h e past t e n s e in verbs (/IdvckV 'sell', /xrekV sold ), and on the other hand is obligatory in adjectives after t h e adverbs /kle:/ 'very' and /ro/ 'too, excessive' as a purely automatic (meaningless) c h a n g e (/khunardax/ 'dangerous', /kle. xunardax/ 'very dangerous'). T h e mutation known as lenition (older term: aspiration)

replaces stops

with spirants and spirants with o t h e r spirants, in t h e main. T h e full range of r e p l a c e m e n t s in lenition is as follows for E S G (I = in t h e environment of a following front vowel; U = in the e n v i r o n m e n t o f a following back vowel; L =

any

lateral):

aspirated obstruents radical

I 1 f

lenited

chI I 1 h

th I 1 h

Ph

nasal

c k L' I 1

khI I 1

9

9

unaspirated

m 1 1 V

obstruents

radical

Ρ

t

c

kl

kU

A

lenited

1 V

1 y

1 V

y,x*

Ύ,Χ"

kfcU I 1 X

A

fricatives radical

s 1 1 h

f I 1 0

lenited

si 1 1 h

sU I 1 9

aberrant consonant radical

phw

pw

mw

tSv

thr

/\

1 w

1 w

Λ

Λ

lenited

fw~hw

radical

str 10

/

\

r ~ n o mutation

lenited 8

clusters9

hw~w

sn'

sL

' \

1

n ' ~ n o mutation

L

hr~r

tr

l\ yr~r

khV

kv

1 ς

y

1

The lenited form is lyl in Golspie, IxJ in Brora and Embo.

' All clusters other than those listed here show the normal lenition of their initial consonant as given above. Thus, the lenited form of/pkr-/ is lh-1. 10

This mutation takes place only in nouns. There is in any case only one common verb in initial /str-/.

Language Change in Dying ESG

122

The mutation known as nasalization (older term: eclipsis) replaces voiceless consonants with voiced consonants, in the main. The full range of replacements in nasalization is as follows for ESG: aspirated 1

radical

p·

nasalized radical

b

d

obstruents c

h

unaspirated 1

J

f

/ nasalized

f

1

k·

ρ

g

b

s

\

0 ~ n o mutation

/

obstruents

t

c

k

d S"

j str12

g sn' 1 2

J ~ n o mutation

dr

dr

\

d ~ n o mutation

The initial mutations are prominent in verbal syntax, for example. The phrase /pris a/ (with unmutated verbal root /pris/ break ) signifies the imperative 'Break it!' With lenited initial consonant /vris a/ the past tense is formed: 'It broke. With nasalized initial consonant /bris a1 the colloquial interrogative future is formed: 'Will it break?' 13 Some consonants and consonant clusters are not subject to mutation, however, and in such cases context has to serve to distinguish among possible meanings. The initial mutations are highly productive. Loanwords borrowed from English are mutated according to the same patterns as native words, for the most part, and coinages likewise. Because the definite article nasalizes any noun in initial /th/ plus vowel, a borrowing like /^elavasan/, for instance, becomes /delavasan/ after the definite article; and /helavasan/ after the numeral /ta:/ two', which lenites any following noun or adjective. Where the initial mutations have grammatical significance, they may occur as the sole marker of a grammatical category, or in conjunction with a grammatical particle, or in conjunction with an inflectional suffix, or both. Final mutation (cf. Dorian 1978a:77-80) is a much less far-reaching part of ESG: it plays a role in the expression of fewer grammatical categories, and it is not productive. It applies to a closed class of nouns and verbs (and one adjective only), and never affects loanwords or coinages. Nonetheless, since it is involved in the expression of such grammatical categories as the plural and the vocative of nouns, it needs to be dealt with here. In final mutation the features of voicing and manner of articulation remain constant in the affected consonant, but place of articulation changes. A dental occlusive is replaced by an alveolar; or, in rare cases, the reverse occurs. The dental nasal, the velar fricative, and the velar " Nouns and adjectives in /S-/ are reliably nasalized to /]•!. The commonest verbs in /§-/ are frequently, but not universally, nasalized to /]-/. Less common verbs show no mutation. 12

Only nouns are affected. Verbs in these clusters are not mutated; no adjectives occur with these initial clusters.

13

There is a potential interrogative particle in the last phrase which can give /am briS a / 'Will it break?' It is commonly unexpressed, however, and leaves its mark solely in the nasalization of /priS/.

123

lateral are replaced by palatals of the same series; arid the reverse replacement again also occurs, although this is less common. The replacements are as follows in ESG (with two arrows indicating that replacement occurs in both directions): tk

ιs

1 cb

» Γ

The consonant replacement of final mutation is often (but not always) accompanied by internal vowel change. The same set of replacements may also occur in conjunction with suffixation to a word stem; the term "final" mutation will be stretched to cover such cases, even though the consonant alternation becomes internal in a word when a suffix accompanies it. A noun plural which shows final mutation might express the plural solely by means of the mutation, for example (/kkatV 'cat', plural /k'acV); or by final mutation plus a vowel change (/kkräü:n/ 'mast', plural /kfcrl:n7); or by final mutation, vowel change, and suffixation (/ρεχ/ 'beast', plural /ρ3ίςεη/). I hope that with this brief introduction to the workings of the various consonant mutations in ESG, it will be possible for the non-Celtic reader to follow readily the discussion of grammatical changes in ESG as revealed by comparisons along the proficiency continuum. Wherever a particular mutation is involved, the reader might make reference to this section. Other sorts of changes involve devices which are commoner in the Indo-European language family and offer no particular problem for the reader familiar with the study of language change.

Changes

in the Nominal

System:

Gender

Gaelic has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. Gender is the most redundantly signaled grammatical category in the language. Two signals may occur within the noun itself: initial mutation of the noun after the definite article, and a gender-marked diminutive suffix. Other signals outside the noun are the form of the definite article, the initial mutation of any attributive adjective, and gender-marked pronoun replacement. Some, all, or none of these signals may actually occur in a given sentence. A subset of test sentences was included in the translation battery to test specifically for gender in ESG. Fifteen sentences containing the frame "The w e e fell and it broke" were presented; in the translation responses all of the signals of gender could potentially appear. Apart from these fifteen sentences there w e r e no tests of pronoun replacement, but all of the other gender signals also appeared elsewhere in the total corpus, some very rarely but others frequently. The various gender signals proved to have very different rates of reten-

Language

124

Change in Dying

ESG

tion, so that it will be necessary to deal briefly with each one separately. Pronoun replacement, for example, shows a good deal of decay as a gender signal. T h e masculine pronoun /a/ is being extended to use with all inanimates, presumably on the model of English "it." Six reliably feminine" nouns in the gender tests should have produced replacements with the feminine pronoun Iii, but O F S s used only 16 in 24 opportunities (66.5 percent), and Y F S s used only 7 in 24 opportunities (29 percent). Although all O F S s used some /i/-replacement, two Y F S s used none. SSs likewise used none. T h e weakness of feminine pronoun replacement is further evident in its optional status for a good many speakers. For example, the O F S who was most conservative overall in her use of a feminine replacement nonetheless gave several variable responses in which she alternated between the masculine and the feminine pronoun replacement for feminine nouns. O n e such, verbatim, ran: /huc b 3 jugag veg 3 vä:n s vri$ a. n3 vriS i. na vris a./ 'The wee juggie fell down and he broke. O r she broke. Or he broke.' Asked which of these replacements she preferred, she had no strong feelings: either one would do. T h e masculine pronoun is rather freely generalized into the position historically reserved to the feminine pronoun for some speakers, but not vice versa. As a result, the occurrence of a single feminine pronoun replacement for an inanimate noun is an almost certain sign that that noun has feminine gender in the dialect. With some YFSs, however, and especially with SSs, feminine pronoun replacements simply do not occur. A few nouns in E S G rarely appear without a diminutive suffix, but for most nouns diminutivization is optional. It is exceptionally common both in E S G and in East Sutherland English, however, probably under the influence of northeast Scots, which is famous for its heavy use of diminutives. 1 5 Consequently diminutives were not hard to elicit, and without any special insistence on diminutivization, English stimulus sentences with "wee" produced 108 diminutives from fluent speakers and 71 from SSs. Table 2 indicates that fluent-speaker assignment of appropriate diminutive suffixes ran substantially higher than did SS assignment of appropriate diminutive suffixes, expecially where masculine nouns were concerned. W h e r e the six reliably feminine nouns and the six reliably masculine nouns were concerned, SSs provided feminine diminutive suffixes for most feminine nouns, but masculine nouns received masculine diminutive suffixes from SSs only half the time (receiving feminine diminutive suffixes the other half of the time); that is, SSs show some tendency to generalize the feminine diminutive suffix. Diminutiviza14

S o m e nouns are of constant gender for all speakers and all t h r e e villages; others are inconstant in various ways. In these tests there were six reliably masculine nouns and six reliably feminine nouns. But there was also one noun which was idiosyncratically feminine for a single speaker, and one which was masculine in o n e village and feminine in another; and some nouns simply have variable g e n d e r in t h e dialect and cannot b e assigned a definitive gender.

15

Professor Kenneth Jackson called my attention to this connection.

125

Masculine nouns

Feminine nouns

Number of Number of Number of diminutives Number of diminutives offered for offered for masculine Percentfeminine Percentage feminine nouns suffixes masculine nouns suffixes age OFS

16

16

100%

16

15

94%

YFS

19

19

100

17

15

88

SS

22

11

50

22

17

77

Table 2. P e r c e n t a g e of g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e

diminutive

suffixes according

to

speaker group tion as a morphological p r o c e s s c o n t i n u e s s t r o n g a m o n g SSs, b u t it seems to b e losing m u c h of its g e n d e r - s i g n a l i n g force. If w e take f e m i n i n e and masculine n o u n s t o g e t h e r , O F S s m a d e 97 p e r c e n t g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e use of d i m i n u t i v e suffixes, YFSs 94 p e r c e n t , and SSs 64 p e r c e n t , for t h e subset of s e n t e n c e s used to test g e n d e r specifically. O n l y o n e phonologically d e f i n e d class of n o u n s shows both a g e n d e r specific form of t h e d e f i n i t e article and an associated gender-signaling difference in initial m u t a t i o n of t h e n o u n itself. F o r n o u n s in an initial labial or velar stop, t h e f e m i n i n e f o r m of t h e d e f i n i t e article in t h e nominative/accusative case is /a/, and it is followed by lenition in t h e n o u n ; t h e m a s c u l i n e form of t h e definite article in t h e s a m e case is /a(n)/, a n d it is followed by nasalization in t h e noun. T h r e e of t h e n o u n s in t h e g e n d e r - t e s t i n g s e n t e n c e s w e r e f e m i n i n e s in an initial labial or velar stop. T h e y s h o w e d 100 p e r c e n t g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e lenition a m o n g O F S s (12 out of 12 cases), 92 p e r c e n t g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e lenition a m o n g YFSs (11 out of 12 cases), b u t only 38 p e r c e n t g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e lenition a m o n g SSs (8 out of 21 cases). F o u r masculine n o u n s of t h e s a m e phonological class showed, in t h e s a m e tests, t h e following p e r c e n t a g e s of g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e nasalization a m o n g t h e t h r e e g r o u p s of speakers: 100 p e r c e n t a m o n g O F S s (16 out of 16 cases), 87.5 p e r c e n t a m o n g YFSs (14 out of 16 cases), a n d 61 p e r c e n t a m o n g SSs (19 out of 31 cases). All of t h e f l u e n t - s p e a k e r a b e r r a t i o n s w e r e p r o d u c e d by t h e s a m e individual, t h e y o u n g e s t of t h e YFSs. E a c h of t h e 3 cases in which h e d e p a r t e d from t h e n o r m involved t h e s u b s t i t u t i o n of t h e o p p o s i t e mutation from the o n e e x p e c t e d ; such s u b s t i t u t i o n s a r e e q u i v a l e n t to g e n d e r changes, and they may in fact r e p r e s e n t idiosyncratic g e n d e r - a s s i g n m e n t s on his part. F i f t e e n of t h e SS aberrations w e r e likewise potential g e n d e r c h a n g e s , b u t a n o t h e r 6 w e r e of a t y p e u n i q u e to SSs: n o m u t a t i o n at all a p p e a r e d a f t e r t h e definite article, b u t r a t h e r t h e u n m u t a t e d root. 1 6 H e r e g e n d e r is not c h a n g e d b u t unassigned, so far as this signal is c o n c e r n e d .

16

Four other SS aberrations were of an indeterminate nature because of a phonological weakness on the part of two SSs (lack of a distinction between voiced and voiceless unaspirated consonants).

Language Change in Dying ESG 126

For t h e c o r p u s as a w h o l e , t h e statistics show generally similar t r e n d s . O F S s lenited f e m i n i n e n o u n s of this phonological class a p p r o p r i a t e l y 100 p e r c e n t of t h e time (67 out of 67 cases), YFSs 9 3 p e r c e n t of t h e t i m e (67 out of 72 cases), and SSs 59 p e r c e n t of t h e t i m e (56 o u t of 95 cases). 17 M a s c u l i n e nasalizations w e r e a p p r o p r i a t e for O F S s 100 p e r c e n t of t h e t i m e (108 o u t of 108 cases), for YFSs 94 p e r c e n t of t h e t i m e (109 o u t of 116 cases), and for SSs 6 8 p e r c e n t of t h e t i m e (118 out of 174 cases). 17 SS r e t e n t i o n of t h e g e n d e r - s i g n a l i n g n o u n m u t a t i o n s is r a t h e r b e t t e r over t h e e n t i r e b a t t e r y of tests than in t h e specifically g e n d e r - t e s t i n g subset, b u t it shows a fairly s h a r p drop-off as c o m p a r e d w i t h

fluent-speaker

perform-

ance. If w e take m a s c u l i n e and f e m i n i n e n o u n s t o g e t h e r , O F S s m a d e 100 p e r c e n t g e n d e r - a p p r o p r i a t e use of initial m u t a t i o n , YFSs 94 p e r c e n t , and SSs 65 p e r c e n t . In s t a n d a r d Gaelic g r a m m a r , t h e t r e a t m e n t of an a t t r i b u t i v e adjective after masculine and f e m i n i n e n o u n s in t h e nominative/accusative (nom./acc.) case is a reliable signal of g e n d e r : a d j e c t i v e s a r e lenited after f e m i n i n e s and u n m u t a t e d after masculines. A l t h o u g h this r u l e is not invariable in E S G , since both lenited adjectives after masculines and u n m u t a t e d a d j e c t i v e s a f t e r f e m i n i n e s are tolerated (that is, a c c e p t e d as correct) e v e n by very c o n s e r v a t i v e speakers, and are s o m e t i m e s p r o d u c e d by t h e m , t h e r e is still a distinct p r e f e r e n c e for t h e g e n d e r signaling usage of t h e s t a n d a r d g r a m m a r a m o n g O F S s . It falls off, however, a m o n g YFSs, and d i s a p p e a r s a m o n g SSs. Table 3 shows t h e results for t h e subset of g e n d e r - t e s t i n g s e n t e n c e s . S o m e lenition a p p e a r s in adjectives after masculine a m o n g fluent speakers, b u t lenition a f t e r f e m i n i n e s is 5 0 . 5 p e r c e n t g r e a t e r for O F S s and 38 p e r c e n t g r e a t e r for YFSs. SSs r e v e r s e t h e s t a n d a r d g r a m m a r altogether: they actually lenite slightly m o r e after m a s c u l i n e n o u n s than after feminine nouns, although t h e d i f f e r e n c e is small.

r

These figures exclude the data from one SS who does not control nasalization at all and therefore does not have the mutational gender-option under consideration.

Lenition

Lenition

after

noun Number

noun

(correct)

Lenited

after

Difference

masculine

feminine

Percentage Number

(incorrect)

Lenited

in

percentage

Percentage 37.5%

lenited· Percentage

OFS

17

15

88%

16

6

YFS

16

7

44

17

1

6

38

SS

40

30

75

37

29

78

-3

50.5%

Table 3. Lenition in t h e a t t r i b u t i v e a d j e c t i v e after f e m i n i n e and masculine n o u n s in t h e g e n d e r - t e s t i n g s e n t e n c e s " Feminine percentage minus masculine percentage.

127

For all attributive adjectives in t h e corpus, the statistics followed much t h e same pattern: O F S s lenited the adjective 42.5 percent more after feminine n o u n s (80 p e r c e n t versus 37.5 p e r c e n t after masculine nouns), and YFSs 33.5 p e r c e n t more (47.5 p e r c e n t versus 14 percent after masculine nouns). SSs reversed t h e p a t t e r n by leniting 4 p e r c e n t more after masculine nouns than after feminine nouns (70.5 p e r c e n t versus 66.5 percent). In actual fact it is only the O F S s who approach the standard grammar's norm of leniting adjectives after t h e feminine noun and leaving adjectives unmutated after the masculine noun. SSs indiscriminately lenite most adjectives after both genders, and YFSs lenite less than half the time even after feminine nouns, preferring the u n m u t a t e d adjective in the majority of all cases. But the crucial difference is that YFSs show a differential use of lenition: they may have a general p r e f e r e n c e for t h e u n m u t a t e d adjective, but the lenited adjective is 33 percent more c o m m o n for them after t h e feminine noun. Thus, a gender signal which is moderately operative among O F S s remains visible among YFSs, and then disappears a m o n g SSs. As it happens, however, t h e r e is one O F S who makes no use at all of this device (she lenites all attributive adjectives, and by herself accounts for 7 of t h e 9 O F S lenitions after masculine nouns in the entire corpus), and none of t h e SSs do; but all YFSs make greater use of lenition with adjectives which follow feminines. Adjective mutation is not altogether without significance for gender signaling in E S G , thanks to the differential use which is m a d e of it by fluent speakers. But since it is a variable rule for almost all fluent speakers, with neither the mutated nor t h e u n m u t a t e d adjective truly "marked," it has nothing like the gender-signaling strength of the diminutive or of noun mutation after the definite article. If all O F S s lenite an adjective after a given noun, it is likely that that noun is feminine and if none of them does (except the one who lenites all adjectives), it is likely that it is masculine; but this is the most that can be said. O n e feminine p r o n o u n replacement carries more definite gender-signaling weight, with the feminine p r o n o u n very much the "marked" replacement for any inanimate noun; and so does any O F S s diminutive formation or noun mutation after the definite article. Because of t h e discrete n a t u r e of the various g e n d e r signals and their c o n s e q u e n t ability to operate i n d e p e n d e n t l y of each other, it is possible to get contradictory g e n d e r signals within a single sentence, in t e r m s of the conservative norm. T h e only kind of contradiction which is actually common is brought about by t h e generalization of the masculine p r o n o u n replacement; even among OFSs t h e r e w e r e 16 instances (out of 28 w h e r e contradiction was possible) in which the pronoun r e p l a c e m e n t was at odds with t h e diminutive suffix and/or the noun mutation. Far less c o m m o n are contradictions in t e r m s of the diminutive suffix and t h e noun mutation, but w h e r e the g e n d e r of the noun shows some variation in the dialect such contradictions do occur; two such nouns were produced with mixed signals by fluent speakers. Very occasionally contradictory suffixal and mu-

Language 128

Change

in Dying

ESG

tational signals occur a m o n g fluent s p e a k e r s w h e r e t h e r e is no a p p a r e n t reason for it; o n e n o u n so sturdily f e m i n i n e that it p r o d u c e d four f e m i n i n e p r o n o u n r e p l a c e m e n t s n o n e t h e l e s s also p r o d u c e d c o n t r a d i c t o r y suffixal and mutational signals f r o m t h r e e d i f f e r e n t fluent s p e a k e r s . A m o n g fluent s p e a k e r s 8 p e r c e n t of t h e n o u n s for which t h e y gave b o t h a m u t a t i o n and a d i m i n u t i v e suffix s h o w e d contradiction (5 out of 58). A m o n g SSs t h e p e r c e n t a g e was 35 (6 out of 17). T h e c o m p l e x p i c t u r e of g e n d e r signaling in E S G is difficult to c h a r a c t e r ize briefly. T h e two g e n d e r - s i g n a l i n g devices which a p p e a r within t h e n o u n itself (initial m u t a t i o n a f t e r t h e d e f i n i t e article and t h e d i m i n u t i v e suffix) r e m a i n very strong for fluent s p e a k e r s . O n e of t h e s e signals has phonological limitations to its applicability, h o w e v e r , and t h e o t h e r b o t h phonological and s e m a n t i c limitations. T h e signals of widest p o t e n t i a l applicability—-pronoun r e p l a c e m e n t and a d j e c t i v e l e n i t i o n — s h o w m a r k e d decay. F o r t h o s e speakers w h o m a k e no use of f e m i n i n e p r o n o u n r e p l a c e m e n t a n d little or no differential use of a d j e c t i v e lenition, t h e n u m b e r of n o u n s to which g e n d e r can b e assigned is r e d u c e d , since n o u n s resistant to d i m i n u t i v i z a t i o n for phonological or s e m a n t i c reasons, a n d n o u n s in any initial c o n s o n a n t o t h e r than a labial or a velar stop, will not b e m a r k e d for g e n d e r . T h u s , t h e category

" g e n d e r " is intact in

fluent-speaker

E S G , b u t it applies

to a

smaller n u m b e r of n o u n s . F o r SSs, p r o n o u n r e p l a c e m e n t and a d j e c t i v e lenition are c o m p l e t e l y d e f u n c t as g e n d e r signals, but b o t h t h e d i m i n u t i v e suffix and n o u n m u t a t i o n retain s o m e s t r e n g t h . If w e a s s u m e that at least s o m e of t h e a b e r r a n t d i m i n u t i v e suffixes a n d n o u n m u t a t i o n s p r o d u c e d by t h e SSs r e p r e s e n t e d actual c h a n g e s in g e n d e r class for t h e n o u n s c o n c e r n e d r a t h e r than j u s t incorrect g e n d e r signals, 1 '' t h e n t h e level of r e t e n t i o n of g e n d e r signaling may b e h i g h e r than t h e figures

s e e m to indicate. In t h e section on t h e nom./acc. case within t h e discus-

sion of t h e case system below, an u n u s u a l use of lenited versus u n l e n i t e d consonants is n o t e d for o n e particularly weak semi-speaker, p o i n t i n g to a s u r p r i s i n g tenacity of g e n d e r m a r k i n g in s o m e form for e v e n a very low proficiency level.

Changes

in the Nominal

System:

Case

Gaelic has four cases, w h i c h contrast for t h e most p a r t only for d e f i n i t e noun p h r a s e s : nominative/accusative, genitive, dative, and vocative (cf. Dorian 1 9 7 8 a : 8 4 - 8 6 ) . In t h e plural t h e distinction b e t w e e n t h e nom./acc. and t h e d a t i v e d i s a p p e a r s , a n d t h e g e n i t i v e plural exists only as a rare fossilized form. T h u s , t h e case p a r a d i g m is far m o r e d i f f e r e n t i a t e d in t h e singular than in t h e plural in E S G :

18

This is not an unreasonable assumption, at least where the reassignment of feminine nouns to the masculine gender class is concerned There is a small but noticeable tendency in this direction even among fluent speakers. For rather striking evidence that a gender-class distinction survives, among even quite weak SSs, see p. 133 below.

129

masculine plural

masculine singular

nom./acc. /dat.

Ins k'a

Is xatV

[gen.

/na(n) gat·"/]

/xatV

voc.

/xac h /

nom./acc.

/a{n) gatV ' t h e cat'

dat.

Is xatV

gen. voc.

feminine plural

feminine singular nom./acc.

/a xalag/ ' t h e girl'

dat.

Is xalag/

gen. voc.

nom./acc./dat.

/ n a kalagan/

Is xalag/ 19

[gen.

/na(n) galagan/]

/xalag/

voc.

/xalagan/

T h e chief signals of case distinctions in E S C are t h e form of t h e definite article and initial mutations; in one case (the vocative) t h e r e are vestiges of inflectional morphology· which o p e r a t e in addition to t h e mutational signal (see below). O n e of t h e c a s e s — t h e genitive—is m o r i b u n d in E S C . No genitive plurals at all w e r e p r o d u c e d by t h e informants in t h e translation tests, although t h e r e w e r e s e n t e n c e s in t h e batten.· which allowed for genitive plurals in t e r m s of standard Gaelic g r a m m a r or e v e n of archaic E S G grammar. T h e only framework which is capable of eliciting t h e genitive singular from conservative E S G speakers is a possessive construction in which t h e possessor (in second position) is a n i m a t e and t h e thing possessed (in first position) is a body part, or an item of clothing, or s o m e o t h e r item intimately associated with t h e possessor. F o u r s e n t e n c e s in t h e c o r p u s included such frames. Two O F S s , two YFSs, and two SSs spontaneously a t t e m p t e d t h e genitive. All o t h e r speakers u s e d prepositional p h r a s e s instead to express possession. T h e success rate of t h e two O F S s was very good: of t h e seven genitive constructions they p r o d u c e d , six w e r e correctly f o r m e d ( u n m u t a t e d first n o u n , definite article in a p p r o p r i a t e form, and lenited second noun). T h e YFSs a t t e m p t e d only t h r e e genitives, of which two w e r e correctly f o r m e d . T h e SSs a t t e m p t e d four genitives, of which two w e r e correctly f o r m e d . But two of t h e SS genitives (one of t h e correctly f o r m e d ones and o n e of t h e incorrectly f o r m e d ones) w e r e semantically

i n a p p r o p r i a t e for E S G because t h e possessor was an in-

a n i m a t e object ("the kettle's lid"). Significantly, no fluent speaker a t t e m p t e d a genitive in that s e n t e n c e . Table 4 shows t h e differential use of t h e genitive by t h e t h r e e groups of speakers, and their differing rates of success with it. T h e c o m m o n e s t deviation in forming t h e genitive was t h e use of a nasalized second n o u n ; that is, t h e possessor-noun (where t h e possessor was masculine) a p p e a r e d in t h e nom./acc. instead of in t h e genitive, although t h e syntactic construction still r e s e m b l e d a genitive in that it juxtaposed two n o u n s without 18

There is an archaic genitive singular feminine case form which appears for some nouns as a fossil; by extrapolation that form here would be */n3 k'alag/. In the still tenuously productive possessive construction, however, the form would be as given in the paradigm above.

Language Change in Dying ESG 130

Prepositional phrase

Semantically appropriate genitive Correctly formed

Incorrectly formed

OFS

9

6

1

YFS

13

2

1

SS

30

1

1

Semantically inappropriate genitive Correctly formed

Incorrectly formed

Total

16 16 1

34

1

Table 4. Expression of the possessive by prepositional phrase and by genitive case in four test sentences any preposition to indicate possession. In such cases the word order could be said to have remained genitive while the morphophonology has become nom./acc. T h e dative in E S G is distinguished from the nom./acc. only in masculine nouns beginning with a labial or velar stop. Other initial-consonant classes of nouns which show this case distinction in standard Gaelic (for example, nouns in initial Is-/ or in an initial vowel) do not have a distinct dative form in E S G . What is called the dative is the distinctive form which the masculine article and noun take after most monosyllabic prepositions; the article loses its final nasal consonant and the noun"1 is lenited (whereas these nouns are nasalized after the nom./ acc. masculine article, which ends morphophonemically in a final nasal). T h e prepositional phrases produced show a clear difference in usage between O F S s and YFSs. T h e former lenited the noun (that is, used the dative) 87 percent of the time (75 out of 86 cases); in the other 11 cases they nasalized the noun (that is, used a form indistinguishable from the nom./acc.). The latter lenited 51 percent of the time (45 out of 88 cases) and nasalized in the other 43 cases. That is, almost half the Y F S forms, in an environment traditionally calling for the dative, were not datives. T h e SS results seemed very much out of line at first in that they were more conservative than the Y F S results. The SSs lenited in 77 cases and nasalized in only 36, which suggested that they preserved a dative at a far higher level than the Y F S s did. But the SS results were greatly skewed by the fact that one E m b o SS lacks the initial mutation "nasalization" altogether and has only the choice of lenition or no mutation at all. She has grasped the role of lenition in this case and uses it with almost perfect consistency, far beyond any other E m b o SS and, for that matter, far beyond any E m b o Y F S . Lacking nasalization altogether, she never deviates from what looks like an utter linguistic conservatism; but her "conservatism" is actually the result of a mutational weakness greater than that of any other SS. Furthermore, apart from the skewing from her responses, there turns out to be an internal geographical variation in the preservation of the dative: Brora and Golspie speakers retain it to a much greater degree than E m b o speakers, both at the fluent-speaker level and at the SS level. 20

S t e m s in initial labial or velar stop only, for these purposes.

131

If the weak E m b o SS's data are excluded and the rest of the data are then broken down along geographical lines, the resulting picture is considerably more generationally coherent, as shown in table 5. It is notable, however, that the loss of the dative lenition has gone essentially no farther among E m b o SSs than it had already gone among Y F S s . One of the constraints that prevents the loss of the dative from becoming wholesale seems to b e a lexical one. Some of the commonest nouns (for example, "village," "table") seemingly resist the intrusion of the nasalized nom./acc. form into the prepositional phrase, even among E m b o speakers and SSs. In addition, certain prepositions govern the dative more reliably than others; the most notable case is the preposition "in," which is very generally followed by a dative article and noun. W h e r e both factors interact—for example, in the prepositional phrase "in the village"—there is no failure of the dative, even among SSs. It is possible, too, that certain very common prepositional phrases have b e c o m e more or less fossilized fixed phrases which simply do not show variation. Thus, the phrase "on the table" produced only lenited datives in the tests, despite the fact that "on" does not otherwise govern the dative with complete reliability. T h e same was true of the phrase "in the cupboard/closet," and, of course, both phrases are of very high frequency in any Gaelic-speaking household. T h e Y F S s would seem to have scarcely any workable dative case, since they nasalize nearly as often as they lenite in the dative environment. But the question is not simply one of the use of lenition in this environment, but of contrast between the mutation of the same noun outside the prepositional phrase, in the subject or object slot. And in that sense the Y F S s do make a distinction in the use of the mutations, and hence in the use of the cases. That is, the realistic way to determine whether the dative case survives in E S G is not simply to tally the number of masculine lenitions in the prepositional phrase, but to establish whether that rate of lenition contrasts significantly with the treatment of the same nouns in the nom./acc. case. According to conservative E S G norms, the masculine noun in an initial labial or velar stop will show

Brora and Lenited (dative)

OFS

Numbe r

Percentage

42

98%

Golspie

Embo

Nasalized (nom./acc.) Num- Ρ er centbe r age 1

2%

YFS ss

35

80

9

20

Lenited (dative) Numbe r

Percentage

Nasalized (nom./acc.) Numbe r

Percentage

33

77%

10

23%

45

51

43

49

27

50

27

50

Table 5. Preservation of the dative lenition in prepositional phrases by village and speaker group

Language Change in Dying ESG 132

nasalization in the nom./acc. case, and never lenition. O F S s adhered to this norm 100 percent of the time (108 out of 108 instances); this contrasts with a 2 percent nasalization rate in the dative environment among Brora and Golspie OFSs and a 23 percent nasalization rate in the dative environment among Embo OFSs. Thus, OFSs make a clear distinction between the nom./acc. and the dative cases. YFSs nasalized 95 percent of the masculine nom./acc. nouns (109 out of 115 instances, with 6 aberrant lenitions); on the other hand, they also nasalized 49 percent of the masculine "dative" nouns. Whereas the OFSs showed a 98 percent (Brora and Golspie) or 77 percent (Embo) difference in the use of nasalization according to case environment, the YFSs showed only a weak 46 percent difference; still, they were almost twice as likely to nasalize in the nom./acc. as in the dative. The Brora SSs nasalized 76 percent of their masculine nouns in the nom./acc. environment and 20 percent in the dative environment for a difference of 56 percent; they actually retained the case distinction better than the Embo YFSs. The Embo SSs nasalized 82 percent of their masculine nouns in the nom./ acc. environment and 50 percent in the dative environment, for a difference of 32 percent. This indicates a very weak retention of the case distinction among Embo SSs, but some retention nonetheless. It is a long way, for example, from the gender-signaling treatment of the adjective after the noun, where SSs show a difference of less than 5 percent in the use of lenition with the two genders, and in the wrong direction at that. The lenition of a masculine noun in the nom./acc. environment is tantamount to assigning the noun feminine gender, since one of the signals of feminine gender is the lenition of a noun in initial labial or velar stop in the subject or object position in the sentence. Interestingly, the one SS who has virtually no nasalization seems to have tried to avoid this feminization of her masculine lexicon. She did lenite 8 nouns incorrectly, thus "feminizing" them, but she gave an unmutated root for 17 others. (By contrast, 7 of her feminine nouns were lenited and only 4 were unmutated.) In the dative, where she could lenite the masculine nouns without contravening the grammatical norm or feminizing them, she gave only 6 unmutated forms (as opposed to 15 lenited forms). This SS's mutuational behavior seems to be a striking case of the persistence of some form of gender distinction. Although she is particularly weak in her control of E S G grammar, she appears to be aware of a mutational norm she cannot meet; thus, she avoided the lenition of masculine nouns by the use of an unmutated initial consonant in 68 percent of her nom./acc. responses, whereas unmutated initial consonants constituted only 29 percent of her dative responses. In fact, she has preserved two grammatical categories: by preferring unmutated masculines to lenited masculines in the nom./acc., she has kept the gender distinction alive, and by countrariwise preferring lenited masculines to unmutated masculines in the dative, she has kept the case distinction alive. This seems to me to represent an ingenious use of her limited mutational resources to preserve categories maintained by more conventional means among speakers whose morphophonology is intact.

133

There were actually no SSs who did not show some difference in the degree to which they used nasalization in the nom./acc. and in the dative, despite the fact that SSs nasalized 50 percent of their nouns in the dative. There were two SSs, both from Brora, who nasalized more nouns than they lenited in both environments; but the proportion of nasalized to lenited nouns was very much higher in the nom./acc. environment. This is a very tenuous sort of case distinction indeed, but it is still something other than chance level of use of the mutation in the two environments, or than a reversal of the traditional mutational patterns (as with mutation of the adjective in gender signaling). As noted above, case distinctions are minimal in the plural. Only the last case to be discussed, the vocative, is distinctive in terms of case markings in both singular and plural. The chief signal of the vocative case in singular and plural is lenition of the initial consonant. For the great majority of nouns this is the sole signal of the case. There is a vocative particle which theoretically (that is, in standard grammar) precedes all nouns in the vocative and is the source of the mutation, but the particle is not phonologically realized in ordinary ESG usage. It never appears at all if the noun of address is the first element in the sentence; it appears only very rarely with the noun of address in any other position. Two OFSs and two YFSs lenited for the vocative in 100 percent of the vocative test sentences. 21 Although one YFS showed only a very weak retention of the vocative lenition (20 percent), no fluent speaker was entirely lacking the phenomenon. The productiveness of the signal for them is evident in their free use of it with English forms of personal names: Jimmy /jimi/ in the vocative becomes /yimi/, Geordie /jordi/ becomes /yardi/, and so forth. Three SSs, on the other hand, showed no lenition at all in the vocative. Table 6 gives the overall results for the three groups of speakers. Although there were three SSs who showed no use of the vocative at all, there were eight who did indicate some use of the case. None of the SSs achieved 100 percent use, however, and the drop between the level of YFS use of the vocative and SS use is sharp. Two other signals of the vocative exist in conservative ESG. One is a vocative plural suffix added to a few high-frequency nouns. The suffix is essentially a fossilized element in the dialect at present, however, rare even among 21

The vocative seems to be a structure which does not test well. It has been apparent over the years that actual use of the vocative in conversation is at the 100 percent level for all OFSs and for most YFSs. Tests for the vocative are always somewhat off the 100 percent level, however. Perhaps the artificiality of addressing a nonexistent person causes the discrepancy. A number of times an informant who failed to lenite for the vocative in a test sentence produced half a dozen unfailingly lenited vocatives in rapid succession in the first conversation he or she entered into after completing the tests. This is the more noteworthy because most of the test results are generally in keeping with conversational usage for ESG grammar.

Language Change in Dying ESG 134

Number of speakers

Number of opportunities'

Number of lenitions

Percentage of use 95%

OFS

4

40

38

YFS

6

53

40

75

SS

11

88

23

26

Table 6. U s e of lenition to signal t h e vocative • There were 10 sentences which required a vocative, but some of the speakers did only certain subsets of sentences.

O F S s , 2 2 and I did not test for it. T h e other signal is final mutation, which applies again to a few high-frequency nouns and also to a few personal names ending in Is/.

T h e latter are the most likely to preserve the final mutation in E S G , and the

tests included t h r e e such names in the vocative; one of the names occurred twice in the vocative, making a total of four opportunities for final mutation to appear. T h e O F S s used both final mutation and lenition in 9 instances out of 19, or 47 percent of the time; for Y F S s the figure was 2 1 percent, or 4 instances out of 1 9 . ° T h e SSs used no final mutation at all, and indeed used lenition

only 14 p e r c e n t o f

the time (5 out of 3 5 instances); most of the personal names in Is/ had no vocative signal for the SS group (86 percent, or 3 0 out of 3 5 instances). W h e r e a s g e n d e r in E S G has some possibility for expression outside t h e noun phrase itself (pronoun replacement) and for morphological reinforcement (the diminutive suffix), the E S G case system operates almost entirely in t e r m s o f the initial mutations a n d — e x c e p t in the vocative—the form of the definite article which accompanies the mutation. T h e only exception is the possibility of final mutation and/or a plural suffix in the vocative, but these are exceedingly limited p h e n o m e n a wholly without the productivity of the diminutive suffix. In t h e signaling of gender, the c h i e f differences fell on the whole b e t w e e n fluent speaker usage on the one hand and SS usage on the other. 2 * In the signaling o f case, however, the O F S s e m e r g e as t h e group apart. Maximum case differentiation occurs among this group. In their speech there is a reliable vocative case, in both singular and plural, and the nom./acc. case is distinguished from t h e dative case in the singular, in the one class o f nouns which permits the distinction (masculines in initial labial or velar stops). Y F S s preserve the vocative, but the distinc22

For a discussion of all the signals of the vocative in fluent-speaker ESG, see Dorian 1978d.

23

There were four speakers in each group and four personal names in /-s/, making a theoretical maximum of 16 opportunities for final mutation; but several speakers gave variants both with and without final mutation, raising the total of instances.

24

Pronoun replacement was the only real exception. There the YFSs' usage was more like that of the SSs than like that of the OFSs.

135

tive dative is rather poorly maintained. SSs do no worse than the YFSs on the dative (better, in Brora), but they make little use of the vocative. The genitive is essentially a relic for all speakers; most of the time possession is expressed by a prepositional phrase. In terms of case, then, there is a conservative OFS system which gives way to an increasingly undifferentiated noun phrase, in the syntactic environments concerned, among YFSs and SSs.

Changes

in the Nominal

System:

Number

Since I have reported elsewhere in great detail on changes across the full proficiency continuum in the expression of number in nouns (Dorian 1978c), a concise summary will suffice here. Number in the noun phrase is expressed in ESG only by the definite article and the noun; demonstratives, possessives, and adjectives are not marked for number. The noun plural morphology is highly complex. Eleven different pluralization devices were used in the test sentences: (1) suffixation (nine different suffixes); (2) final mutation; (3) suppletion; (4) quantity change plus suffixation; (5) final mutation plus suffixation; (6) vowel alternation; (7) vowel alternation plus final mutation; (8) vowel alternation plus suffixation; (9) vowel alternation plus final mutation plus suffixation; (10) vowel alternation plus syncope plus suffixation; and (11) quantity change. YFSs are actually slightly more conservative than OFSs in maintaining these diverse pluralization processes, but as might be expected, the SSs show marked movement in the direction of simplification. Most especially they extend the process of simple suffixation (that is, suffixation alone as the signal of the plural) to many nouns which would require some other device, or suffixation plus some other device, in fluent-speaker usage. And they do so largely by favoring a single suffix very heavily, ths cutting down the variety within the suffixation process itself. Whereas fluent speakers used simple suffixation to form 46.5 percent of the plurals in the test sentences, SSs used it to form 63.5 percent of their plurals in the same sentences. But since there is no inherent reason why the simplification process could not have been carried much farther—by using one of the more productive and phonologically flexible suffixes with all nouns, for example—the movement toward simplification is not particularly extreme. In a separate analysis of the plurals provided by the two weakest of the SSs who completed the entire battery of test sentences, I found that simple suffixation did not rise above 67 percent, even for them. Each of them did introduce 11 percent "zero-plurals" (nouns unmarked for the plural in any morphological way, although half of the noun phrases concerned were syntactically marked for the plural, for these two speakers, by the presence of the plural form of the definite article). But that still left a residue of better than 20 percent plurals which each of these especially weak SSs formed by other devices, including vowel alternation (with and without suffixation), final mutation (with and without suffixation),

Language Change in Dying ESG 136

vowel alternation plus syncope plus suffixation, and quantity change (one instance only of this last, however). Not only does the quantity of morphological complexity seem fairly high for speakers who represent the last degree of proficiency before we reach great difficulty in forming sentences, but the variety of allomorphs providing the quantity seems rather great as well. For more proficient SSs, of course, both the quantity of morphological complexity and the variety of plural allomorphs rise. The plural form of the definite article was used correctly at least once by eleven out of twelve SSs. Some knew it well and controlled it reliably; others used it easily with the nouns they knew best but left it out or substituted an incorrect form when dealing with noun plurals which were more difficult for them. A special problem in the number marking of noun phrases has arisen among SSs in the case of nouns ending in /-n/. Such nouns form their plural solely by lengthening the final 1-nJ in ESG, but consonant length is no longer controlled by a number of the SSs. If an /n/-final noun appears without the definite article, the noun phrase will be indeterminate as to number for those SSs. There were 14 instances in which SSs used a short nasal, leaving the noun unmarked for plurality, in a sentence which called for no article; thus, the entire noun phrase was unmarked for number. Apart from these cases, there were just 4 sentences in the corpus which were given by SSs as translations of English sentences with noun plurals, but which emerged with a singular noun phrase in Gaelic. In 2 of those cases both the noun plural morphology and the definite article were missing altogether; in another, where no article was called for, the noun plural morphology was missing. In the last case the noun phrase was given in the singular, but was promptly followed by a pleonastic pronoun in the plural. There is one other example, from the same SS (who is, in fact, more nearly a passive bilingual), in which he found a way to mark the noun phrase as plural despite inadequate control of the plural morphology of noun and definite article: he added an English splural to the Gaelic adjective which modified a noun whose plural he did not know. Although s-plurals were very occasionally borrowed into Gaelic by other SSs, this was the only instance in which one was attached to the adjective; the fact that the adjective (which follows the noun in Gaelic) was the last element in the noun phrase may have affected the placement of the sibilant here. The four "plural" sentences with singular noun phrases noted above, and one other with a semantic plural implied but a morphologically singular noun ("We can put our head [sic] together"), constitute (along with the 14 lengthless /n/-final "plurals" mentioned above) the sole instances of noun phrases inadequately marked for number in a corpus which contained 506 noun phrases requiring plural marking. Thus, complete absence of number marking in SS noun phrases occurred 4 percent of the time, or 19 out of506 instances. The nouns themselves had no marking for the plural, where a plural was required, 8 percent of the time, or 41 out of 506 instances.

137

Changes

in the Verbal System:

Tense

Gaelic has three recognized "tenses": past, future, and conditional. 0 The independent tense forms for the regular verb /khur/ put', for example, are as follows:

past future conditional

root ( = also imperative singular) root + lenition root + suffix root + lenition + suffix

/khur/ Ixurl /khuri/, /k b ur3s/* /xuru/

The tense system is totally intact among fluent speakersj In the entire corpus only two fluent-speaker aberrations appeared: the youngest of all the fluent speakers chose an inappropriate root for the future of a highly irregular verb, but he inflected it correctly; and the same speaker on one occasion gave a redundant personal pronoun after a synthetic form (in itself corrcctly formed) of another highly irregular verb. Among SSs no tense is wholly intact, but there are marked differences in the degree of distance from the fluent-speaker norm. The past tense is far and away the best preserved. For all mutatable verbs (apart from about ten highly irregular verbs which are suppletive), the past tense is formed simply by leniting the root. Ninety percent of the SS past tense constructions took this form (113 out of 126),27 although there were 2 phonologically aberrant attempts at lenition in that total. The remaining 10 percent of the past tense attempts showed no mutation at all. The unmutated root is formally identical with the imperative singular in Gaelic, but since the past tense verb is immediately followed by a subject pronoun whereas the imperative is not, no confusion of forms results. Unmutatable verbs have no distinctive past tense form and are distinguished from the imperative by the presence of the pronoun (and by intonation contours, of course). That is to say, the dialect could theoretically tolerate a very high, or even total, failure of lenition in the past tense without this necessarily resulting in a

Only the v e r b "to b e has a formally distinct present tense of its own. O t h e r verbs form a progressive present by using the present of the verb "to be and a g e r u n d . To express t h e habitual present one uses either the progressive ("I'm [always] believing him") or the f u t u r e ("When I'll go to the shop, I'll [always] buy bread"). T h e conditional has semantic functions which are partly modal and partly aspectual. Morphologically and paradigmatically, however, it is clearly part of the Gaelic inflectional system which centers on tense and is regularly treated as such in Gaelic grammar.

a

T h e suffix with final consonant appears before pronouns which begin with a vowel (third singular masculine and feminine, third plural, and variably t h e second singular).

r

A past t e n s e verb which began each of 15 sentences in a row was c o u n t e d only once, except for t h e single SS who showed one lone variation. Each of h e r variants was c o u n t e d once.

Language Change in Dying ESG 138

chaos in the verbal system, provided that the other tenses remained at least partly intact—for example, kept their suffixes. A problem arises, however, if the unmutated root is allowed to stand in for more than one of the original tenses—and in fact, it is precisely the unmutated root which is the favored substitute for the future tense among SSs who do not control the traditional future. The conservative independent future tense is formed by adding a future suffix to the unmutated root.® SSs did this 48 percent of the time (33 out of 69 instances), although the suffix which they added—while distinctively future—was a generalized one which violated phonological and morphological norms in some cases. Nine percent of the SSs' future forms (6 out of 69) consisted of the lenited root plus the same future suffix; this is a workable, if aberrant, future tense, since it shows future morphology and coincides with no other tense form. But 26 percent of the SSs' "futures" (18 out of 69) took the form of the unmutated root—and precisely the same seven SSs who gave the only 13 unmutated-root past tenses also gave these 18 unmutated-root future tenses. That is, these seven SSs show a certain amount of collapse in their tense system. Furthermore, 13 percent of the SS "futures" (9 out of 69) consisted of the lenited root with no suffix at all; that is, they showed the form of the conservatively correct past tense. The four SSs who show this collapse also showed the collapse in the direction of the unmutated root. The collapse of past and future simply takes either of two forms for them, in about equal numbers; the same four speakers provided 9 examples of "futures" in past tense (lenited-root) form, 7 examples of "futures ' in unmutated-root form, and 9 examples of "past" tenses in unmutated-root form. To put the results another way; only four SSs out of eleven showed no instances of the collapse of the past and fiiture tenses. On the other hand, seven out of eleven SSs used at least one correct future form,29 and three of the seven consistently formed the future correctly, apart from the use of a generalized future suffix. The conditional in E S C is expressed by lenition of the root and the addition of a suffix /-u/. As with the other tenses, fluent-speaker forms never deviated from the conservative norm. The SSs, on the other hand, produced 28 correct conditional forms out of 65 (or 43 percent), but 35 forms unrecognizable as conditionals (54 percent). Two forms (3 percent) were unlenited but showed the suffix /-u/; they could be considered workable conditionals. Of the 28 forms which I am calling "correct," since they showed both lenition and the /-u/ suffix, 8 were actually formed with the wrong one of two related roots and thus were M

Only independent verb forms are considered here. There are matching dependent verb forms for each tense; but since they are inseparable from questions of subordination they are omitted here, although they were elicited in the translation task.

M

The future of the verb "to be" was not counted, since it does not always have a future suffix. Two more of the SSs could be considered to use some future forms correctly if "to be" were included.

139

still deviant in terms of the conservative norm. Furthermore, only five out of ten SSs provided any recognizable conditionals at all, and only three consistently gave recognizable conditionals. The conditional failures on the part of the SSs were impossibly various. Some coincided, once again, with the future or the past (10 instances of the former, 2 of the latter), and some consisted of the unmutated root (7 instances). In one case the root was lenited but an aberrant suffix /-a/ was added. Progressives (present, past, and future) were occasionally given where a conditional was called for (6 instances), and a number of forms were simply uninterpretable in terms of the grammatical norms of the dialect. Inability to handle the conditional in the test sentences seemed verymarked among SSs, and in order to double-check these results I later undertook a second kind of testing with two SSs who had used no conditionals and another who has used a recognizable conditional only twice. The second test consisted of a series of dictated questions which required ves-or-no answers. Since the questions were themselves couched in the conditional and Gaelic uses verb phrases in the tense given in lieu of the nonoccurring words equivalent to "yes" or "no," ves-or-no answers should also have been in the conditional. 30 The speakers were told that they could say anything else they liked in response to the questions, but first they should answer "yes" or "no." The two SSs who had produced no conditionals in the translation sentences also produced none in this test; they appear simply to have no conditional. A number of their responses were either unmutated or lenited roots; some were futures (irregular verbs only, which require no future suffix), and some were uninterpretable. The SS who had given 2 recognizable conditionals in the translation tests gave 4 (in 8 responses) here. In particular she showed a mastery of the conditional, both positive and negative, with the verb "to be"—3 out of 3 forms were correct. This is the more impressive because the question sentences show a sharp difference depending on whether they are phrased as positive conditions or negative conditions; the SS in question responded correctly to both when the verb "to be" was used. On the other hand, only 1 of the 5 sentences which did not use the verb "to be" produced a recognizable (and correct) conditional, her other responses were either unmutated roots (2 instances) or futures (2 instances; but both were irregular verbs which take no future suffix). To return to the results of the translation sentences, three SSs who gave unmutated root forms as conditionals were among those who likewise used un10

That is, the question "Did you go? requires "Went or "Didn't go in reply; "Will you go?" requires "Will go" or "Won't go"; and "Would you go?" (the conditional) requires "Would go" or "Wouldn't go." It seems certain that the conditional questions used were correctly understood by the SSs. They were personalized, in the first place, so that they were based in each interview on the individual's actual family circumstances. And in the second place, the further comments made after the "yes" or "no" response often showed that the conditional sense of the question was correctly grasped.

Language Change in Dying ESG 140

mutated root forms as both past and future forms. Two other SSs who gave lenited roots (that is forms identical to the past tense) as conditionals were among those who likewise used lenited roots as both past and future forms. T h e s e five SSs thus have a potential three-way collapse of their tense system. I say "potential" collapse because for the most part they appear to avoid using only one form for all three tenses, eyen though their tense "system" would seem to allow it. No one verb occurred in all three tenses within the test sentences, but /pris/ 'break' occurred in both past and future, and /ρΓΪ:ηίς / speak' in both future and conditional." Four of the five SSs whose responses elsewhere in the tests indicated potential collapse of the tense system produced all of these /pris/ and /pri:ni9 / forms. O n e of these SSs collapsed the past and the future (both produced as lenited roots by her), but she produced an unlenited root as a conditional. Two other SSs collapsed the future and the conditional (both produced as unlenited roots by one speaker; both produced as unlenited roots plus future suffixes by the other), but they kept the past distinct as a lenited root. One of these SSs did show total collapse of the tense system in these two verbs in initial /pr-/: all four forms appeared as lenited roots. She does not invariably collapse all her tenses, however; she sometimes used the unlenited root as a future, and on one occasion she actually produced a future suffix. To sum up the situation with regard to tense, the fluent speakers showed no changes in the conservative system and no weakening of that system, but the larger part of the SSs did. SS past tense forms were correct 90 percent of the time, future tense forms were recognizable 57 percent of the time, and conditional tense forms were recognizable 4 6 percent of the time. Morphologically and morphophonemically, three out of eleven SSs showed no sign of the conservative future (apart from the irregular verb "to be"); four out of ten showed no sign of the conservative conditional. All SSs controlled the past tense most of the time, but some of them used ostensibly past tense forms where other tenses were required. T h e potential for total collapse of the tense system existed for five SSs who used either unmutated roots some of the time for all three tenses or lenited roots some of the time for all three tenses. Clearly, tense is not a strong grammatical category for a good many SSs.

Changes

in the Verbal System:

Number

Number is very weakly represented in the verbal system. The imperative shows an inflectional difference between the singular and the plural, according to the conservative norm. And the first person of the conditional has potentially a synthetic form in the singular, which contrasts with an analytic first person 31

I chose overlapping verb forms with roots in the same initial consonant (consonant cluster, in this case) to avoid any possibility that a lower-frequency initial consonant, with a consequently less familiar mutation, might skew the results—that is, make lenition more likely for one verb than the othir.

141

plural form. O t h e r w i s e no v e r b forms show n u m b e r differences; the accompanying pronouns signal n u m b e r as well as person. T h e imperative singular consists o f the unmutated and uninflected root, whereas the imperative plural consists o f the unmutated root plus a suffix /-u/. This suffix showed s o m e weakening even among O F S s , who used it 7 3 percent o f t h e t i m e (8 out o f 11 instances) in the test sentences. W h e r e the suffix is not applied,

t h e imperative singular and plural usually fall together.

One

OFS

marked his i m p e r a t i v e plural construction for n u m b e r on a single occasion, however, by supplying an intrusive subject pronoun in the plural. None of his imperative singular constructions showed any use of an intrusive pronoun. Y F S s used t h e imperative plural suffix only 4 3 percent of the time (6 out of 14 instances); t h e youngest of them n e v e r used the suffix at all. S S s likewise showed no use o f t h e imperative suffix at all (0 out of 2 6 instances). T h e s y n t h e t i c first person singular conditional form is theoretically optional; speakers can always choose to use the analytic form in which person and n u m b e r are e x p r e s s e d by an accompanying subject pronoun. T h e conservative choice is t h e s y n t h e t i c form, however, and it was heavily favored by all of t h e fluent speakers tested. O F S s used the synthetic form, in which person and numb e r are e x p r e s s e d solely by an inflection and no subject pronoun appears, 9 2 p e r c e n t o f the t i m e (22 out of 24 instances). Y F S s used the synthetic form 8 3 p e r c e n t o f the t i m e (20 out o f 24 instances). By contrast, among SSs who used an inflected conditional at all, t h e synthetic form appeared only once in 20 instances, or 5 p e r c e n t of t h e time. Interestingly, the one SS who gave a synthetic conditional used only o n e o t h e r recognizable conditional in any test s e n t e n c e . S i n c e h e r single synthetic conditional was in an irregular, high-frequencv verb, it is possible that it is a fossilized form for her. N u m b e r is essentially missing from the verbal system for S S s . In o n e case (the imperative) it is distinctly weakening for fluent speakers, but in the other (first person singular conditional) it remains quite strong. Only the former case involves any informational loss to the language, however, since n u m b e r is expressed by a s u b j e c t pronoun w h e r e v e r the use of the synthetic conditional form is given up.

Changes

in the Verbal System: Voice

T h e vast majority of the English stimulus sentences were couched in the active voice. But t h e 1974 s e n t e n c e s included 12 which were designed to test for the E S G passive, and t h e 1976 s e n t e n c e s included one passive purely by chance. Two of t h e passive stimulus s e n t e n c e s proved unworkable for lexical reasons, 32 but t h e r e m a i n i n g 11 w e r e successful in eliciting E S G passives.

32

Speakers avoided the transitive verb "deafen" in favor of intransitive phrases like "grow deaf'; and the English "got beaten" produced "got a beating" more often than it produced the passive.

Language Change in Dying ESG 142

T h e E S G passive can take either of two forms. T h e more "old fashioned" of the two, used almost exclusively by OFSs, consists of the finite verb /tot/ 'to go' followed by a possessive pronoun and a gerund. "She was drowned" translates literally, in this form of the passive, as "Went her drowning." Although this passive has a possessive pronoun, it has no personal pronoun. T h e other form of the passive uses /pi/ 'to be' as the finite verb, followed by a personal pronoun and then by a prepositional phrase, the preposition used is /er/ on', and it is followed by a possessive pronoun and a gerund. In this form of the passive, "She was drowned" translates literally as "She was on her drowning." Person and number are marked in the /tof/-passive only by the choice of possessive and by the mutation which that possessive causes in the gerund. Person and number are marked in the /pi/-passive by these same two signals and also by the subject pronoun. O n e of the more striking differences between older-fluent-speaker E S G and younger-fluent-speaker E S G is the handling of the passive (see Dorian 1973). T h e Y F S group tends to reduce the difference between the two passive constructions to a difference of finite verb alone by adding a subject pronoun and the preposition /er/ to the /tol/-passive. This development was evident in the test sentences. O F S s used 24 of the conservative /toi/-passives (out of 44 possible), YFSs used 1 (out of 47), and SSs 1 (out of 79 attempts at the passive). W h e r e the analogically formed /tof/-passives with intrusive pronoun and preposition were concerned, the OFSs used 1, the YFSs 36, and the SSs none. O n e Y F S used a compromise form of the /tof/-passive with an intrusive pronoun but no preposition. H e gave this form of the passive only once in the test sentences, and no other speaker tested used such a form at all, but it is not unique to him; it can be met with even among OFSs, although none happened to use it in these tests (see Dorian 1973:422). T h e r e is one further respect in which the YFSs' passives differ markedly from the O F S s ' passives: the preservation of a differentiated possessive construction for the third person, singular and plural. YFSs show a strong tendency to analogize the third person singular masculine possessive into the third person singular feminine and the third person plural. All three third person possessives, if physically present at all, can be realized as /a/, although the third person plural theoretically takes the form /an/ or /am/; for the most part the possessives are not expressed, however, and they make their presence felt only morphophonologically in the mutation of the following gerund. T h e masculine possessive lenites, the plural possessive nasalizes, and the feminine possessive causes no mutation. Among YFSs w h o analogize the masculine third person possessive into all third person passives, all gerunds are lenited. Clearly this could not be allowed to happen in conservative /toi/-passives, which lack a person subject-pronoun, because all distinction of gender and number would be lost in the third person: "he was drowned," "she was drowned," and "they w e r e d r o w n e d " would become indistinguishable. But since YFSs have introduced a subject pronoun into virtually all of their /toi/-passives, the generalization of the masculine singular lenition causes no loss of information. T h e one YFS /to!/-passive which lacked a subject

143

pronoun in the test results also showed retention of the conservative mutation (nasalization in the third person plural, in this case). In the third person analogical YFS /tot/-passives with subject pronoun, 12 out of 27, or 44.5 percent, retained conservative mutations in the third person; 15, or 55.5 percent, showed lenition inappropriately (that is, even though they followed a feminine or plural third person possessive). The one OFS /tof/-passive which had an intrusive pronoun and an intrusive preposition also had an inappropriate lenition. In the /pi/-passive, where the personal pronoun is conservatively present, the OFSs produced 26 percent inappropriate lenitions (5 out of 19 instances). All four OFSs lenited the gerund inappropriately in the one case where the subject was a long noun phrase rather than a subject pronoun; three of these four passives were /pi/-passives. Aside from these three instances, there were two others from one of the OFSs. The YFSs produced 83 percent inappropriate lenitions (5 out of 6 instances) in the /pi/-passive. The /tof/-passive is virtually nonexistent for the SSs, even in its analogical form with pronoun and preposition. One SS used a /tol/-passive once, and curiously enough (since 75 percent of her passives were incorrectly formed), it was used in the conservative form without pronoun and preposition. Otherwise no /tof/-passives at all were produced by SSs. No SS produced correct passives 100 percent of the time, and two out of the seven SSs tested for this construction produced no correctly formed passives. The two most proficient SSs produced 82 percent and 80 percent correctly formed passives; the next-highest success rate was 27 percent. SS errors in forming the passive were various, but the commonest was omission of the prepositional phrase to produce a passive consisting of /pi/ plus personal pronoun followed simply by the gerund, lenited or unlenited (23 instances, or 29 percent of all SS passives). These constructions are not recognizable as passives because they come too close to the progressive verb phrases; those with unlenited gerunds are actually identical with the progressive verb phrase. In a few cases an element which could be considered a possessive preceded the gerund (9 instances, or 11 percent of all attempted SS passives). The preposition /er/ but no possessive occurred twice. Altogether, constructions which were not recognizably passives constituted 62 percent of the SS attempts at the passive. The English stimulus sentences were all presented as "got"-passives, with the exception of the stray 1976 passive sentence, in order to prevent the influence of English "was" from producing nothing but /pi/-passives in Gaelic. This strategy was successful where fluent speakers were concerned, but as it turned out the SSs generally knew no other passive than the /pi/-passive. One SS was influenced by English "got" and produced 5 "passives" which began with the Gaelic translation equivalent of that finite verb, which of course was totally unorthodox. The 23 SS passives which consisted only of /pi/, personal pronoun, and gerund bear some resemblance to the English "was"-passive, if the gerund can be roughly equated with the English past participle (past participles being impossible to construct for five of the seven Gaelic verbs used in the test sentences). Language Change in Dying ESG 144

Retention

of Basic

Lexicon

A 220-item version of the lexicostatistical list of basic, or "core," vocabulary was presented for translation to the eight fluent speakers who participated in the full battery of test-sentence translations, and to six SSs, including one of the SSs who is actually scarcely more than a passive bilingual. This last speaker missed the largest number of words, namely, 70. Other SSs missed, respectively, 59 words, 51, 47, 38, and 29. The highest SS score of 191 was not far below the lowest fluent-speaker score of 204. It should be noted that 5 words on the list ("fruit," "smooth," "spear," "cloud," and "push") are simply not available in ESG; the highest possible score in this dialect would thus be 215. Of the 215 possible items, 119 were produced by all speakers, including the weakest of the SSs, and 193 were produced by all of the fluent speakers; that is, fluent speakers missed the same 22 words over and over. Lexical recall did not correlate well with grammatical conservatism for fluent speakers. The two highest scorers were YFSs rather than OFSs, and the lowest scorer among the fluent speakers was a particularly conservative OFS. Two other OFSs scored exactly the same as the two least conservative YFSs. On the other hand, SS scores correlated very well with the individual speakers' grammatical abilities; the best SSs scored highest, the weakest scored lowest. It was apparent in testing the fluent speakers that their production of isolated words was somewhat erratic. That is, some of the words missed are perfectly well known to all fluent speakers of ESG, even though they may not be of high frequency in their present-day use of the language and are thus difficult to recall on demand in isolation. A good example of this kind of word is "blow." It was missed by three of the OFSs and two of the YFSs; yet I had elicited it many times in sentences during the previous decade from many fluent speakers of ESG (including one of the OFSs who missed it in this test), and there can be no doubt that it was widely used in this seafaring community. Other well-known words missed by fluent speakers in the lexicostatistical testing included "float" (5 misses); "claw" and "split" (4 misses each); "right(hand)," "animal," "liver," and "sew" (3 misses each). Often during the testing fluent speakers complained of tipof-the-tongue problems in recalling a particular word, and only one fluent speaker—the second-youngest of the YFSs—missed no words but those not available in the dialect. Thus, fluent-speaker results generally underrepresented their knowledge of basic vocabulary. It is harder to be sure what the SS results represent, since I have worked with them a shorter number of years and have heard most of them use Gaelic in general conversation much less frequently. They sometimes complained of tip-of-the-tongue problems during this test, just as the fluent speakers did, and in the case of three relatively strong SSs I can vouch for the fact that they do know some items which they failed to produce in isolation. Most likely this was true of all the SSs. Still, as noted above, there was a good correlation at both extremes between grammatical proficiency and recall of basic vocabulary, with

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t h e best speakers producing most items, and the worst speaker producing fewest. T h e greatest interest in the SS test results lies in the performance of t h e weakest speaker, the near-passive bilingual who was presented with the 220-item list. H e missed 70 words, but nonetheless produced 150. Since he has very little ability to use words productively in sentences, these results seem to confirm that a good deal of lexicon lingers on in a community after the language which provided the lexicon has effectively died out (see p. 121 above).

Summary

and

Conclusions

This chapter has concentrated on developments in the traditional grammatical categories of the Indo-European noun and verb, categories in which changes over time have long been studied within various branches of the IndoE u r o p e a n family. Table 7 presents the ESG developments outlined in the previous sections in terms of the percentage of retention of each category marked by a distinctive signal. W h e r e two signals operate (for example, lenition and t h e suffix l-ul in the conditional), the presence of at least the one which is definitive for t h e category is required to identify- recognizable instances of that category for SSs; fluent speakers use both signals in such cases, and there are seldom questionable data for them. W h e r e a single signal operates as the distinguishing feat u r e b e t w e e n two categories (lenition as a marker of gender in the adjective), t h e p e r c e n t a g e of differential use of that signal is shown, and similarly with the distinction b e t w e e n the nom./acc. and the dative cases, where the same two signals o p e r a t e as distinguishing features. The significant figure is the percentage of difference b e t w e e n use of nasalization in the nom./acc. environment and in t h e dative environment, rather than simply the percentage of nom./acc. nasalizations and dative lenitions. Table 7 also records any instances in which at least some m e m b e r s of a given group of speakers make no use at all of the category in question. Fluent-speaker points of weakness, as revealed in table 7, appear to some extent in gender and case within nominal structures, and in n u m b e r only within verbal structures. In the history of the Indo-European language family, g e n d e r and case have some history of loss. Watkins (1973:92) instances the loss of a case system in Romance nouns, and the loss of a grammatical gender opposition in English and Armenian. Transformational grammarians account for t h e greater likelihood of the case and gender categories disappearing than of n u m b e r disappearing, in the noun, by invoking respective place in the syntactic hierarchy: n u m b e r is selected in the phrase structure rules, whereas case belongs to surface structure and gender is specified in the lexicon (Bynon 1977:147ff.) What is striking in ESG is the complexity of the picture. Not all facets • of g e n d e r or case show equal decay, or even any significant decay, among fluent speakers. G e n d e r is the category of greatest redundancy, since for many nouns it would theoretically be possible to mark for gender in four different ways. Given

Language Change in Dying ESG 146

Percentage of retention

Nominal

OFS

Gender

YFS

Some failure of occurrence SS

f e m i n i n e pronoun r e p l a c e m e n t

66.5%

29%

gender-accurate diminutive

97

94

100

94

65

33

-4

gender-accurate noun mutation gender-accurate adjective leni-

42.5

OFS

0%

YFS SS X

X

64 X

X

tion Case genitive singular

44

19

12

n o m . / a c c . - d a t i v e distinction

98·

—

56·

77 k

46 b

32 b

vocative singular and plural

95

75

26

100

100

92

past tense lenition

100

100

90

future suffix

100

100

57

X

conditional suffix

100

100

46

X

X

X

X

X

Number plural noun

Verbal Tense

Number imperative plural

73

43

0

first person singular conditional

92

83

5

100

100

38

X

X X

Voice recognizable passives

X

Table 7. S u m m a r y of retention and failure of o c c u r r e n c e for nominal and verbal categories in E S G by speaker group " Brora and Golspie. b

Embo.

this situation, one might expect the signals of least generality, and h e n c e utility, to give way first: noun mutation, restricted to a single phonological class; and diminutive formation, constrained both phonologically and semantically. O n the contrary, in E S G it is the signals of greatest potential generality which show decay, precisely the two signals which could apply to any noun in the lexicon: pronoun r e p l a c e m e n t and adjective mutation. Consequently, though gender remains a strong grammatical category for fluent speakers, the n u m b e r of nouns to which it applies has shrunk. T h e decay of either of the two remaining signals would

147

shrink the number of gender-assignable nouns further, even if the one surviving signal remained very strong. It is not a foregone conclusion that gender shrinkage would continue to the vanishing point if ESG had future generations of fluent speakers to look forward to. The two gender signals outside the noun itself (pronoun replacement and adjective mutation) would surely disappear, but signals internal to the noun might conceivably survive, producing a kind of lexicalization of gender preservation linked to specific nouns. Both mutational and suffixal signals continue strong elsewhere in the fluent-speaker grammatical system (mutation and suffixes in verbal tense, suffixes in nominal number) and provide the support of categories operating in similar terms. The decline in these internal signals among SSs is not evidence to the contrary, since SSs are distinct from fluent speakers of any age in their acquisition histories 33 and in their use of Gaelic. Case seems to be a much weaker category for ESG than gender, to judge by the marked falling-off of YFS use of the case signals. But even here the development is not uniform or general: the vocative is better preserved than the distinction between the nom./acc. and the dative, and the latter is in turn better preserved than the genitive. One might argue that structurally less is lost with the decay of the case system than with the decay of gender. When grammatical gender is no longer marked, a noun-class division ceases to be made in any way at all. But when the genitive is no longer marked, its semantic role is taken over by a prepositional phrase. And although the noun itself may lose morphophonemic marking for the dative, the prepositional phrase continues as a distinctive syntactic environment. Direct address is signaled by suprasegmental features alone if the vocative case-marking morphophonology disappears, but it is still perceptually present. Semanticallv in the case of the genitive, syntactically in the case of the dative, and suprasegmentally in the case of the vocative, there is a kind of persistence of function possible even if nouns lose their distinctive case markings. This may be a deeper kind of "redundancy" than the multiple markings of the gender system. There is a sense in which the case markings of the noun can readily be spared. The only other grammatical category which shows fluent-speaker decay 13

Although none of the SSs has an acquisition history exactly like that of a fluent speaker, neither do they have, as a group, a single "semi-speaker acquisition history" in common. At least two of them, and probably three, were fluent childspeakers, dominant in Gaelic, at the time they entered school. At least two others also had childhood proficiency greater than their current proficiency, but they were never completely fluent and never Gaelic-dominant. One was not a speaker at all during her childhood, but a passive bilingual who learned active skills in later childhood from a relative of her fathers. Two others are likewise better speakers now than they were in early childhood, having taken greater interest in Gaelic after they returned to settle permanently in their native village following a number of years away from home. It is interesting in view of these various histories that semi-speaker ESG shows as many features common to most or all SSs as it does.

Language Change in Dying ESG 148

is number in the verb. Since verbal number is selected by nominal number, there is less reason for its preservation than for the preservation of number in the noun. But in the imperative, the noun phrase is deleted in the surface structure, and the verb carries the sole signal of number. Despite this lack of surface-structure redundancy, imperative number marking is clearly disappearing among fluent speakers of E S G , as reflected in the percentage drop in its use among YFSs as well as in its relatively low level of use among OFSs. Oddly enough, number is better preserved in the first person singular conditional, even though the presence of a subject pronoun in the competing analytic structure preserves number (and person). This is odder still because the first person singular conditional is paradigmatically and typologically isolated; all other verb forms in the dialect, including all the other conditional forms, are analytic. The first person plural conditional is also synthetic in standard Gaelic (and in most, if not all, other dialects). It seems likely that E S G once had such a synthetic first person plural conditional and lost it, which makes the anomalous survival of the synthetic first person singular even harder to account for.14 But it is in fact very strong among fluent speakers; even the two youngest of the YFSs used it heavily, and only one YFS showed a preponderance of analytic forms. Some of the declining percentages of retention in table 7 proceed progressively across all three groups of speakers. For example, feminine pronoun replacement and the genitive are present at a fairly low rate among OFSs, sink to a lower rate still among YFSs, and either disappear or survive very precariously among SSs. Here the SS failure to preserve the feature in question seems to be a natural outcome: loss of a signal or category which was not faring well in the language in any case. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of SS performance in these areas of general gradual decline is the tenacity with which certain of the features survive in adverse circumstances. We saw how one SS, despite the lack of an entire mutation, contrived to preserve a gender distinction by opposing lenition to absence of any mutation. And two SSs extended the use of the genitive case to a construction in which fluent speakers do not normally use the genitive, namely one in which the possessor is inanimate. Similarly, in the case of a category which is not in general decline, one SS whose control over the traditional signals of that category is very weak made two rather heroic efforts to preserve number in the nominal environment, once by use of a pleonastic pronoun and once by the totally unorthodox attachment of an English siblant plural to the last element in the noun phrase (the adjective). There are two areas in which fluent-speaker retention of categories is total, and yet SS performance shows a rather drastic decline; the tense system and the passive voice. The latter is certainly the more dispensable of the two. ' 34

The conditional is not used in politeness formulae in ESG; that is, there are no conditional analogues to "Could I borrow . . . " or "Might I ask . . . " to explain the preservation of an archaic first person singular conditional form.

149

Although the passive can be very useful for syntactic flexibility and expressiveness, it is scarcely ever obligatory. The impersonal, capricious nature of the event is highlighted if one says, "He was struck by lightning," but the referential function of the speech event is adequately served if one says instead, "Lightning struck him." The SSs lose a syntactic option when they lose control of the passive, but not the ability to communicate certain information. The loss of adequate tense signals is more basic, since it involves potential abandonment of automatic ordering of events in time. Adverbial time markers might be substituted for tense signals, but the SSs who have difficulties with tense marking show no tendency to make such a substitution. They do compensate to a considerable extent, however, by relying more heavily than is normal on the progressive aspect. Since all progressive verb phrases make use of the verb "to be," this cuts down vastly on the need for a productive control of tense marking. Only the various tense forms of the verb "to be" (almost all of them suppletive and thus outside the regular tense formation patterns) need be controlled. For example, in answer to a question phrased in the negative interrogative with its attendant particles and mutation 35 —for example, /nax ta yüisi^ u ka:lik vd na p k 0:rant3n ad?/ 'Didn't you learn Gaelic from your parents?'—The SS is likely to avoid the required verb phrase /xa ta yii:si£ . . ./ Ί didn't learn' and answer /xa ra mi kyü:si£u . . ./ Ί wasn't learning.' The advantage of the progressive response as opposed to the response in the simple past is that the progressive requires neither control of the slightly complicated comings and goings of the particle /ta/ nor control of mutation; it relies on negation of the irregular past tense of "to be," which is of such enormously high frequency that its irregularity is inconsequential. Similarly the question "Will you see your auntie tomorrow?" is likely to produce not the required, "I will see" but "I will be [seeing]." And so with all the other tense forms. 36 The sole disadvantage of relying heavily on progressive verb phrases in place of a variety of finite verbs is that the SS must produce a gerund for every verb which accompanies "to be." Gerund morphology in ESG is extremely complex, but SSs often handle this by generalizing one of the commonest gerund suffixes; where generalization does not take place, they show a surprising hold on the morphology, as with the equally complex noun plural morphology (see Dorian * The standard Gaelic verb kmnsaich has a prothetic consonant in ESG, giving gionnsaich; thus, the past tense form in the following sample sentence shows initial mutation in ESG, although it would not in standard Gaelic. " Compare the overuse of muss among foreign workers in Germany: A look at the interview passages of these learners in Group III who use the modal very often shows that particular verbal strategies rather than specific discourse topics seem to be responsible for the frequent application of müssen. We find that muss is apparently used as a substitute for morphological tense markers of the verb. [Heidelberger Forschungsprojekt "PidginDeutsch" 1978:16]

Language Change in Dying ESG 150

1978b). In general one can say that they do significantly better with morphological complexity within certain high-frequency categories (noun plural, gerund) than with syntactic complexity in the control of particles and conjunctions and the mutational and suffixal apparatus which accompanies them. Despite the fact that excessive use of the progressive verb phrase can potentially reduce the need to handle verbal morphology to its use with the single verb "to be," not all SSs are relieved of their difficulties with tense by this means. To be sure, one or two are, by reason of their ability to form a correct future and/ or conditional solely for the verb "to be." But at least two SSs are unable to distinguish between the future and the conditional of "to be" itself, and thus have a partly collapsed tense system even within the progressive aspect: they have a past tense, a present tense (distinct for the verb "to be" alone), and a merged future/conditional tense. For these speakers the tense system is simply reduced. It is quite clear from the data presented in this chapter on the expression of grammatical categories in ESG that there is a good deal of flux in the nominal and verbal systems of the dialect at present. This is true both within speaker groups and across speaker groups. Thus, for OFSs as a group there are clear differences in the preservation of the various gender signals and the various case categories; and for SSs as a group there are clear differences in the preservation of the various tense categories. And when one compares OFSs with YFSs and SSs, there are likewise sharp differences in the degree to which signals and categories survive; feminine pronoun replacement, the imperative plural, and several other items show a straightforward pattern of decreasing strength across the speaker groups. There have been no startling departures to report here in terms of types of change. Dying languages, to judge by ESG. show much the same sorts of change we are familiar with from perfectly ordinary change in "healthy" languages: distinctive case structures are replaced by prepositional structures (genitive); analogical leveling reduces the number of allomorphs for some morphemes (noun plural); separate syntactic structures with a single semantic function aje merged (the two passives); a native distinction not shared by the speakers' second language is given up (grammatical gender reflected in pronoun replacement). But if the types of change are not unusual, it seems possible that the amount of change is. Even among fluent speakers, only two of the categories considered showed no significant change: number in the noun and tense in the verb. 37 And even if one looks no farther than the grammatical categories, there is a great deal of internal differentiation within categories: nominal case and gender and verbal number show less than 100 percent levels of retention and also show, as noted above, great variety in the levels of retention for individual signals or individual forms of the category. Even granting that ESG is an unwritten language and free of whatever conserving force literacy may exert, the amount of 37

OFSs and YFSs produced 100 percent recognizable passives, but their passives show a gradual convergence of two distinct syntactic structures.

151

change seems high. With the provocation of major changes in the phonological system, it is not improbable that a "healthy" language might show similar levels of change in six rather prominent categories of the nominal and verbal grammar 0 '—but note that none of the major grammatical changes under way in ESG has a conditioned phonetic basis." It would be possible to apply the technique used here (controlled translation tests across a full range of age groups) in stable bilingual communities in order to determine whether either of the languages in use was showing change at a level comparable to ESG. This would be particularly revealing if one of the languages were, like ESG, unwritten. We can hope that such a comparison will eventually be available. In the meantime the guess might be hazarded that the degree of flux in the basic grammatical categories of noun and verb in ESG at a single point in time may prove to be fairly characteristic of a dying language (at least of one with a complex morphology) and fairly uncharacteristic of a "healthy" language—again assuming that no major changes are under way in the phonological system. Conspicuously absent in ESG is the social stratification which seems to have played such a major role, in a good many communities (Labov 1963, 1966; Fasold 1972; Trudgill 1974a), in organizing the inherent variability of a language in such a way as to promote systematic change. Everyone who speaks ESG is of fisherfolk background. Education is uniformly the legal minimum, and any differences in wealth are of very recent date. The degree of consanguinity is so great, and the size of the speech community so small, that apart from the three geographical divisions there are no marked breaks in communication patterns within the group. The geographical divisions have given rise to a good deal of systematic phonological differentiation and to a much smaller amount of lexical differentiation (see Dorian 1978a; 151-58), but they proved relevant only once (in the distinction between the nom./acc. case and the dative case) to changes in the expression of basic nominal and verbal grammatical categories within ESG. On the other hand, age grouping is clearly a major social dimension along which systematic change appears. Yet it is not the case that horizontal communication networks are generally stronger than vertical. Many speakers, and most especially SSs, use their Gaelic more frequently with older kin or neighbors—or even exclusively with them—than with peers or siblings near in age. Language contact can be assumed to play some role in the grammatical changes of ESG, although it is not necessarily a simple role and it is also not sufficient to account either for all the general trends or for the differences in M

The fixing of stress on the root syllable in Germanic brought about truly vast changes in the grammar of this branch of the Indo-European family, for example.

36

The only phonologically determined change among all those discussed in this chapter is the loss among SSs of the noun-plural allomorph produced by consonant lengthening. This constitutes a part, but only a rather small part, of SS deviations in plural formation; and the noun plural is in any case the grammatical category which shows least change between fluent speakers and SSs.

Language Change in Dying ESG 152

retention within given categories. Loss of tense distinctions among SSs can scarcely be attributed to the influence of English grammatical structure," for example, and since English has no formal vocative at all, whereas it does have a formal genitive, the better preservation of the vocative than of the genitive is not in any way the result of English grammatical influence. Steadily decreasing use of Caelic might be invoked to explain the amount of change, and clearly it is a major factor in the differences between semispeaker grammar and fluent-speaker grammar. Where there is sharp discontinuity between semi-speaker performance and fluent-speaker performance (as in tense, the ability to express the passive, two of the gender signals, and number in the first person conditional), the lesser use of Gaelic which resulted in incomplete acquisition earlier, and is reflected in rather extreme function-specialization for the language now, must be the key factor in the differences. On the other hand, where there is a steady, progressive decline across speaker groups, with the YFSs performing quite differently from the OFSs (as in all of the cases, number in the imperative plural, and two others of the gender signals), simple decreasing use of Gaelic cannot be invoked, since there is no great falling-off in the use of Gaelic among the younger fluent speakers as compared with the older fluent speakers. Both groups use Gaelic as the habitual home language, and most of the fluent speakers of both groups are clearly Gaelic-dominant. It would seem that the incomplete acquisition histories of the SSs play a major role in some of the changes evident in table 7 (for example, the loss of tense distinctions), and that certain general tendencies in linguistic change combine with acquisitional deficiencies to hasten other changes (for example, the replacement of case-marked nouns by prepositional phrases). It is much too early to propose a model of grammatical change in language death for comparison with the models of change which are emerging from creolization and decreolization, however. A single case can be suggestive at most, and as yet there are few other studies of linguistic change in dying languages. 11 For this reason my emphasis 40

Michael Silverstein has called my attention to the fact that the tenses with which the SSs do least well in ESG are handled periphrastically in English, but not in Gaelic, whereas the past tense, which is mutational in ESG and is well preserved, also has some mutational (ablaut) forms in English. Thus, English method of expression might be thought to have some influence on the failure of tense in semi-speakers ESG. This is conceivable, but it does not seem likely to me. For one thing, the dominant method of past tense expression is suffixal, not mutational, in English. For another, it seems a rather sophisticated concept of mutation which includes both internal vowel change in the root syllable (which exists as a grammatical device in ESG, but not in the tense system) and also initial consonant change (used in the tense system); if both "mutations" were used in the expression of Caelic tense, perhaps naive speakers would equate them, but they are not.

" Dressier 1972 and Rankin 1978 deal with phonological change; Hill 1973 and Voegelin and Voegelin 1977 deal with syntactic change; Hill and Hill 1977 deals with lexical change. Only Trudgill 1976-77 deals in a systematic way with mor-

153

here has been on negative findings: that is, on what has been thought important to the promotion of change in other cases but seems not to be of major significance here (social stratification; stronger horizontal than vertical communication networks; language contact; major phonological change). Since a good deal more change can be documented for ESG than is discussed here, and yet many of our commonest theories of linguistic change prove inadequate to explain even the change patterns presented here, ESG represents something of a test case for the explanation of language change. Quite possibly there are conditions characteristic of language death (apart from mere decrease in use, which is not by itself sufficient to explain the change patterns in ESG) which help to account for the rather high degree of change among even fully fluent, language-loval speakers of a threatened language. For example, self-appointed monitors of grammatical norms may become increasingly rare in dying language communities. There are anecdotes about old men who used to scold and correct today s fluent speakers, in their youth, for departing from grammatical and lexical norms. Certain senior males in the community played the well-established role of "Gaelic scholar," which in the Highlands means a person who is literate in Gaelic, takes a special interest in the language, and is looked up to and resorted to for definitive judgments on grammar, spelling, idiom, and lexicon. But there were no such figures left in the community by the time I reached the area, and I heard only a little mockery of aberrant lexical choices and of one aberrant morphological choice. It is quite possible that this relaxation of internal grammatical monitoring is typical of language communities approaching extinction, and that it has some effect on the rate of change among the last generations of speakers. But only further studies of terminal languages will confirm or disconfirm this hypothesis. In general it seems possible to suggest that sociolinguistic factors, rather than purely linguistic features, distinguish change in dying languages from change in "healthy" languages. The types of changes in formal language structures, going from OFSs to SSs, are not notably different from those well established in the study of language change in general. But the timespan for change seems to be compressed, as it is in pidgin-creole languages (Sankoff 1979), and the amount of change seems relatively large. Sociolinguistically many features associated with language change are not strongly present in ESG (notably marked social stratification), but of course others likely to be characteristic of the final stages of language decline are: decreasing use of the language (in terms of both functions and interlocutors), incomplete acquisition histories, absence of vigilant grammatical purists in the speech community, for example. phological change; he finds a good deal of change in the paradigm for the connecting particles in Arvanitika (the Albanian spoken in Greece), in the noun declension, and in the verbal morphology. But the results are not age-graded, and the change is recognized by comparison with standard Albanian rather than with reference to an internal conservative norm represented by the oldest local speakers.

Language Change in Dying ESG 154

Semi-speaker E S G is a reduced linguistic system as compared with fluent-speaker E S G . The question then arises of how semi-speaker E S G compares with other reductive language systems: child language, for example, or pidgins. Certain similarities are apparent. Vocabulary is relatively restricted among SSs, morphological inflection is to some extent generalized (plural) or lost (future, conditional); some transformations are missing (passive). But the differences are equally striking. Allomorphic variety remains fairly substantial (plural, gerund) even in the speech of quite weak SSs. Fair persistence of a category with marginal or indirect semantic significance (gender) is shown. In areas outside the grammatical categories considered here, there are also sharp differences. For example, some embedding (positive and negative relativization of subject and object noun) is handled readily, again even by relatively poor SSs. Word order is virtually unchanged as compared with the fluent-speaker model." If the pattern of simplification on the one hand yet retention of complexity on the other seems contradictory, so are certain aspects of SS linguistic history. The most striking feature of SS linguistic performance, at least for E S G , is its asymmetry. While most of the E S G semi-speakers produce a Gaelic with very ev ident deficiencies, their receptive control of the language is outstanding. They are fully privy to all ordinary conversation in E S G ; they can laugh at jokes and stories, pick up whispers, enjoy repartee, and make out messages under high-noise conditions. It is not difficult for the visiting linguist to learn to speak more correct E S G than the SSs, and even to speak it more readily and connectedly than many of them. But it is unlikely that he or she will ever equal the SS's effortless and complete understanding of the rapidly spoken language. Because of their outstanding passive skills in E S G , the SSs have a strong sense of inclusion in the speech events of the community, however little they may say themselves. It even happens that a very weak speaker conceals from himself as well as from others how incomplete his productive control of the grammar is by remaining primarily a listener and making judicious use of his limited spoken Gaelic in verbal interactions. With full passive skills, a little active use of Gaelic can be made to go a long way toward adequate social interaction. It seems, too, that things like morphological or morphophonological inaccuracy will often go largely unnoticed if the remark which is made is contextuallv acceptable, showing perfect integration with whatever has preceded it in the conversation. In the light of this rather extreme asymmetry in reception as compared with production, we can look to semi-speaker E S G to reveal the degree of simplification likely to appear, and the degree of complexity likely to survive, where the acquisitional history has permitted the one set of skills greatly to outrun the other.43 12

The only common difference is that in the standard VSO (verb-subject-object) ordering a pronoun object, postponed until after any prepositional phrases in conservative fluent-speaker usage ('put he on the table it"), is moved before any prepositional phrases in SS usage ("put he it on the table").

" Children, of course, typically show considerable asymmetry in receptive and productive skills, too. But their conceptual powers are not yet fully developed, and

155

Although SSs have both linguistic and sociolinguistic features in common with child speakers, with pidgin speakers, and with natural (as opposed to classroom) second-language learners, they are at the same time unique in the particular configuration of their linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics, as I hope the presentation in this chapter has established. Like those other "exceptional" language users, they merit special study for the light they may shed on our understanding of the human language facility in general, to the benefit of linguistic description and theory.

hence their receptive skills are not nearly so advanced as those of SSs. Secondgeneration members of immigrant communities also often show the receptive/ productive asymmetry reported here for semi-speaker ESC. In the broad sense, the languages of such immigrant communities are usually themselves "dying languages," and the second-generation members "semi-speakers." The immigrant language may be quite intact in the country of origin, and yet in effect be a dying language in its overseas context. Changes soon appear in the structure of the isolated immigrant language; see Saltarelli 1975 and Karttunen 1977.

Language Change in Dying ESG 156

Appendix Questionnaire Surveys of East Sutherland Bilinguals and Monolinguals

A number of questionnaires on language use and language attitudes were employed at a late stage in this study, in 1976 and 1978. Questionnaire data were sought for two principal reasons: they had been gathered for other threatened linguistic groups in the Celtic world (Dressier and Leodolter 1973 [see also Dressier and Wodak-Leodolter 1977]; MacKinnon 1977; Lewis 1975), and East Sutherland data could consequently be used for comparative purposes; and questionnaire data are widely used and valued in social science in general, so that the study might be considered both more complete and more valid if this potential source of information were tapped. A third reason for introducing questionnaires was that they are relatively easy and quick to distribute and collect, so that the investigator can reach more people than he could either observe or interview personally. There are, on the other hand, certain problems inherent in using questionnaires which are more easily avoided in interviewing and in participant-observation. If questionnaires are simply distributed, rather than administered in an interview (in which latter case the advantages of speed and the great enlargement of the sample are usually lost), the investigator loses a major degree of control over the results. He does not even always know, for example, whether the person to whom he gave the questionnaire is the person who filled it out. Equally important, he is not privy to possible uncertainties and misunderstandings on the part of the respondent which may affect the answers given. If he is not present at the time the questionnaire is filled out, he cannot answer questions or expand on the instructions where needed; and if he is present, he may adversely affect the responses, for example, by causing the respondent to hurry, or by inadvertently giving an indication of the answer he expects. (The latter result eliminates one of the supposed advantages of questionnaires as opposed to interviewing: a lesser degree of "leading" the respondent.) Since I introduced questionnaires into my study fully thirteen years

157

after I had first begun to investigate the linguistic situation in East Sutherland, I was in an unusually good position to assess their utility and accuracy. That is to say, I already knew a great deal about language use and language attitudes in East Sutherland from direct observation of language habits and from in-depth interviewing of bilinguals. Furthermore, I knew a good many of the questionnaire respondents intimately, so that I was able to judge the accuracy of their responses while they for their part felt fairly free to tell me their reactions to the questions and their difficulties with the questionnaire format. There were enough cases of inaccuracy, and enough problems with questions and the questionnaire format, to persuade me that the questionnaire data belonged in an appendix rather than in the body of this book, and that some discussion of the use of questionnaires in linguistic investigations would be worthwhile. The questionnaire I am best able to judge in terms of the accuracy of the results and the difficulties of the format was one which was designed for fully fluent native speakers of ESG and administered ultimately to twenty-nine people. Of those twenty-nine, I had worked for many years previously, and in great depth, with sixteen. I had worked previously in less depth with another four. Six more were people with whom I had some acquaintance, relatives of long-standing informants; I was in possession of a good deal of information about their kinship and friendship networks and their linguistic habits. Three were people whom I knew not at all, or only by reputation; they entered my sample bv chance encounter. This questionnaire is reproduced as Questionnaire I at the end of this appendix. Because the questionnaire was relatively long and complex, it was intended precisely for the kind of respondent who, for the most part, did receive it: people with whom I was personally acquainted, who would be willing to spend time and effort on a longer instrument, and who would ask me for further instructions if uncertain how to proceed. There were difficulties with the design of the questionnaire, most especially in section 2(b), where the categories were viewed only in terms of the present moment in time (anyone who did not still have a living parent, for example, or a current household pet, tended to leave the question out or to check "doesn't apply"), and in section 6, question 4, which was faithfully answered but uninterpretable if questions 1, 2, or 3 of that section had been answered on the very positive end of the scale. Most of the difficulties, however, pertained to the administering of a detailed questionnaire in a population unaccustomed to questionnaires, rather than to the design of this questionnaire in particular. There were, for example, some refusals (though none from the category of long-term informants). These were all couched in the same terms: "I have nobody to help me with it." Several elderly women took this position; several elderly women who were long-term informants accomplished the task only by having me read the questions out and in effect dictating a response that was interpretable as one of the boxes to be checked. Two other elderly women had family members do their questionnaires: a brother-in-law in one case, a daughter in another. There was, in short, a good deal of helplessness in the face of a complicated task; it was met either by refusing the task or by drafting a third party to handle it. Whether the third party was a family member or the investigator, it seems likely that the results were affected to some extent. For example, it struck me very forcibly that out of a mere five responses which accorded with my expectations about section 3 (namely, that ESG speakers would be less likely to use Gaelic with the more prestigious figures), two were on questionnaires with which I had "helped." Other difficulties in handling the questionnaires appeared. The actual

Appendix 158

marking of the questionnaire was not always in accord with the instruction to place a check in the appropriate box. Sometimes words were written in the box (usually the word which headed the column for the box in question); one respondent systematically wrote "yes" in the first box and then made an χ in the box which actually pertained. A few markings were uninterpretable. Another problem was the omission of answers, a fairly frequent occurrence even on the questionnaires of respondents of the greatest cooperativeness and good will. Some of this appears to have been the product of what might be called "questionnaire fatigue. In the long list of responses called for in section 4, for example, a few items (in the total pool of questionnaires) were left out at the top of the list; only slightly more in the middle; but toward the bottom of that list, the number of omissions was double the number omitted at the top. Since the omissions do not correlate with the degree of willingness to fill out the questionnaire, or with the touchiness of the question (no. 22 being touchier than no. 19, but not omitted more), it seems that people simply got tired and overlooked more boxes toward the bottom of the page. In terms of consistency of response there are also notable problems. One respondent reported that she read the Gaelic Bible and psalms "often," yet checked "no" when asked whether she could read Gaelic (section 4, no. 2 versus section 5[b]). Another reported that she "never," as a child, spoke Gaelic to any of the interlocutors presented in section 2a of the questionnaire, but that as an adult she uses Gaelic "often" to siblings and classmates, "sometimes" to friends, and "usually to fellow workers. But unless "never" in section 2a is a mistake for its polar opposite, "always," there is some question as to how she learned enough Gaelic to make the use of it she claims in section 2b. Then there is the problem of the "disappearing parents"—seven sets of parents who were accounted for in section 2a disappear entirely in section 2b, appearing in none of the categories proffered. I suspected initially that this might reflect an uncertainty about how to use the "doesn't apply" box. But this is not the case, because extensive and accurate use is made of that box in reporting differences of linguistic behavior with household pets between childhood and adulthood. The household pets are accounted for, in the diachronic reports, but the seven sets of parents are not. Finally there is the question of accuracy. For projections of possible behavior, as in section 3, there is no sure way of assessing accuracy; and where section 7 was concerned I had too seldom witnessed encounters between speakers of other Gaelic dialects and many respondents to be certain of the appropriateness of the response. For sections 2b and 4, however, I was in an excellent position to judge the accuracy of the response for at least the sixteen respondents whom I had known and observed for many years, and in fact for some of the rest as well. Both of those sections of the questionnaire produced recognizable inaccuracy, but in opposite directions. In section 2b, where the questions were posed in terms of interlocutors, the inaccuracy was in the direction of overestimating the amount of Gaelic spoken. Certain claims of speaking Gaelic to a spouse "always" were inflated, for example, or of speaking Gaelic to a child "usually" or "often." The amount of such overestimation was quite considerable. In section 4, on the other hand, where the questions were posed in terms of verbal activities and topics, the inaccuracy was generally in the direction of underestimating the amount of Gaelic spoken. People whom I had often enough heard discussing local affairs and health in Gaelic claimed never to do so, and a surprising number of people (three out of twenty-five, or better than 10 percent) claimed never to dream at all, in Gaelic or in English. The only noticeable case of overestimating the use of Gaelic in section 4 was one in which a daughter filled out her mother's

159

questionnaire; she checked "always" for every item except the ones which entailed an ability to read and write Gaelic. But this was strikingly counter to the general trend of underestimation. For example, three (that is, 19 percent) of the sixteen people whose language habits I knew intimately denied all use of Gaelic to discuss local affairs, whereas all three of them did so with some frequency. Perhaps the difference in the direction of inaccuracy for these two questionnaire sections reflects the strength of the interlocutor factor in choice of language and the weakness of the topic factor in East Sutherland (see chapter 3). Most of the interlocutors named in section 2b represent interlocutor categories likely to evoke Gaelic; this is less true of the topics in section 4, nos. 16 through 21, since topic has little influence on code choice in East Sutherland. Unless questionnaire responses can be cross-checked against each other (as with one aspect of sections 2a, 3, and 4 of Questionnaire I: see "Questionnaire I, section 3" below) and show high consistency, there is obviously good reason to be cautious about accepting them at face value. Despite the shortcomings just discussed in the responses to Questionnaire I, I am relatively comfortable in presenting its results precisely because I have sufficient experience to interpret them and to contradict them where necessary. To a much more limited extent (since the questions are ones of values rather than of practices), I am also able to assess and interpret the results of Questionnaire II; but the school questionnaires (III and IV) are much more opaque to me and are assessed in largely statistical terms, as also suits their format and number. Where possible, the results of these East Sutherland questionnaires are compared with the results of questionnaires administered in other Gaelic speech communities. In general it seems to me, on the basis of my experience with questionnaires in East Sutherland, that while questionnaire results can be regarded as enlightening and useful in their general gestalt, they may well be askew in some of their particulars. Even the utility of the general gestalt obviously depends, however, on the validity of the design and of the sample.

Questionnaire

I, Sections

2a and 2b

In table 8 the results of questionnaire sections 2a and 2b appear. When the older generation of fluent speakers were children, it seems that patents, grandparents, older siblings, and classmates were the interlocutors who evoked Gaelic speech most powerfully. Among the same speakers as adults, classmates and some friends are most likely to evoke Gaelic speech (taking the aggregate of the "always" and "usually" responses). Demographic factors undoubtedly enter in here.. Parents are no longer alive, and a good many Gaelic speakers either married monolingual English speakers or failed to marry at all. Emigration plays a role. In some cases very few of the siblings are still in the home village, or even in the country, whereas from the larger original pool of classmates more may still be available as interlocutors. Conspicuous here is the decline in the use of Gaelic within the respondent's own household. Assuming "spouse" and "children" to represent the individuals most likely to be living in the same household as the respondent, the bilinguals represented here make very much less use of Gaelic in their own homes than they did as children. This is, of course, perfectly in keeping with the position of ESG as a language on the edge of extinction.

Appendix 160

Degree of use of Gaelic Interlocutor

Always Usually Often

Sometimes Sever

Doesn't apply Number

Childhood parents

24

1

1

2

—

grandparents

20

1

1

1

—

4

27

older siblings

22

2

—

4

28

younger siblings

14

2

2

—

5

23

21

2

1

4

—

—

28

classmates (in school)

15

2

2

5

4

—

28

minister

11

1

10

6

—

28

household pets

11

1

1

10

4

—

27

—

—

28

—

classmates (on playground)

—

Adulthood older siblings

14

2

5

—

6

27

younger siblings

11

1

2

4

—

7

25

classmates

16

3

1

4

3

1

28

spouse

13

1

2

2

4

22

1

11

3

7

24

1

11

21

1

28

7

28

children

1

parents

9

some friends household pets

—

1 —

4

11 5

—

—

—

4

8

1

8

—

7

Table 8. Self-report by fully fluent bilinguals o f use o f Gaelic with various interlocutors

Questionnaire

I, Section

4

T h e results of section 4 are p r e s e n t e d out o f o r d e r — t h a t is, before t h e results of section 3 — s o that they can b e used subsequently for comparison with them. Table 9 records the responses to this section of Questionnaire I. It is readily apparent that the bulk o f t h e responses fall into the " n e v e r " and " s o m e t i m e s " categories. I have already stated that these responses s e e m to me very m u c h to u n d e r e s t i m a t e t h e use o f Gaelic. In general the " n e v e r " category is overused, and t h e " o f t e n " category underused. It is certainly quite out of proportion that t h e passive activity o f listening to broadcasts in Gaelic is reported as more regularly indulged in than the active pastime of discussing health and local affairs, or even sports and finances, in Gaelic. Gaelic church services are indeed widely and faithfully listened to on the radio; otherwise, in my e x p e r i e n c e , n o n e of the G a e l i c broadcasting activities is regularly followed by m o r e than a very small n u m b e r o f people, though many listen to music broadcasts on an irregular basis.' 1

This opinion is based on the observed behavior of households in which I regularly visited or occasionally stayed, and on the low incidence of reference to material heard in Gaelic radio broadcasts. Television broadcasts (almost exclusively music) are more likely to be followed, but are relatively rare.

161

Degree of use of Gaelic

Activity

Always

Read Gaelic (secular) Read Gaelic (religious) Music broadcasts News broadcasts Religious broadcasts Discussion broadcasts Write Gaelic Speak to fellow workers Speak to superior Prayer Dreaming Cursing Counting Telephoning Speak to Highlanders from elsewhere Discuss local affairs Discuss national affairs Discuss religion Discuss sports Discuss finances Discuss health Exclusionary speaking

1

Usually Often —

4 8 5 2

2 5 2 4

2 7 3 4

1 —

3 —

4

4 —

—

5

1

26

3 2

1 2 2

29 28 26 29

7 24

2 2

27 26

t 1 6 10 16 13 7

7 17 15 11 4 5 18

4 8 1 3 3 1

28 26 25 25 26 26 28

—

3 —

SomeXo partitimes Never cipation S'umber

10 7 11 5 11 —

2 —

11

—

—

2 1 2 2 1

1

—

2 1

—

2 2

2 2

3 5

15 9

5 8

2 1

29 27

2 2 2 1 1

1 1 1 1 2

1 2 2 2 5

10 8 9 9 10

10 10 10 11 5

3 3 2 1 —

27 26 26 25 23

5

12

5

—

27

5

1

19

—

—

4

—

Table 9. Self-report by fully fluent bilinguals of use of Gaelic in various activities There are, however, four or five responses to this section of the questionnaire which seem to me reasonably accurate and which reflect issues that were raised in chapter 3. For those reasons they merit brief comment here. The common limitation of Gaelic skills to speaking and understanding is clear from the high incidence of never in response to questions about reading and writing Gaelic. More than a third ot the sample never engage even in reading the Gaelic Bible or the psalms; no one claims to use Gaelic in writing at all. Telephoning, noted as an unusual function for Gaelic in chapter 3, appears as such here. The structure of East Sutherland society is reflected in the fact that only one respondent uses Gaelic to a superior at work, and only "sometimes" at that, whereas

Appendix 162

seventeen are able to use Gaelic to varying degrees with fellow workers. There are simply very few bilinguals in supervisory positions. And finally, the use of Gaelic as a "secret" language appears surprisingly clearly here. This exclusionary use of Gaelic is a somewhat sensitive issue, since it is often resented by English speakers, but only five respondents claimed never to use Gaelic for that purpose. The exclusionary use of Gaelic will be discussed again below in connection with Questionnaire II.

Questionnaire

I, Section

3

Table 10 presents the results of section 3 of Questionnaire I. Sections 2a and 4 offer two opportunities to correlate these results with self-reports of actual behavior. The responses "always," "usually," and "often" in section 2a can be equated roughly with "yes, surely" in section 3. Since the ministers in East Sutherland were always outsiders, the twelve people (out of twenty-eight) who gave "always," "usually," or "often" responses to the question whether they actually spoke Gaelic to the minister in their childhoods correlate well with the twelve people (out of twenty-eight) who responded "yes, surely" in section 3 to the question whether they would speak Gaelic to a hypothetical minister from Skye. The correlation between the "sometimes" response to the minister question in section 2a and the "maybe" response to the minister question in section 3 is almost as good (10:9), it is only slightly less good for the respective "never" and "no, probably not" responses in the two sections (4:7). That is, there is high consistency of response here. There is also fairly good consistency between part of the projection of hypothetical behavior here and part of the self-report on the use of Gaelic to speak to other Highlanders in section 4 of this questionnaire, where five people said they "never" did (and five to seven said here that they probably would not). On the other hand, many more people (eleven to sixteen out of twenty-seven or twenty-eight) imagined that they "surely" would speak to these Skye incomers than claimed "usually," "always," or "often" to speak to other Highlanders in their self-reports in section 4 (seven out of twenty-nine). My own opinion, based on observed behavior and on the comments of older bilinguals on their feelings about speaking to the occasional Gaelic-speaking teacher or minister from elsewhere in Scotland, is that the self-report is more accurate than the projection: a good many older bilinguals hesitate to use their Gaelic with a Gaelic-speaking incomer if that incomer is of fairly high social standing.

Position Joiner Bobbv Shopkeeper Teacher Minister

Willingness to speak Gaelic Yes, surely Maybe No, probably 16 13 13 11 12

7 8 9 9 9

5 6 5 7 7

Number not 28 27 27 27 28

Table 10. Projections by fully fluent bilinguals of their willingness to speak Gaelic to a hypothetical Skye incomer of varying social position

163

Questionnaire

I, Sections 7a and 7b

Respondents were permitted, in these sections, 2 to check more than one response. This seemed realistic because of the variety of different dialects they might have been exposed to and the different circumstances in which they might have encountered the various dialects. Twenty-eight people completed this section of the questionnaire, but there were forty-two responses, indicating that most people did feel that more than one of these descriptions applied to their experience. The strongest response was to (c); twelve people agreed that they could get the general idea of what a west coast or island Gaelic speaker was saying. Nine people checked (b): "only a few words here and there"; and nine likewise checked (e): "quite well if I have a chance to listen to it for a good few minutes and can get used to it." The other responses were at a much lower level: four for (f); "pretty well"; three each for (d): "quite well if I know in advance what the topic of their conversation is," and (g): "without any trouble at all;" and two for (a): "not at all." Fourteen people (50 percent) checked no response stronger than (c); nine people (32 percent) checked no response weaker than (d). The results for 7a were correlated with the results for 7b. Of the fourteen people who checked at least one of the responses (d), (e), (f), and (g) in 7a, all but three responded "yes" to at least two of the statements in 7b. It is noteworthy that two of the three exceptions (people who here claimed a fair facility at understanding at least some other dialects, but have no experience with islanders or west coasters) have made strong statements to me on other occasions about their frustration and difficulty in trying to understand other dialects. Since the statements about difficulties were made with illustrations of particular cases and circumstances, I am inclined to credit the statements more than the questionnaire response. Of the fourteen people who checked no response stronger than (c), "enough to get the general idea of what they 're saying," only three responded "yes" to at least two of the statements in 7b. In general terms, then, section 7 of Questionnaire I supports the notion that ability to understand other Gaelic dialects is notably increased for East Sutherlanders by direct personal experience with speakers of those dialects.

Results of Sociolinguistic Populations

Questionnaires

in Other

Celtic

Dressier and Leodolter, Austrian linguists working in Brittany, included questions about a number of similar uses of Breton in their sociolinguistic pilot study of Breton speech in Tregor (1973). The results are presented only sketchily, however, and in terms of global contrast between older and younger speakers, which makes comparison with the East Sutherland results difficult. They found that Breton was used by old and young alike in only a few of the situations covered in their questionnaire; conversations with grandparents, parents, rural workers, subordinates, and people from the immediate vicinity. French, the official language, was used by old and young alike for communication with public officials and with strangers. MacKinnon (1977) distributed questionnaires to a random sample of the Gaelic-speaking adult population of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. He recog2

Section 6 is omitted because inadequacies in its design prevented it from being readily interpretable.

Appendix 164

nized five domains for Gaelic: the personal (for example, dreaming, swearing, praying), the familial (speaking to spouse and other family members), the communal (community affairs, church affairs, etc.), the transactional (commercial interactions), and the official (local government, conferring with teachers, etc.). For all age groups, use of Gaelic was strongest in the familial domain and, for almost all age groups, next strongest in the communal domain. Exclusive use of Gaelic was highest for speech to the following interlocutors: (1) older relatives; (2) parents; (3) spouse (when alone); (4) older people locally; (5) a missionary (that is, an evangelist). The first three of these interlocutors elicited exclusive use of Gaelic from better than 90 percent of the sample, the fourth from 87 percent, and the fifth from 78 percent. Exclusive use of Gaelic was lowest for speech to: (1) an inspector (IT percent); (2) a telephone operator (16 percent); (3) a telephone operator on the local Harris phone exchange (15 percent); (4) a policeman (13 percent); and (5) a doctor (11 percent). The primacy of the family for the use of Gaelic is as evident in Harris as in East Sutherland, and people in authority seem to have just as adverse an effect on the use of Gaelic in Harris as in the much more anglicized East Sutherland setting. MacKinnon does not say how many of the inspectors, operators, policemen, or doctors in Harris were bilingual, but it is usual in the Outer Hebrides to place at least some bilinguals in such positions. "Inner speech" seems to be relatively weakly Gaelic in Harris, as in East Sutherland. In the former setting only the over-seventy age group used Gaelic only for inner speech more than about 50 percent of the time. In the latter setting there were thirty-five "never" responses to the four inner-speech activities listed, forty-six "sometimes" responses, and only ten responses indicating any greater use of Gaelic for these purposes (see table 9). Questionnaire

Π

Questionnaire II was created in an attempt to get at the reasons native speakers may have, or at least profess, for valuing Gaelic, and to determine whether these differ significantly from the reasons for valuing Gaelic professed by the English monolinguals in their midst. Originally the questionnaire was used in a variety of East Sutherland settings, but difficulties in obtaining useful samples lead me to restrict my discussion here to the results from Embo village. In Embo I gave the questionnaire to all of the fluent speakers, semi-speakers, and English monolinguals whom I knew personally, and then I broadened the sample, and made it more representative, by knocking on every door up and down several streets and giving the questionnaire to every willing adult who was at home, to be collected two or three days later. A special effort was made to reach English monolinguals, who are relatively few in Embo. The result was eighteen responses from monolinguals, and thirty-four from bilinguals. For the purposes of this questionnaire, both fluent speakers and semi-speakers are considered bilinguals; both have access to Gaelic, and all of the semi-speakers are perfect passive bilinguals who possess active skills in varying degrees as well. One additional reason for limiting the survey to Embo, ultimately, and for using the door-to-door approach as well as personal contacts, was the hope of making the results of this survey more comparable to the results of a door-to-door survey of a small Inner Hebridean village, using this questionnaire, reported on elsewhere (Dorian forthcoming). The Embo results are presented here in the tabular format used in that paper, so that the interested reader can make direct comparisons if desired. A general comparison is provided below. In this survey thirteen possible reasons for valuing Gaelic are matched

165

in content across the forms for monolinguals and those for bilinguals. the chief difference being that most of the reasons are couched in the conditional for the English mother-tongue group and in the indicative for the bilingual group. The thirteen reasons proposed in the questionnaires are distilled from the personal expressions of scores of informants, over a thirteen-year period, in fieldwork undertaken in East Sutherland, Easter Ross, eastern Inverness-shire, and the Isle of Mull. These reasons fall, as I see it, into six categories of motivation, three of which can be expressed nominally and three adjectivally: tradition (personal, no. 1, or local, no. 9); local integration (nos. 6 and 10); abstract principle (no. 2); subjective aesthetic (nos. 4 and 13); operational (nos. 3, 7, 11, and 12); and exclusionary (nos. 5 and 8). The reasons are labeled according to this scheme in the tables which follow. No respondent took advantage of the provision made for writing in other reasons for valuing Gaelic. Table 11 presents the reasons which were either circled or starred (both those responses indicating agreement with the reason) by the bilinguals, labeled " E m b o Gaelic," and by the monolinguals, labeled "Embo English," in descending order of strength. The most striking overall result is that the bilinguals responded much more positively as a whole to the proffered reasons: 100 percent of them selected no. 13 ("Gaelic is a beautiful language to hear and speak"), and even the least favored reason (no. 7: "I can read in Gaelic") was selected by 44 percent of the sample. Monolinguals, on the other hand, reached only 83 percent selection of the most favored reason (no. 10: "It's the language of my friends and neighbors"), and the least favored reason (no. 5: "No one can understand the Highlands properly without Gaelic"), mustered only 17 percent support. Not surprisingly, then, native speakers of Gaelic felt the appeal of the thirteen reasons more strongly than did the English monolinguals. Subjective aesthetic reasons rank high for both groups, an interesting result for a "folk language" which contains a number of phones unpopular in other languages (nasal vowels, which English monolinguals often object to in French, and "guttural" consonants, which English monolinguals often object to in German). It might be noted here that although it is theoretically investigatable whether Gaelic is actually a "rich and expressive" language in comparison to other languages (for example, whether its lexicon is significantly larger or smaller), it seems safe to assume that the claim was evaluated by respondents in subjective terms. Hence the label "subjective aesthetic." Only one of the operational reasons had much support from both groups: the greater enjoyment of Gaelic music. The monolinguals set more store by the ability to talk to other Highlanders, relatively speaking (although not absolutely, in terms of percentages); neither group responded to Gaelic broadcasting or—especially—Gaelic reading as a motivation. The broadening effect of speaking two languages (no. 2) had much more appeal to those who do in fact have two languages than to the monolingual group. There is an interesting difference in the responses to tradition and local integration. Personal tradition, strong for the bilinguals, is weak for the monolinguals, not all of whom are of Highland descent. Local tradition has a fair response from both groups. But local integration, the single strongest response from monolinguals, is well down the list for bilinguals. The difference lies in the two groups perception of Embo village. Incoming monolinguals perceive the village as very "Highland" and very "Gaelic"; they hear Gaelic spoken around them, and their neighbors and sometimes their friends are bilingual. The native speakers, on the other hand, remember a time when the village was wholly Gaelic; to them the village seems to have lost much of its Gaelic character, and the local integration

Appendix

166

Reason

Number selecting

Percentage of group Motivation subjective aesthetictradition: personal subjective aesthetic abstract principle exclusionary tradition: local operational: music local integrative exclusionary local integrative operational: talk operational: BBC operational: reading

Emho Gaelic (η = 34)

Reason o n n t a i M i D i N - a c - i ^ m

o n n o i N i i i i N i N a N M M «

co — T t N l ß O i c ^ t O a o O^Ho «i-Η - HΗt —

Number selecting Percentage of group

Motivation local integrative subjective aesthetic operational: music subjective aesthetic tradition: local abstract principle local integrative operational: talk tradition: personal exclusionary operational: BBC operational: reading exclusionary

Embo English (η = 18)

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Appendix

170

dents, although, as in the starring results, music fares best. Local tradition (and, for the bilinguals, personal tradition as well) generally escapes crossing out among both groups, and the subjective aesthetic reasons likewise. The abstract principle (no. 2), which was rarely starred, is nonetheless seldom crossed out; it seems to be a fairly neutral item. It is possible to gain a reading of the least ambivalent responses to this questionnaire by asking which items were sometimes starred but never crossed out, and sometimes crossed out but never starred, for each group. The sole reason which, while starred, was never crossed out by the bilinguals was no 13: "Gaelic is a beautiful language to hear and speak." This same reason, and also the other subjective aesthetic reason (no. 4: "Gaelic is a very rich and expressive language") achieved the same results among the monolinguals. To a striking degree, both groups seem to feel the appeal of Gaelic as a language, not as a means to anything else (even to a sense of local integration or to an appreciation of Gaelic music). For the bilinguals this result is understandable enough, but this might seem an odd response among the monolinguals in an area where Gaelic is the language of a stigmatized group. However, the monolinguals who live in Embo are largely self-selected for their favorable attitude toward the bilingual villagers; some are married to bilinguals or have other affinal ties to them, and others have chosen to live in the v illage out of interest in or fondness for its character as a former Gaelic fishing village. Two reasons among the thirteen were sometimes crossed out, but never starred, by each group, and again there is a reason in common—no. 7: "I can [would be able to] read in Gaelic. . . ." This is, of course, factually untrue for most of the bilinguals, and they crossed it out in correspondingly large numbers. For the monolinguals the idea of reading in Gaelic held little appeal, and one may suppose that this has something to do with the general ignorance in Scotland (among Gaels and non-Gaels alike, in many parts of the Highlands) of the Gaelic literary tradition, a lack of awareness that there is anything much to read in Gaelic. The second reason to be crossed out but never starred among bilinguals is no. 11, Gaelic broadcasting. This result may reflect the uncertain success in comprehending BBC Gaelic broadcasts reported by many bilinguals, but it accords poorly with the strong response to church service broadcasts in the selfreports of Questionnaire I, section 4. The second reason to be crossed out but never starred among monolinguals is no. 5; "No one can understand the Highlands properly without Gaelic. Among a monolingual group resident in Embo, marked as relatively favorable to Caelic and to the Highland character of the village by their very choice of residence, the exclusionary nature of that statement may be perceived as particularly offensive. In general, and not surprisingly, the exclusionary reasons have a much more favorable response, in terms of circling and crossing out especially, but to a lesser extent also in terms of starring, among the bilinguals than among the monolinguals. The bilinguals are not unaware of, or unwilling to admit, the exclusionary value which Gaelic has for them.

The Inner Hebrides

Questionnaire

In the Inner Hebridean village of Dervaig, on the Isle of Mull, the same questionnaire was administered door-to-door in 1976 (see Dorian forthcoming). Dervaig is about one-third the size of Embo, is closer to the remaining Gaelicspeaking heartland, and has a local dialect much closer to the written standard than does East Sutherland. The Gaelic language is dying out in Dervaig, too,

171

however; Gaelic is spoken only by the older generation, and the village is no more Gaelic-speaking overall than Embo. Dervaig Gaelic speakers responded as strongly as ESG speakers did to personal tradition, in terms of reasons starred, but much less strongly to the operational value of understanding Gaelic music better, and much more strongly to the value of Gaelic as a secret language. They showed the same downgrading of local tradition relative to the English monolinguals. In both locations subjective aesthetic reasons for valuing Gaelic made a particularly strong showing across both mother-tongue groups. Responses to the operational value of Gaelic for understanding BBC broadcasts and for talking to other Highlanders were considerably more positive among Dervaig Gaelic speakers than among Embo Gaelic speakers; the former can do both more readily thanks to the relatively standard nature of their dialect. Dervaig English speakers showed the same strong reaction to the exclusionary reasons for valuing Gaelic as Embo English speakers; the chief difference was that they crossed out the "secret language reason to a considerably greater degree. Dervaig Gaelic speakers showed greater strength of response to the exclusionary reasons than Embo Gaelic speaker, both starring them and crossing them out to a much greater degree. Those who valued them seemed to value them more strongly, and those who rejected them did so more vehemently. The broadening value of a second language had even less appeal in Dervaig than in Embo; it was never starred by either mother-tongue group and was crossed out by a higher percentage of both groups.

Questionnaire

III

This questionnaire was adapted for use in East Sutherland from a questionnaire used in a survey of Welsh schoolchildren in 1967-71 (Lewis 1975). The Welsh questionnaire was very kindly made available to me by Professor E. Glyn Lewis. In its adapted form the questionnaire was administered, by permission of Mr. Bryan Wood, Divisional Education Officer (Sutherland Division), Highland Regional Council, in six schools: four primary schools and two secondary schools. With the cooperation of the headmasters of those schools, the questionnaires were given over to a strategically placed teacher, who then administered them to the target population. The investigator talked personally to the Divisional Education Officer and to each headmaster, but not to the teacher who administered the questionnaires (except in the smallest school, where the headmaster was also the teacher who administered the questionnaires) and not to the pupils. The task was thus rather impersonal for the administering teachers and for the pupils, which was the aim of this procedure. The target populations were chosen with the nature of the questionnaire and the schools in mind. This was the first experience in responding to a questionnaire for most of the children. Because of the novelty and possible difficulty of the task, only the oldest primary school class (primary 7) was surveyed in the three larger primary schools. In the smallest primary school, the three oldest classes were surveyed in order to achieve a reasonable sample, and even then the number of pupils responding was only twelve (versus twenty-nine, thirty-two, and thirty-two for the other three primary schools). There are three secondaryschools in East Sutherland, but the largest of them had to be excluded because it has a large population of west and north coast boarding pupils. In order to secure a strictly east coast sample, only the two smaller secondary schools were surveyed; their pupils are all from east coast families. These two schools are not fullfledged senior secondary schools, however; after two years their pupils go on to Appendix 172

the larger high school in Golspie. Therefore the oldest class—secondary 2—in each of these truncated secondary schools was surveyed. The pupils in secondary 2 numbered thirty-six in one case and fifty-three in the other. Whereas all of the primary schools (Brora, Golspie, Embo, and Dornoch) draw pupils only from their own immediate geographical area, the two secondary schools sampled, Brora and Dornoch, draw also from areas farther to the north (in the case of Brora) and farther to the south (in the case of Dornoch). The more southerly east coast area has no indigenous Gaelic-speaking population any longer; its former Gaelicspeaking population was made up of agriculturalists rather than fisherfolk. The more northerly east coast area has a long-standing Gaelic fisherfolk component in its population (although this is now very small and consists at present entirely of long-term residents born in either Brora or Golspie). The Dornoch secondary school does have a very small number of fisherfolk descendants from Embo in its pupil population, however, and of course the Brora secondary school draws a small number of fisherfolk descendants from the local village population as well as from farther north along the coast. In Questionnaire III, the thirty statements for which agreement or disagreement was to be registered were divided for purposes of analysis into six groups. The items labeled "C" were considered goal-directed questions. The items labeled " D " were considered program-oriented, while item A can be called a fact question, even though an opinion is elicited; this item was separated from the Β items because it seemed possible that it might have some independent bearing on the Β response as well as on the C and D responses. The items labeled "E" were considered purely questions of attitude toward English. And the item labeled " F " was separated from the Ε items because it seemed that it might have some independent bearing on the B, C, D, and Ε responses. One item (section C, no. 2) was eliminated from the analysis because in retrospect it seemed potentially ambiguous for the Highland child. For the twenty-nine items ultimately scored, a value of 5 was assigned to the box most favorable to Gaelic, descending to a value of 1 for the box least favorable to Gaelic (in sections A and B), or (in section C) 5 for the box most favorable to English, descending to 1 for the box least favorable to English. The responses by school to the B, C, D, and Ε items on Questionnaire III are extremely consistent internally. Table 14 shows the mean score by school for the various groups of items; 5 would represent the most favorable response possible to Gaelic (B, C, D, and A items) or to English (E and F items), and 1 the least favorable response. It appears clearly in these results that on the whole the younger children are more favorable to Gaelic. Three of the four primary schools (Brora being the exception) show the most Gaelic-positive responses to the B, C, and D items. The same three primary schools show the least favorable attitude to English in the Ε items. In terms of specific settings, Brora is consistently the school population least favorable to Gaelic and most favorable to English. Embo, the only one of the villages in which virtually all of the children are of Gaelic fisherfolk background, shows consistently the most positive response to Gaelic and the least positive response to English. The gap between Embo and the next school is relatively large in every case. These attitudes are apparently not much affected by the children's notion of whether Caelic is a difficult language to learn. None of the school populations sampled disagreed notably with the statement that Gaelic is difficult to learn; but the two Brora schools are on opposite ends of the scale, despite their similarity of attitude to Gaelic and English otherwise, and the Embo schoolchildren did not show any strong tendency to disagree about the difficulty of Gaelic despite their otherwise positive attitudes to the language. On the F

173

School Β items (attitude: Gaelic)

D items (program: Gaelic)

Ε items (attitude: English)

Mean

School

Mean

E m b o primary Golspie primary 7 Dornoch primary 7 Dornoch secondary 2 Brora primary 7 Brora secondary 2

4.83 3.97 3.94

2.89 2.72 2.56 2.50

4.00

E m b o primary Golspie primary 7 Dornoch primary 7 D o m o c h secondary

4.33 C items 3.62 (goal: 3.56 Gaelic)

2 Brora primary 7 Brora secondary 2

3.49 3.28 3.19

E m b o primary Dornoch primary 7 Golspie primary 7 D o m o c h second-

3.44 A item 2.69 (difficulty: 2.66 Gaelic)

ary 2 Brora secondary 2 Brora primary 7

2.57 2.39 2.25

Brora secondary 2 Golspie primary 7 Dornoch primary 7 E m b o primary Dornoch secondary 2 Brora primary 7

Brora primary 7 Brora secondary 2 Dornoch secondary 2 Golspie primary 7 Dornoch primary 7 E m b o primary

3.75 F item 3.44 (class: English) 3.34 3.10 3.00 2.42

E m b o primary Brora secondary 2 Dornoch secondary 2 Golspie primary 7 Dornoch primary 7 Brora primary 7

3.64 3.54 3.33

2.00 1.71

2.28 2.23 1.76 1.59 1.59

Table 14. Mean response by school to the B, C, D, A, E, and F items of Questionnaire III (schoolchildren)

item, however, the E m b o response is strikingly out of line with the responses of the other school populations. Only in E m b o are the children overwhelmingly of Gaelic fisherfolk descent; only in E m b o do the children agree at a high level with the statement "You are considered to belong to a higher class if you speak English." T h e E m b o children seem to be aware in a way that the other children are not of the lingering linguistic and ethnic biases in East Sutherland society. Otherwise noteworthy in these responses is the fact that the goal-oriented statements, which involve reading Gaelic (section A, no. 8) and understanding Gaelic songs (section B, no. 6), receive the warmest response, across the board, among the groups of items. This is rather in contrast to the relatively low value placed by adults on "operational" values in Questionnaire II, although enjoying Gaelic music certainly had relatively good strength there. Dismayingly evident is the gap between relatively positive attitudes toward Gaelic (B items) and willingness to see something done to implement those attitudes (D items). Only in E m b o did the children show any positive strength of response to the possibility of using the schools and the mass media more extensively to promote Gaelic. Some of the factors which might be expected to affect a child's attitude toward Gaelic and English (as reflected in responses to the twenty-nine state-

Appendix 174

ments scored) w e r e r e p r e s e n t e d in the background questions in Questionnaire I I I . T h e relationships b e t w e e n the child's background and his attitudes w e r e correlated by c o m p u t e r and c h e c k e d for statistical significance. T h e general attitude toward Gaelic, as r e f l e c t e d in responses to the Β items, was not correlated in a statistically significant w a y with e i t h e r the child's place o f birth ( H i g h l a n d versus L o w l a n d ) or the parents occupation ( w h i t e collar versus blue collar). O n the other hand, having l i v e d w h e r e most p e o p l e speak Gaelic, understanding or speaking some G a e l i c oneself (without b e n e f i t of schooling), h a v i n g a mother, grandparents, minister, teacher, or neighbors w h o speak Gaelic, all had a statistically significant relationship to the child's attitude toward G a e l i c (B items). T h e n u m b e r of children w h o had a Gaelic-speaking minister was tiny, h o w e v e r , and thus d e spite statistical significance the result is not interesting.

H a v i n g a father 5 or

friends w h o speak G a e l i c d i d not correlate with the attitudes significantly, nor did having learned s o m e G a e l i c in school. H a v i n g a Gaelic-speaking teacher, which showed a statistically significant correlation, did not correlate with m o r e positive attitude scores; the Gaelic-speaking teachers in East Sutherland d o not teach Gaelic, h o w e v e r , and they are also not all enthusiastic supporters of their original h o m e language. All o f the o t h e r statistically significant factors had a strong correlation w i t h relatively positive responses to the Β items. Table 15 shows percentages of the children g i v i n g responses to the Β items which averaged out to a score in the range of 4 to 5 (favorable, or v e r y favorable, to G a e l i c ) in terms o f various background factors. T h e four most p o w e r f u l are, in d e s c e n d i n g order: (1) having lived w h e r e most p e o p l e speak Gaelic, (2) understanding some Gaelic, (3) having a m o t h e r w h o speaks Gaelic, and (4) speaking some Gaelic. ' The number of children with Gaelic-speaking fathers was very small in any case (3). whereas the number of children with Gaelic-speaking mothers was larger (31). Percentage Vps

No'

of

difference

have lived w h e r e most p e o p l e speak Gaelic

88%

(22 o f 25)

48%

(80 o f 167)

40%

understand some 78.5

(40 o f 51)

44

(62 of 141)

34.5

speak some G a e l i c

81

(17 o f 21)

50

(85 of 170)

31

mother speaks G a e l i c

81

(25 o f 31)

47

(77 o f 163)

34

68

(45 o f 66)

44.5

(57 o f 128)

23.5

68

(41 o f 60)

45

(59 o f 132)

23

Gaelic

grandparents speak Gaelic neighbors speak Gaelic

Table 15. P e r c e n t a g e of children w h o s e responses to Β items a v e r a g e d to a score of 4 or 5 (favorable to G a e l i c ) according to " y e s " or " n o " responses on background factors • In the case of the grandparents and neighbors, the "no" responses here include also the "not as far as I know" responses.

175

Higher response averages for the goal-oriented C items on Questionnaire III are positively correlated with most of the same things which also correlated positively with higher response averages for the Β items: having lived where most people speak Gaelic, understanding some Gaelic, speaking some Gaelic, having a mother who speaks Gaelic, being younger (nine to twelve) rather than older (thirteen to sixteen), and having grandparents who speak Gaelic. Response averages for the program-oriented D items on Questionnaire III showed a different constellation. For the first time, place of birth and parents occupation had statistical significance: the Highland-born had more favorable response averages for the D items than did the Lowland-born, and while the children of white-collar background had almost the same percentage of favorable response average as the children of blue-collar background (7.8 percent versus 8.8 percent), they had a very much higher percentage of unfavorable response average (56.2 percent versus 35 percent). It should be noted that all response averages were conspicuously lower for the D items than for the Β or C items. It is still true, however, that certain statistically significant factors correlated with a somewhat more favorable response average: having lived where most people speak Gaelic, understanding some Gaelic, speaking some Gaelic, and having grandparents who speak Gaelic. In this case, having a mother who spoke Gaelic was not a statistically significant background factor. Response averages for the Ε items (attitude toward English) correlated positively with the following background factors: not understanding Gaelic, having learned some Gaelic in school (paradoxically), being older (twelve to sixteen), and having at least one teacher who speaks Gaelic. Since both of the relatively large secondary-school groups have contact with at least one Gaelic-speaking teacher, whereas only one relatively small primary 7 group does, the last two factors may in effect come to the same thing.

Results

of Schoolchildren

Questionnaires

in Wales

The Welsh questionnaire upon which Questionnaire III in this study was modeled produced results with certain similarities to the East Sutherland results (Lewis 1975). For example, the general attitude toward Welsh was much more favorable than was the response to statements involving actions which might be taken to promote Welsh. Attitudes toward Welsh were more favorable in the relatively Welsh-speaking parts of the country, just as attitudes toward Gaelic are more favorable in relatively Gaelic-speaking Embo. Younger children had a more positive attitude toward Welsh, and a less positive attitude toward English, than older children.

Questionnaire

IV

The schoolchildren in East Sutherland schools were surveyed in 1976, but for a variety of reasons teachers were not surveyed until 1978. There was some change of teaching staff in the intervening two years, ranging from zero at Brora secondary school, to one at Dornoch and Golspie primary schools, four at Brora primary school, and perhaps four or five in Dornoch secondary school, which shares and alternates some teachers with the Golspie secondary school. There were only two teachers, a husband-and-wife team, at Embo primary school in 1976. They were no longer there in 1978, but I had given them an attitude questionnaire in a slightly different format in 1976 and thus had some measure of their position with regard to Gaelic. Excluding the two Embo teachAppendix 176

ers, there were in 1978 a total of fifty-nine teachers at the six schools where Questionnaire III was filled out by the children. Despite the kind cooperation of the Divisional Education Officer and the headmasters of the schools, only thirtythree of the teachers returned questionnaires (which again were presented without personal contact between investigator and respondents). A further disadvantage was that the Brora teachers all listed their school (both divisions of which are housed in one complex) as "Brora," without specifying primary or secondary. Thus the results of this questionnaire were analyzed in terms of five groups: Brora (primary and secondary), Golspie primary, Dornoch primary, Dornoch secondary, and one peripatetic teacher who formed a group by himself. The eighteen statements to which the teachers were asked to respond were broken down for purposes of analysis into groups of items, as indicated on the Questionnaire IV sample at the closc of this appendix. A items were considered indicators of attitude toward Gaelic, the Β item an indicator of the opinion of the difficulty of Gaelic; the C items indicators of attitude toward the public use of Gaelic; the D items indicators of attitude toward home bilingualism; the Ε item an indicator of attitude toward foreign languages in schools; and the F items indicators of attitude toward Gaelic in schools. One item (no. 16) was discarded as uninterpretable in terms of the other F items. Responses most favorable to Gaelic (A, C, and F items), home bilingualism (D items), and foreign languages in schools (E item) were scored as 5; the least favorable as 1. The Β item was scored as 1 for a strong agreement, to 5 for strong disagreement. Table 16 shows the mean responses to the various groups of items by schools. The results presented in table 16 are much less internally coherent than the results of the schoolchildren's questionnaire as broken down by school (table 14). On the whole there is the familiar drop between a relatively favorable general attitude toward Gaelic (A items) and a less favorable attitude toward increased public use of Gaelic (C items) or promotion of Gaelic in the schools (F items); but

A items (Gaelic, general attitude)

Dornoch secondary Golspie primary peripatetic Brora Dornoch primary

4.29 C items 4.00 (public 4.00 use of 3.73 Gaelic) 3.25

Golspie primary Dornoch primary Dornoch secondary Brora peripatetic

3.40 3.25 3.14 3.13 3.00

F items (Gaelic in schools1

peripatetic Dornoch secondary Dornoch primary Golspie primary Brora

5.00 Β item 3.86 (Gaelic, 3.50 diffi3.33 culty) 3.26

Dornoch primary Brora Dornoch secondary Golspie primary peripatetic

4.00 3.73 3.71 3.60 3.00

D items (home bilingualism)

Dornoch primary Dornoch secondary Golspie primary peripatetic Brora

4.50 Ε item 4.28 (foreign 4.00 lan4.00 guages 3.80 in schools)

Dornoch primary Dornoch secondary Brora peripatetic Golspie primary

4.50 4.14 4.07 4.00 3.67

Table 16. Mean response by school to the A, C, F, B, D, and Ε items of Questionnaire IV (teachers)

177

the Dornoch primary teachers actually responded slightly more favorably to the promotion of Gaelic in the schools, as did the single peripatetic teacher. The most consistently favorable attitude toward languages other than English—including the general attitude toward Gaelic, the attitude toward Gaelic and foreign languages in general in the schools, and the attitude toward home bilingualism—is shown by the Dornoch secondary teachers; they are not notably favorable to greater public use of Gaelic, however. The Brora teachers are most often at or near the lowest level of support for Gaelic and home bilingualism, but on the other hand they have a strongly favorable attitude toward the school teaching of foreign languages in general. Although the two Embo teachers filled out a different questionnaire, their responses were markedly favorable to Gaelic, in terms of general attitude, attitude toward greater public use of Gaelic, and attitude toward the teaching of Gaelic in the schools. The only deviation from this pattern was that neither of them agreed with the statement that Gaelic should be a compulsory subject in all Highland schools; but both agreed that Gaelic should be an optional subject in all Highland schools and that its teaching should not be confined solely to districts with a strongly Gaelic-speaking population. These results correlate with the results of the schoolchildren's questionnaire only in that the Brora responses are relatively unfavorable to Gaelic and the Embo responses are strongly favorable. The background information gathered for the teachers was analyzed and correlated by computer with the (also computer-analyzed) results of the attitude statements. Very few background factors showed statistically significant correlation. Having studied at least one modern foreign language correlated strongly with the opinion that Gaelic was not "too difficult for others to learn." Being female was positively correlated with a favorable attitude toward home bilingualism. Having lived in an area where Gaelic was the everyday language of a majority of the people correlated with about the same degree of positive reaction to teaching Gaelic in the school as there was for those who had not lived in such an area; but it also correlated with a notably higher degree of negative reaction to teaching Gaelic in the schools. None of the other factors—age, sex, length of residence in the Highlands, Highland or Scottish birth, acquaintance with professionals who are native Gaelic speakers, personal experience of Gaelic or intention of learning some Gaelic—correlated in any statistically significant way with any of the A through F items. In comparison with Questionnaire III, it was this almost total lack of significant intercorrelation of attitudes and background factors that was striking. In consequence of the lack of correlations, no further comment on the results of Questionnaire IV is either necessary or possible.

Appendix 178

Questionnaire I Your name: Your place of birth: Your place of residence now 1. How many children did your mother actually bear? How many of those children (including yourself) lived to reach 21 years of age? Of those who lived to 21 years of age (including yourself), how many married Gaelic speakers? Of those who married Gaelic speakers, how many children did they have, counting your own children, if you married a Gaelic speaker and had children, and also counting the children of your brothers and sisters who married Gaelic speakers? Of your mother's children who lived to reach 21 (including yourself) (a) how many stayed in Sutherland? (b) how many moved to other Highland areas? (c) how many moved to the Lowlands or England? (d) how many went overseas to live? (e) how many have gone back to Sutherland to live after being away for a number of years ? (Count the ones who have gone back twice, once as (b), (c), or (d), and again as (e).) When you were a child did you speak Gaelic: (a) to your parents?

a

(b) to your grandparents?

b

Doesn't Always Usually Often Sometimes Never

apply

Always U sually Often Sometimes Never

Doesn't apply

(c) to vour sisters and brothers older c than vou? (d) to your sisters and brothers younger d than you? (e) to your own classmates on the school playground (the ones with e Gaelic)? (0 to your own classmates in the f school (the ones with Gaelic)? (g) to the minister of the church? (h) to household pets?

g h

As an adult, did you, or do you now, speak Gaelic (a) to your older sisters and brothers? a (b) to your younger sisters and brothb ers? (c) to your spouse?

c

(d) to the people who were in your d own class at school? (e) to your children?

e

(f) to some of your friends?

f

(g) to either parent, if still alive?

g h

(h) to household pets?

179

3. If you learned that an incomer to your street or neighbourhood was a Gaelic speaker from the Western Isles, say Skye, would you speak to him in Gaelic if he was: No.

surely Maybe (a)

a joiner

(b)

a bobby

(c)

a shopkeeper

(d)

a teacher

(e)

a minister

probably not

4. Check the column which is correct for you, to answer the questions below: I don t engage in Never Sometimes Often Usually Always this actiMty at all 1.

I read Gaelic in the newspapers or church bulletins.

1

2. I read the Bible and psalms in Gaelic.

2

3. I listen to Gaelic music broadcasts.

3

4. I listen to the Gaelic news broadcasts.

4

5. 1 listen to the Gaelic church service broadcasts.

5

6. I listen to the Gaelic discussion programs.

6

7. I use Gaelic in my correspondence.

7

8. I use Gaelic with my fellow workers.

8

9. I use Gaelic with my boss or supervisor.

9

10. I pray in Gaelic.

10

11. I dream in Gaelic.

11

12. I curse in Gaelic.

12

13. I count in Gaelic.

13

14. I make telephone calls in Gaelic.

14

15. I speak to people from other Highland areas in Gaelic.

15

16. I discuss local affairs in Gaelic.

16

17. I discuss national affairs in Gaelic.

17

18. I discuss religion in Gaelic.

18

19. I discuss sports in Gaelic.

19

20. I discuss finances in Gaelic.

20

21. I discuss health in Gaelic.

21

22. I use Gaelic to keep other people from knowing what I'm saying.

22

Appendix 180

YES

5. Check the YES column or the NO column. (a) I had some Gaelic in school.

NO

(b) I can read Caelic. (c) I was taught to precent.

Never Sometimes Often Usually Always

6.

1.

I prefer to speak Gaelic to local people older than myself.

2.

I prefer to speak Gaelic to local people of about the same age as myself.

3.

I prefer to speak Gaelic to local people younger than myself if they have Gaelic.

4.

I prefer to speak Gaelic only if the other person addresses me in Gaelic.

7a. Check any of the statements below that apply to you: I understand other kinds of Gaelic, for example the Gaelic spoken on the West Coast or in the Western Islands (a) not at all. (b) only a few words here and there. (c) enough to get the general idea of what they re saying. (d) quite well if I know in advance what the topic of their conversation is. (e) quite well if I have a chance to listen to it for a good few minutes and can get used to it (fl pretty well. (g) without any trouble at all. 7b. Check YES or NO below:

YES

NO

1. I have worked in the Islands or on the West Coast. 2.

I have lived in the Islands or on the West Coast.

3.

I have some good friends from the Islands or the West Coast.

4.

I have lived in a town where there were many people from the Islands or the West Coast.

Questionnaire II: Bilinguals' form Instructions: When answering the questions below, circle the ones that seem important to you, and draw a line through any that are particularly unimportant to you. Put a star by the most important one or two.

THE MAIN REASONS I'M GLAD I HAVE GAELIC

ARE:

1. It's the language of my people before me. 2. It s broadening to have more than one language. 3. I can enjoy Gaelic music better.

181

4. Gaelic is a very rich and expressive language. 5. No one can understand the Highlands properly without Gaelic. 6. It makes me feel more a part of the community I live in. 7. I can read in Gaelic, for example the Bible and the psalms or newspaper columns. 8. It's useful to have a 'secret language' that not everyone else understands. 9. This part of the world was always Gaelic and I m keeping that tradition alive. 10. It's the language of my friends and neighbours. 11. I can understand the Gaelic programs that are broadcast by the BBC. 12. I can talk to people from other parts of the Highlands in Gaelic. 13. Gaelic is a beautiful language to hear and speak.

If your main reasons are not given above, please write them here:

Your Name: Village name: Your place of birth, town or village and shire:

Questionnaire II: Monolinguals' form Instructions: When answering the questions below, circle the ones that seem important to you, and draw a line through any that are particularly unimportant to you. Put a star by the most important one or two. IF 1 WERE EVER WOULD BE:

TO TRY TO LEARN

GAELIC,

1. Some or all of my ancestors were Highlanders. 2. It's broadening to have more than one language. 3. I would be able to enjoy Gaelic music better. 4. Gaelic is a very rich and expressive language. Appendix 182

MY MAIN

REASONS

5. No one can understand the Highlands properly without Gaelic. 6. It would make me feel more a part of the community I live in. 7. I would be able to read books in Gaelic, for example, the Bible or Gaelic poetry. 8. It's useful to have a secret language' that not everyone else understands. 9. This part of the world has always been Gaelic in the past, and I would be helping to keep that tradition alive. 10. Some of my friends and neighbours speak Gaelic. 11. I would be able to understand the Gaelic programs that are broadcast by the BBC. 12. I would be able to talk to Gaelic speakers from other parts of the Highlands in their own language. 13. Gaelic is a beautiful language to hear and speak.

If your main reasons are not given above, please write them here:

Please check YES or NO:

YES

1.

I have no thought of ever trying to learn Gaelic.

1

2.

I have learnt a few bits and pieces of Gaelic.

2

3.

I have attended a Gaelic class in the past.

3

4.

I am attending a Gaelic class at present.

4

5.

While I have never learnt any Gaelic, I should like to do so some time.

j.

Your name. Village name: Your place of birth, town or village and shire: How long you have lived in the Highlands:

183

NO

Questionnaire III For the statements below, please check the box which expresses best how you feel: whether you agree with the statement, are uncertain about it, or disagree with it. Agree Disagree strongly Agree Uncertain Disagree strongly

Section Α Β

1.

I like to hear Gaelic spoken.

1

Β

2.

We should work hard to save the Gaelic language.

2

Β

3.

As all Highland people speak English, it is a waste of time to keep up Gaelic.

3

A

4.

Gaelic is a difficult language to learn.

4

Β

5.

There are far more useful things to spend time on than Gaelic.

5

Β

6.

Gaelic is a language worth learning.

6

Β

7.

Gaelic has no value in the modem world.

7

C

8.

I should like to be able to read Gaelic books.

8

Β

9.

Anyone who learns Gaelic will have plenty of chances to use it.

9

Β

10.

There is no need to keep up Gaelic for the sake of tradition.

10

Agree Disagree strongly Agree Uncertain Disagree strongly

Section Β Β

1.

I want to keep up Gaelic in order to help the Highlands develop.

1

Β

2.

Speaking Gaelic won't help you get a job.

2

Β

3.

You can't be a real Highlander without Gaelic.

3

D

4.

Learning Gaelic or not should be left to a person's own choice.

4

Β

5.

We owe it to our forefathers to keep Gaelic alive.

5

C

6.

I should like to be able to understand the Gaelic songs on the radio and television and at ceilidhs.

6

D

7.

School time should be used for more practical subjects than Gaelic.

7

Β

8.

Gaelic has a beauty all its own.

8

Β

9.

It's looking backward instead of forward to try to keep Gaelic alive.

9

D

10.

More radio and television time should be given to Gaelic.

Appendix 184

10

Agree Disagree strongly Agree Uncertain Disagree strongly

Section C 1.

English should be taught in all countries.

1

2.

Highlanders should speak their own and not a foreign language.

2

Ε

3.

English will take you farther than Caelic.

3

Ε

4.

It's wrong to teach English in the Highlands when Caelic isn't taught in England.

4

F

5.

You are considered to belong to a higher class if you speak English.

5

Ε

6.

Englishmen who don't want to learn Gaelic shouldn't come to live in the Highlands.

6

Ε

7.

English is a beautiful language.

7

Ε

8.

English is better for studying scientific subjects than Gaelic.

8

Ε

9.

English will become less important in the Highlands in the future.

9

Ε

10.

Ε

We need English in order to be able to welcome English visitors to the Highlands.

10

Please write the answers to the questions below. 1. I was bom in (town or village and shire): 2. My family lives at present in: 3. The language(s) my mother speaks is/are: 4. The language(s) my father speaks is/are: 5. My mother's occupation is/was: 6. My father's occupation is/was: 7. My age is: 8. The school I attend is: Please check YES or NO or NOT AS FAR AS I KNOW for the questions below. YES 1.

One or more of my grandparents speaks/spoke Gaelic.

NO

NOT AS FAB AS 1 KNOW

1

2. The minister of my church speaks/spoke Gaelic.

2

3. One or more of my teachers speaks/spoke Gaelic.

3

4. One or more of my neighbours speaks/spoke Gaelic.

4

5. One or more of my friends speaks Gaelic.

5

185

Questionnaire IV Parti Instructions: please place a check mark in the box to the right which corresponds most closely to your sentiments in response to each question. Agre* Disagree strongly Agrt* Uncertain Disagree strongly A

1.

T h e Gaelic language should be preserved because of the wealth of Gaelic literature and music which would b e lost without it.

1

A

2.

Gaelic is not flexible enough to meet contemporary needs.

2

A

3.

Gaelic should b e preserved because it is part of Scotland's actual history.

3

T h e preservation of Gaelic is a hindrance to a progressive outlook on life.

4

A

4.

C

5.

T h e r e should b e more Gaelic on radio and television.

5

Β

6.

T h e Gaelic language is too difficult for others to learn.

6

A

7.

Gaelic should be preserved because it gives variety to social life in Scotland.

7

A

8.

Gaelic offers no practical advantages in life.

8

C

9.

T h e r e should be greater use of Gaelic in public administration and public life in the Highlands.

9

A

10.

T h e preservation of Gaelic is an unrealistic idea.

10

D

11.

Home bilingualism is an intellectual advantage.

11

D

12.

Home bilingualism is a cultural advantage.

12

Ε

13.

School-learned bilingualism should b e encouraged, that is, foreign languages should be taught.

13

Ε

14.

Scottish Gaelic should b e taught in all Highland primary schools.

14

Ε

15.

Scottish Gaelic should b e taught in all Highland secondary schools.

15

16.

Scottish Gaelic should be an optional subject for Highland 16 schoolchildren.

17.

Gaelic should b e taught only in districts with a strongly Gaelic speaking population.

17

T h e school curriculum is already too full to permit the inclusion of marginal subjects such as Gaelic.

18

F

F

18.

Appendix 186

Part II Please check either Y E S or NO in response to the eight questions below. YES

1. I have studied at least one modem foreign language.

1

2. I have lived in an area where Gaelic was the everyday language of a majority of the people.

2

3. I am acquainted with professional people whose native language is Gaelic.

3

4.

4

I was born in the Highlands.

5. I was bom in Scotland.

5

6. I have lived in the Highlands for more than 5 years.

6

7. I have lived in the Highlands for more than 10 years.

7

8.

8

I have lived in the Highlands most or all of my life.

Please place a check beside the O N E of the following four statements which applies. 1. I speak Gaelic from home. 2. I have learnt some Gaelic. 3. I should like to learn some Gaelic some day. 4. I have no thought of ever trying to learn Gaelic. Your name (OPTIONAL): Name of school: Location of school: Your place of birth, town or village and shire: Your sex: Your age:

187

NO

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Index

Language» and People» References to languages are entered in roman type, and references to peoples in italic type. Albanian, 154 Algonkian language family, 2 Amish, 71, 72 Anglo-French, 13 Anglo-Normans, 13, 14, 15, 16 Anglo-Saxoru, 17 Armenian, 146 Arvanitika, 154 Barbaram, 2 Batsbi, 2 Biloxi, 3 Breton, 2, 39, 105, 164 Bullom languages, 2

Finnish, 2, 111 Flemings, 13, 16 French, 2, 3, 14, 15, 19, 29, 83, 100. 164,

166 Friulian, 105

Celts, 17 Cornish, 4 Cupeiio, 115 Czech, 2, 111 Dene, 111 English, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 59, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101,

105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 144, 146, 153, 159, 160, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178; East Sutherland, 8, 64, 85, 86, 93, 94, 101. 125; Received Pronunciation, 84, 85, 86; standard Highland, 84 - 85, 86. 93. 101. See also Topic index English, 16 Etruscan, 3 Eyak, 115

16, 17, 18, 19, 38, 39, 40, 43, 60, 62, 63, 64, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 93, 94, 95, 102, 103, 104,

Gaelic, East Sutherland, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 27, 40, 47, 48-54, 76, 77, 80, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 107, 112, 113, 114-55; Scottish, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 70, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 127, 129, 131, 144, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153,

197

154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178. See also Topic index Gaels, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 62, 171 German, 2, 3, 27, 71, 74, 78, 82, 83, 105, 166 (see also Pennsylvania Dutch; Swiss German); Germanic language family, 152; Germans, 71 Gothic, 1 Gros Ventre, 115 Highlanders, 9, 16, 17, 18, 22, 37, 51, 163, 166, 168 Hittite, 1, 3 Hopi, 3 Hungarian, 2 Indo-European language family, 1, 121, 124, 146, 152 Inglis, 20 Irish (Scottish Gaelic), 18, 20, 21, 26; (Irish Gaelic), 39 Islanders, Western, 16 Italian, 82, 105 Ketagalan, 2 Komunku, 111 Uppish, 39, 105; Lapps, 103, 105 Latin, 14 Latvian, 111 Lowlanders, 16, 17 Luiseno, 115 Manx, 4 Mennonites, 71, 72 Menomini, 114 Mohican, 3 Normans, 106 Norse, 11, 12; Norse, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18 Norwegians, 103, 105 Numic language family, 2 Örmuri, 1 Oroch, 2 Pennsylvania Dutch, 71, 78, 103, 105, 109; Pennsylvania Dutch, 78 Pictish, 10; Picts, 10, 14 Prussian, 2 Romance language family, 2, 146 Russian, 74 Saxons, 18 Scots, 14, 17, 20, 43, 85, 101, 125; as Scottish Gaelic, 20; Scots, 10, 13, 15, 16, 20 Shoshoni, 115 Somali, 27 Swedish, 2 Swiss German, 27, 74 Index of Languages

198

Tübatulabal, 115 Turkish, 111 Welsh, 86, 111, 176; Welsh, 172 Wendish, 2 Wishram-Wasco, 115 Yahi, 114; Yahi, 114

Places Aberdeenshire, 65 Achavandra, 32 Africa, 2, 67 America, 31, 36. See also North America Argyll, 10, 20 Argyllshire, 23 Assynt, 5, 14, 44, 59 Australia, 2 Balvraid, 32 Berks County, 78, 103, 105, 107, 109 Bonar Bridge, 21, 61 Britain, 9, 19, 26, 51, 53, 62, 63, 72. 84, 85, 86, 106. See also British Isles; Great Britain British Isles, 39 Brittany, 105, 164 Brora, 6, 7, 8, 11, 21, 22, 33, 36, 37, 40, 43, 45, 46, 47, 53, 54. 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 89, 91, 92, 103, 104, 108, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 147, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178 Caithness, 6, 8, II, 12, 13, 40, 45 Canada, 1, 34 Cataibh, 12 Clyne, 21, 23, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 55 Creich, 21, 23 Cromarty, 36, 46 Dervaig, 171, 172 Dornoch, 6, 7, 13, 18, 21, 23, 32, 42, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 66, 77, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178 Duffus, 13 Dunkeld, 20 Dunrobin, 15, 30, 31, 52 Easter Ross, 40, 43, 46, 166 East Sutherland (also eastern Sutherland), 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23, 37, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 106, 109, 111, 112, 115, 119, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 172, 174, 176. See also Topic index Edinburgh, 8, 14, 19, 29, 30, 32, 108

and Peoples/index

of Places

E m b o , 7, 8, 11, 23, 27, 37, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 77, 80, 81, 82, 87, 88, 90, 99, 101, 107, 108, 116, 122, 131, 132, 133, 147, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178

43, 45, 46, 54, 64, 66, 72, 73, 91, 92, 96, 97, 117, 118, 119, 165, 167, 168, 174, 175, 176,

England, 13, 14, 19, 21, 31, 34, 38, 40, 85, 106 Europe, 2, 53 France. 39, 106 Callaibh, 12 Gaul, 40 Glasgow, 92 Golspie, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 21, 23, 28, 30, 33, 37, 42, 45, 46. 47, 48, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 89, 96, 99, 100, 103, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 131, 132, 133, 147, 173, 174, 176, 177 Great Britain, 19, 22. See also Britain; British Isles G r e e c e , 154 Hallkirk, 13 Hamburg, Pennsylvania, 109 Harris, 164. 165 ' Hebrides, 10, 16, 87, 91, 92, 104, 168. See also Inner Hebrides; O u t e r Hebrides; Western Isles Helmsdale, 6, 7, 11, 21, 33, 43, 45, 49 Highlands, 6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 51. 68. 70. 108. 110. 154. 166. 178, 171. 175. 176, 178 India, 67, 71 Inner Hebrides, 26, 165, 168, 171 Inverness, 8 Inverness-shire, 87, 166 Ireland, 19, 20, 26, 40 Italy, 82, 105 Kildonan, 21, 34, 44, 45, 46 Kinlochbervie, 6 Lairg, 61 Lewis, Isle of, 9, 91, 92 Leurbost, 9 Lochinver, 6

Moray, 11, 12, 13 Moray coast, 43, 47, 55 Morayshire, 33, 55 Mull, Isle of, 166, 171 Nairn, 56 Ness, 11, 12, 13 North America, 1, 2. See also America Northamptonshire, 13 Norway, 103, 105 Ord, The, 11, 40 Orkney Islands, 11 Outer Hebrides, 26, 164 Paris, 29 Pennsylvania, 103, 105, 107 Perth, 19 Pictland, 15 Portgower, 33 Reay country, 5, 59 Rogart, 61 Ross-shire, 56 Salop, 53 Scotland, 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 29, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 70, 84, 94, 102, 104, 108, 163, 171 Shetland Islands, 11 Skye, Isle of, 163 Somalia, 27 South America, 1, 2 South Asia, 2 Southeast Asia, 2, 67 Soviet Union, 1 Staffordshire, 53 Stornoway, 91, 92 Strathclyde, 15 Strathbrora, 46 Strathnaver, 34 , 45, 46 Sudrland, 11, 12, 13 Sutherland, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51, 59, 61, 62, 63, 66, 69, 70, 87, 88, 94, 102; central, 5, 8; north coast, 5, 7, 8, 14, 44; "proper," 5, 11, 12; west coast, 5, 7, 8, 14, 44. See also Topic index Sweden, 39 Switzerland, 27, 74

London, 14, 29, 30, 108, 109 Loth, 22, 46

Tain, 43

Lothian, the Lothians, 15, 16 Lowlands, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27, 30, 38, 51, 85, 175, 176

United States, 71

Machair-Chat, 5, 11, 59 Maine, 67 M e i k l e Ferry, 40 M i d d l e East, 1

Wales, 19, 26, 86, 176 Western Isles, 10, 17, 20, 21 Western Isles Region, 26, 94 Wick, 45 Yorkshire, 53

199

Pertone Adam, R. J., 31, 32, 33 Adler, Max K., 4 Alexander II, 13 Anderson, Keith Ο., 71 Anson, Peter F., 43, 45 Atheling, the, 12 Bäks, Chris, 47 Barth, Fredrik, 61, 73 Baugh, Albert C., 2 Bentinck, Rev. Charles D., 13 Berreman, Gerald D , 71 Bloomfield, Leonard, 3, 114 Bourhis, R. Y., 86 Breatnach, R. B., 4 Bynon, Theodora, 146 Cameron, A. C ., 25 Campbell, Η. F., 10, 11, 14, 40, 52, 66 Campbell, John Lome, 5, 16, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 52 Capell, Α., 2 Cassidy, Frederic G., 39 Clement, David, 11 Cole, Roger L., 4 Cooper, James Fenimore, 1 Cottle, Basil, 2 Crawford, Barbara Ε., 11, 12, 13 Darling, F. Fräser, 39 David I, 12, 13, 15, 16 de Moravia family, 11, 12, 13, 18, 52 Denison, Ν., 4, 82, 106 De Vos, George, 54 Dickinson, W. Croft, 13, 15, 16 Donaldson, Gordon, 17 Dorian, Nancv C., 3, 4, 5, 54, 57, 60, 88, 94, 97, 107, 109, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123, 135, 136, 143, 150-51, 152, 165, 171 Dressler, Wolfgang, 2, 3, 4, 97, 153, 157, 164 Duncan I, 15 Duncan, Archibald Α. Μ., 13, 15, 16 Dyen, Isidore, 2 Edgar, King of Scotland, 15 Edwards, Owen Dudley, 111 Eidheim, Harald, 103, 105 Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, 30, 31. See also Stafford family; Sutherland family Elizabeth, sister to the ninth earl of Sutherland, 18 Ellis, Peter Berresford, 2, 111 Elyan, Olwen, 86 Esman, Milton J., 38 Fairhurst, Horace, 37, 45 Fasold, Ralph W., 152

Index of Persons 200

Ferguson, Charles Α., 90, 93 Fishman, Joshua Α., 4, 72, 75, 93, 112 Fleming, J. Arnold, 13 Fordun. See John of Fordun Francis, W. Nelson, 39 Fräser, Sir William, 14, 18 Freskin, 13 Freskin family, 13 Gilbert de Moravia, 13 Giles, Howard, 86 Glazer, Nathan, 62 GoSman, Erving, 62 Gordon, Adam, of Aboyne, 18 Gordon, Sir Robert, 18, 20, 102 Gordon family, 18 Gower, Earl, 30, 31, 32. See also Stafford family; Sutherland family Grant, I. F., 15, 16, 17, 29 Grant, Margaret Wilson, 14, 42 Grant, Samuel Sutherland, 45 Gray, James, 11, 13 Greene, David, 106 Grimble, Ian, 36, 45 Grubb, David Μ , 1 Gumperz, John J., 73 Gunn, Adam, 5, 12, 59, 80 Haas, Mary R., 3 Haugen, Einar, 39, 92 Hechter, Michael, 19, 20, 38, 61 Henry I, 12 Henry II, 13 Herasimchuk, Eleanor, 98 Hill, Jane H., 3, 4, 115, 153 Hill, Kenneth, 3, 4, 153 Horowitz, Donald L., 67 Hostetler, John Α., 71 Huffines, Marion Lois, 71 Hugh Freskin, 13 Hunter, James, 29, 30, 45 Huntington, Gertrude Enders, 71 Hymes, Dell, 77, 89 Inglehart, Ronald F., 2, 40 Jackson, Kenneth, 125 James VI, 19 Jesus of Nazareth, 68 John, thirteenth earl of Sutherland, 18, 102 John of Fordun, 16, 18, 38 Karttunen, Frances, 156 Kennedy, Reverend Angus, 23 Kermack, W. R., 12, 13, 17 Kieffer, Charles, 1 Krauss, Michael, 3, 115 Labov, William, 117, 152 Lamb, Sydney, 2

Lambert, Wallace Ε., 29, 82 Lehmann, Winfred P., 4 Leighton. Alexander Η., 72 Leodolter, Ruth, 4, 157, 164. See also Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth Leveson-Gower, Ceorge Granville. See Cower, Earl, Stafford family; Sutherland family Leveson-Cower family, 53 Lewis, E. Glyn, 2, 97, 157, 172, 176 Lewis, I. M., 71 Loch, James, 32, 33. 34, 35, 43, 44, 46, 69, 70 Lord of the Isles, 14 Love, Thomas F., 68 Ma, Roxana, 98 mac a' Ghobhainn, Seumas, 2, 111 MacColla, Fionn. See MacDonald, T. Douglas Mac Donald, Kenneth D , 25 MacDonald, T. Douglas [pseud. Fionn MacColla]. 18, 19 MacKay, Η. M., 13, 52 MacKay, John, 5, 12, 59 MacKenzie, Alexander, 45 MacKenzie, Colin, 31, 32 Mackey, William F., 38, 51 MacKinnon, Kenneth M , 5, 16, 19, 20, 28, 29, 94, 97, 157, 164 MacLeod, Donald, 34, 36, 44 MacLeod, Murdo, 5, 20, 24, 25, 26 Macmillan, Allister, 72 Macnamara, John, 39 Malcolm III "Canmore," 12, 15. 16, 17 Margaret, Queen of Scotland, 12 Martin, Willard M.. 71 Mavo, Patricia Elton, 39, 111 Miller, Hugh, 34, 36, 49 Miller, Rov Andrew, 2 Miller, Wick R., 3, 115 Mitchison, Rosalind, 16, 30 Mougeon, Raymond, 4 Moynihan, Daniel P., 62 Nicholson, Ranald C., 17, 19 Nielsen, Poul Thoe, 2 O'Dell, A. C., 47 Oftedal, Magne, 9 Parman, Susan Morrissett, 5, 104 Pine, L. G., 13 Postel-Coster, Els, 47 Prebble, John, 45 Pride, J. Β , 27 Rankin, Robert L., 153 Richards, Eric, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 45, 53, 68, 69, 70

Robertson, Charles Μ , 93 Robertion, Stuart, 39 Ryan, William, 106 Sage, Reverend Donald, 49 Salisbury, R. F., I l l Saltarelli, Mario, 156 Salzmann, Zdenek, 115 Sankoff, Gillian, 154 Sapir, J. David, 2 Sellar, Patrick, 32, 34, 36 Sellar, Thomas, 34 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 70 Silverstein! Michael, 78, 115, 153 Sinclair, Sir John, 42 Skene, William F., 16 Smith, John Α., 5, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29 Smith, M. Estellie, 67 Smout, T. C., 17, 21 Spindler, George, 40 Spindler, Louise S., 40 Stafford family, 31, 32, 33, 69, 70 Starr, Paul, 35 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 34 Stuarts, the, 19 Sutherland, Α., 36, 46 Sutherland, Stewart R., 45 Sutherland family, 52, 53 Swadesh, Morris, 3, 114 Tajfel, H . 29, 86 Timm, L. Α., 4, 29, 98, 105 Trevelvan, G. M., 12, 15, 17 Trudgi'll, Peter, 3, 85, 152, 153 Van Eerde, John A., 4, 94 Voegelin, C. F., 3, 4, 115, 153 Voegelin, F. M., 3, 4, 115, 153 Walker, Maud Kimmell, 62 Walton, K., 47 Waterman, John Τ., 3 Watkins, Calvert, 146 Watson, William John, 11 Weinreich, Uriel, 78, 95, 96 White, Geoffrey H., 13 Wiesmann, Dieter, 74 Wilkins, D. Α., 93 William, first earl of Sutherland, 12, 13 William, sixteenth earl of Sutherland, 14, 29 William the Lion, 11, 13 Williamson, Robert C , 4, 94 Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth, 2, 97, 157 Wolff, Hans, 92 Wood, Richard E., 26 Woodward, Margaret, 2, 40 Youngson, A. J., 30, 40, 44

201

Topic» Grammatical terms and other specialized linguistic terms are entered in italic type, unless the word "language" or "linguistic" appears in the entry. ablaut, 153 acculturation, 40 Act of Union, 14, 37-38 adjective, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 129, 133, 134, 136, 137, 146, 147, 148, 149 agriculture, 17, 30, 35, 43, 44 allocation of languages, functional, 27, 71, 7 4 - 80, 93, 153 albmorph, 100, 121, 137, 151, 152, 155 analogical form, 143, 144 analogical leveling, 116, 151 analogy, 118, 143 analytic form, 141, 142, 149 aristocracy: Breton, 29; French-speaking, 13, 29; Gaelic, 11, 12, 14, 29; German, 2; non-Gaelic, in Scotland, 11; Sutherland, 71, 94; in Sutherland and in Scotland, preference for English, 15, 39, 4 8 - 4 9 , 51; Pictish, 12; Scottish, 14, 16, 19, 38, 39 article, definite, 101, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 136. 137 assimilation, linguistic, 29, 40, 72 back-formation, 118 barbarity, equation of Gaelic with, 16-17, 18, 20, 38 Bible, 22, 90, 91, 95, 159, 162 bilingual education, transitional, 21 bilingualism: additive, 82, 94, 111; balanced, 96; Gaelic-Norse, 12, home, 177, 178; near-passive, 107, 121, 146; passive, 84, 105, 109, 119, 121, 137, 145, 148, 155, 165; replacive, 82, 94; stable, 94, 152; transitional, 94, 112 bilinguals and bilingualism, Gaelic-English, 26, 27, 47, 48, 49, 51, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 67, 68, 72, 82, 83, 84 , 74-113 (esp. 94-98), 115, 165-72 bonding, social, 57, 78, 86, 104 burgh, 16, 49, 52 by-names, by-naming, 57, 95 case, 116, 118, 121, 126, 129-36, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, 153 caste, 71, 72 cattle raids, 17 Celtic fringe, 19, 38 Celtic Magazine, 36, 49 centralization, 19, 39 change: linguistic, 4, 114-56; social, 19 channel, 77 chieftains, clan, 14, 17, 29, 30, 52 Church of Scotland, Assembly of, 20, 21 clans. Highland, 19, 29, 52

Index of Topics 202

clan system, 17 clearances, 30, 31, 32, 34, 45; Clearances, Highland, 29, 30, 68, Sutherland, 30, 34, 36, 37, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 68, 70. See also improvement policies code choice, 80, 85. See also language choice code switching. 76, 79, 80. 96-97, 98-102,

110, 1 1 2

colonialism, 19, 37; internal, 19 colonization, 16 commerce, 16, 35, 40, 71, 72 Commonwealth, British, 26 communications, 51, 70; bus, 8; rail, 8; road, 8, 11, 40, 70; in Sutherland, 8, 51, 70 competition, linguistic, 8, 10-41, 48-54, 70, 71, 72, 86, 105, 110-13 conditional, 138, 139-41, 142, 146, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155; negative, 140; positive, 140 conjunction, 151 core, 19. See also periphery/core, periphery/center creolization, 153 crofting, crofters, 6, 32, 53, 54. 59, 60, 62, 67, 70 crown: British, 19; Scottish, 12, 21, 38. See also monarchy, Scottish cultural influence: Anglo-Norman, 12, 13, 17; Anglo-Saxon, 12, 15, 17; Gaelic, 13; Pictish, 13 culture: Celtic, 12, 14, 15, 17, 37, 38, 52, 57, 62, 70, 72; Gaelic, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 51, 54, 62, 70, 73, 80, 102 culture conflict, 9, 10-41, 51, 52, 70, 71 dative, 129, 130, 131-34, 135, 136, 146, 147, 148, 152 decreolization, 153 dialect. See Gaelic, dialects, Gaelic, East Sutherland, dialect differentiation dialect chain, 9 dichotomy, linguistic, 17, 4 8 - 4 9 , 50, 71 diglossia, 90, 93, 94, 112 diminutive, 118, 124, 125-26, 128, 129, 135, 147 displacement, linguistic, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 48-54, 114. See also language shift domains, linguistic, 5, 27, 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 110, 111, 112, 165 dominance: cultural, 15, 41, 51, 67, 70; linguistic, 5, 81, 84, 95 , 96, 99, 106, 107, 116, 119, 148, 153; numerical, 15, 39, 51; political, 14; social, 16, 70 East Sutherland: demography, 5, 6, 20, 39, 51; geography and boundaries, 5, 6, 11; name, 5; political dominance of, 10-14;

schools, 6, 21, 23, 27, 49, 50, 63, 65, 8 0 - 84, 87, 88, 89, 90; social system, 7, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52-53, 62, 70, 71, 162-63 education: official policies in Scotland, 17, 18, 20-29, 39; spread of, 20-23, 49, 50, 51, 70; under Gaelic Schools Society auspices, 22-23, 51; under religious auspices, 20-22, 39, 51. See also East Sutherland. schools; Gaelic, in education, schools, prohibition of Gaelic in elite language use, 2, 29, 38, 39, 40, 49, 51, 52, 53, 70, 94 embedding, 155 emigration, 24, 31, 36, 47, 63, 71, 160 English: as official language, 19, 51, 75. 82, 86, 112; as replacing language. 2, 4, 8, 10, 14, 17, 19, 20-21, 24-25, 28, 39, 49, 53, 60, 67, 70. 71, 107, 110, 111-13; survival of, 2, 39 endogamy, 54, 55, 56, 57, 65, 71 estates, Highland, 29, 30, 31, 53, 68. See also Sutherland Estate ethnicity, 11, 38, 54 - 68, 73, 86 exclusionary use of language, 163, 168, 171, 172 exile, 29, 108, 109 expansion: linguistic, 2, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 49, 110; territorial, 2 exploitation, economic, 19, 39 extinction, linguistic, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 34, 39, 50, 70, 72, 102, 103, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 154, 160 eviction, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 46. See also clearances factor, 25, 30, 31 farming, farmers, 7, 53. See also sheep farmers; sheep farms feminine, 116, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 138, 143, 144, 147, 149, 151 feudalism, 17 feudalization, 11 fisherfolk, 6, 9, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75, 79, 90, 93, 97, 102, 103, 106, 111, 152, 173, 174 fishermen, 43, 44, 45, 47, 55, 58, 66, 90 fishers, 42, 43, 46. 53, 55, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 fishery (-ies), 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 69, 72 fishing, 6, 23, 32, 33, 35, 37, 42-48, 49, 65, 68, 69, 72, 83, 111 fishing community (-ies), 47, 48, 49, 57, 59, 60, 66, 69, 76, 78, 85, 90, 94, 95, 96, 102, 104, 106, 108 fishing settlement(s), 37, 46, 69 fishing village(s), 6, 32, 33, 37, 42, 43, 108, 171 folk traditions, 15, 57, 62

fossil, linguistic, 129, 130, 132, 134, 142 function, linguistic, 77, 154 future, 123, 138, 139, 140, 141, 147, 151, 155 Gaelic: census figures, 7, 24, 25; decreasing use of, 5, 15, 16, 40; dialects, 5, 9, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 118, 159, 164; earlier numerical dominance, 15, 39; expansion, 10, 15; geographical extent of use, 15; hostility toward, 16, 18, 20, 21, 27, 28, 34, 35. 39, 81, 83, 84, 102; in education, 5, 17, 18, 20-29, 39, 8 0 - 8 4 , 87, 88; official use, 5, 38, punishment for use of, 24, 27, 28; as school subject, 25, 26, 39, 82, 84, 88, 89; stigmatization of, 16, 67; as a teaching medium, 25, 26, 39; use in broadcasting, 85, 91, 93, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, use in reading, 77, 90, 95, 160, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171; use in religion, 10, 50, 64, 79, 85, 90-91, 93, 161; use in telephoning, 77, 162, 165; use in writing, 77, 95, 160, 162. See also competition, linguistic; domains, linguistic; education; Gaelic, East Sutherland; Gaelic, Sutherland; inner speech; illiteracy in Gaelic; etc. Gaelic, East Sutherland: archaic features, 11; decreasing use of, 3 9 - 4 0 , 48-54, 62, 67, 70, 72, 76, 79, 82, 83, 94, 102-6, 110. 153, 160, 166, 168; dialect differentiation, 5. 6, 9, 54, 57; linguistic norms, 5, 107, 114-55; Norse influence, 12; number of speakers, 7, 8, 51, 79; placenames, 12. See also Caelic, decreasing use of; norms, linguistic Gaelic, Sutherland: dialects, 5, 59; lack of young speakers, 7; number of speakers, 7 Gaelic Schools Society, 22, 23 Gaelic Society of Inverness, 25, 84 gender, 118, 121, 124-29, 133, 134, 135, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 155 genitive, 92, 129, 130-31, 136, 147, 148, 149, 151 gerund, 92, 138, 143, 144, 150, 151, 155 grammar, 81, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 107, 114, 117, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 138, 152, 154 grammatical category, 92, 121, 123, 124, 129, 133, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155 herring, 33, 34, 47; fisheries, 35, 91; fishing, 43, 47, 48, 75; industry, 33, 69, 75 House of Sutherland, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 29, 38, 69, 70; absence of Celtic marriages, 14, 18; non-Celtic character, 12, 13, 14, 18, 38, 52; use of English, 14 humor, 78, 85, 95, 155

203

illiteracy in Gaelic, 88, 91, 92 imitation of elite by masses, 2, 52. See also elite language use immigration: Anglo-Norman, 13; AngloSaxon, 16. See also in-migration, to Sutherland imperative, 123, 138, 141, 142, 147, 148, 151, 153 improvement policies, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 40, 70. See also clearances industrialization, 4, 19, 27 industry, 6, 30, 32, 6Θ, 70; fishing, 6, 42, 46, 48, herring, 33, 69, 75; iron, 39, sheepfarming, 51 inflection, 138, 142, 155 informant, 3, 117, 118, 119, 130, 134, 158 in-migration, to Sutherland, 39, 43, 46, 49, 51, 52, 66, 70, 166 inner speech, 165 intelligibility, interdialectal, 90-93, 164 interference, 80, 98-102 interjections, 101 interlocutor, 76, 77, 78, 79, 83, 97, 98, 99, 102, 110, 111, 112, 154, 159, 160, 161, 165 internal vowel change, 124, 153. See also vowel alternation internal vowel modification, 121. See also vowel alternation interrogative, 120, 123, 150 intonation contours, 138 isolation, physical, 8, 9, 27, 40, 47, 51, 70, 72, 73, 114, 116, 117 Jacobites, 29 jarls, Viking, 11 lag, linguistic, 54, 5 9 - 60, 70, 106 landowners, landholders, 12, 25, 30, 36, 52, 70 language acquisition, 3, 104, 109, 117, 148, 153, 154 language choice, 38, 40, 41, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 103-4. See also code choice language contact, 152, 154 language death, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 39, 106, 114, 115, 153, 154 language loyalty, 76, 90, 97. 102-10 language maintenance, 4, 9, 27, 53, 54, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73. See also persistence, linguistic language shift, 4, 8, 9, 10-41, 48-54, 70, 71, 72, 102, 105, 106, 112-13, 114. See also displacement, linguistic language(s), dying, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 72, 78, 83, 103, 106, 112, 113, 115, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 171 length, consonant, 137, 152 lenition, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131,

Index of Topics 204

132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 149 lexicon, 90, 93, 95, 114, 120, 121, 133, 145, 146, 147, 154, 166 lexicostatistical word list, 120, 145-46 Linguistic Survey of Scotland, Gaelic Division, 5 loan translation, 100, 101 loanwords. 59, 80, 100, 101, 111, 113. 123 lower class(es), 35, 51 MacKays, clan, 5, 14, 52 MacLeods, clan, 5, 14 masculine, 116, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 143 masses, 2, 39, 40, 52, 94 matched-guise, 86 merchants, 36, 38 mercantile class, Scottish, 16 middle class, 2, 53 military might, 17 minority group(s), 28, 72, 83 missionaries, Columban, 10 mobility, social, 22, 39. 40, 50, 71, 86, 103, 104, 105 modernization, 4, 19, 62 monarchy, Scottish, 11, 15, 35, 37. See also crown, Scottish monolingualism and monolinguals: English, 47, 49, 51. 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 78, 79, 83, 87, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, 115, 160, 165-72; Gaelic, 24, 25, 35, 59, 60, 81, 82, 92, 94, 115 morpheme, 100, 151 morphology, 80, 100, 116, 130, 136, 137, 139, 150, 151, 152, 154 morphological complexity, 151, 152 morphological process, 126 morphological structure, 96 morphophonology, 80, 100, 116, 131, 133, 148 mother tongue, 25, 62, 71, 74, 96, 103, 106, 114, 166, 172 mutation: final consonant, 121, 123-24, 135, 136; initial consonant, 101, 121, 122-23, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153 names of languages, 20. See also personal names; placenames nationalization, 4 nationalists, Scottish, 18, 111 nasalization, 123, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 143, 144, 146 niche; ecological, 68; economic, 68, 69 nominative/accusative, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 146, 147, 148, 152

Norman Conquest, 2, 13, 39 norms, linguistic, 87, 88, 89, 92, 106, 107, 115, 154. See also Gaelic, East Sutherland, linguistic norms noun, 102, 116, 121, 122, 123, 124-37, 144, 146, 147, 148. 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155; animate, 130; inanimate, 125, 130, 149; verbal, 118 number, 102. 121, 136-37, 141-42, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153

proficiency continuum, 4, 114-21, 136 progressive, 102, 138, 140, 144, 150, 151 pronoun: demonstrative, 102, 136; personal, 116, 124, 125, 128, 129, 135, 138, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 151, 155; pleonastic, 137, 149; possessive, 136, 143, 144 Protestantism, 19 quantity, 136, 137 questionnaires, 97, 98, 119, 157-87

ordinals, 96, 115 Parliament, Scottish, 20 participle, past, 144 passive, 116. 142, 143, 144, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155. See also voice past, 120, 122, 123, 138, 139, 140, 141. 147, 150, 151, 153 particle, 150, 151, 154; interrogative, 123; vocative, 134 pastoralism, 17 peasantry, 7 periphery/core, periphery/center, 19, 20, 38, 39 persistence, linguistic, 9, 27, 53-54, 70, 71, 72, 110-12. See also language maintenance person, 142, 143, 144, 147, 149, 153 personal names, 15, 55, 57, 62, 134, 135; Gaelic, 16; Highland, 52 phoneme, 84, 92, 93 phonology, 80, 85, 92, 100, 107, 114 phonological features, 72 phonological system, 152 phonotactics. 100 pidgin languages, 154, 155, 156 pidginization, 3 placenames, 11, 15, 64; English, 12; Gaelic, 12; Norse, 11; Pictish, 10 "planting "; of English, 20, of families, 11, 12 plural, 100, 102, 118, 121, 123, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 possessive construction, 130, 131, 136, 143 preaspiration, 11 predation, 17 prehistory, 2 preposition, 131, 132, 143, 144 prepositional phrase, 130, 131, 132, 136, 143, 144, 148, 153, 155 present, 138, 140, 151 prestige, linguistic, 15, 38, 51, 82, 85, 86, 89, 90, 94, 110, 112 Privy Council, 20 productivity, linguistic, 135 proficiency, linguistic, 4, 60, 94, 95, 96, 107, 109, 112, 113, 121, 129, 137, 144, 145, 148

race, 17, 61, 62, 63 reduction, linguistic, 3, 93, 151, 155 Reformation, Scottish, 19, 20 relative, 118; possessive, 115; prepositional, 115 relativization, 155 religion, 19, 20, 38, 62, 71, 75, 79, 90, 110 repertoire, verbal, 8 4 - 9 3 revival, linguistic, 4, 111 rising, Jacobite, 1715 and 1745, 19 Roman period, 10 root, 122, 123, 126, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 153 sagas, Norse, 11 sandhi, 122 schools: for teaching English, 18, 20, 21. 24, 26, 28 , 52; prohibition of Gaelic in, 21, 24, 27 , 28, 75, 81, 82. See also education, Gaelic Scottish Education Act of 1872, 24, 84 Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (S.S.P.C.K.), 2 0 - 2 3 secularization. 4 segregation, 55, 60, 63, 64, 65, 79 semi-speaker, 7, 76, 81, 84, 89, 92, 94, 96, 106-10, 112, 114-55, 165, 168 separateness, social, 53, 5 4 - 68, 70, 71, 72, 102 setting, 76, 77, 78, 80, 101, 111 settlement, Norse, 11 sheep farmers, 25, 49, 69, 70. See also farming, farmers sheep farms, sheep farming, 30, 31, 32, 33, 39, 48, 51, 68 simplification, 3, 136, 155 singular, 118, 130, 134, 135, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 147, 149 slaves, slavery, 16, 36, 69 social class and language use/language attitude, 15, 16, 18, 25, 38, 39, 48-49, 50, 51-54, 70, 85, 94, 162-63, 174, 176. See also dichotomy, linguistic; elite language use socialization, linguistic, 107, 109, 112 solidarity, social, 57, 78, 79, 86, 89, 104 specialization: economic, 46, 61, 69; linguis-

205

tic (see allocation of languages, functional) speech community, 8, 75, 84, 107, 115, 116, 117, 152, 154 speech island, 9 Statutes of Iona, 17. 18, 20, 52 stem, 131 stereotype: ethnic, 18; linguistic, 116 stigma, stigmatization, 9, 6 1 - 6 8 , 70, 71, 72, 102, 103, 107, 112, 171 stress, 100 subordination, 95, 139 suffix, 121, 124, 126, 128, 129, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142. 146, 147, 148 suffixation, 121, 124, 136 suppletion, 121, 136, 138, 150 survival, linguistic, 6, 9, 38, 67, 71, 73, 110-11 Sutherland Book, The. 18 Sutherland Estate. 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 42, 43, 44, 46, 52, 59, 68, 69, 70 See also estates, Highland Statistical Account: new, 37, 43, 48, 49, 50. 51, 53. W , 106; old, 37, 42. 48. 50, 94 substratum, 101 syntax, 85, 100, 123 syntactic construction, 130 syntactic structure. 96 synthetic form, 138, 141, 142, 149 tacksmen, 32, 36 tag questions, 118 tenants. 31, 32, 35, 49, 68

Index of Topics

206

tenantry, 15, 32 tense, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 1 3 8 - 4 1 , 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153 tessera, 24 tinkers, 53, 62, 71 tip, linguistic, 51, 52, 70 Tocher, 58 topic, 79, 80, 111, 112, 159, 160 transportation, 14, 19, 40, 51, 70 u p p e r classes, 35 urbanization, 4, 7, 27, 62, 67 verb, 102, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 1 3 8 - 4 4 , 146, 147, 148, 149, 150. 151, 155; d e p e n d e n t , 118, 139; finite, 143, 144, 150; ind e p e n d e n t , 118, 138, 139; intransitive, 142; irregular, 138, 140, 141, 150; transitive, 142 verb complement, 96 Viking period, 11, 12 vocative, 101, 121, 123, 129, 130, 134-35, 136, 147, 148 voice, 121, 142-44, 147, 149; active, 142. See also passive vowel alternation, 136, 137. See also internal vowel change, internal vowel modification Wars of I n d e p e n d e n c e , Scottish, 16 Whigs, 29 white fish(ing), 33, 34, 48, 75 word order, 131, 137, 155 working class(es), 50, 5 3 World War I, 46, 47, 63, 65, 71, 73, 76, 111