Not Enough Words: Language Acquisition and Identity Work in Tertiary-Level Gaelic-Medium Education

Abstract

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig is a fully accredited higher education institution that teaches degrees up to the PhD level entirely through the medium of Scottish Gaelic, a threatened minority language with less than 60,000 speakers. Gaelic-medium education in Scotland is underdeveloped and fragmented, and this mirrors the weak, fragmented condition of the Gaelic speech communities themselves. As a result, Gaelic language/identity acquisition in the school and in the community is failing. Most nominally fluent undergraduates come to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig with much stronger English language skills than Gaelic language skills, as well as inchoate identity connections to the Gaelic language, and they rarely speak Gaelic with peers outside of formal educational contexts. Here I will draw on my own research and the research of colleagues, as well as my experience at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig designing a curriculum that meets the special needs of this cohort of young bilinguals, to propose a new direction for the development of Gaelic-medium education in Scotland, to examine the role of identity work in successful education in a minority language, and, more generally, to consider the role of tertiary-level immersion education in language revitalisation.