Abstract
Two social roles for language have been distinguished by Edwards – the communicative and the symbolic. Using data from a survey of public attitudes to Gaelic in Scotland, the article investigates the extent to which people's view of language may be characterised as relating to these roles. Respondents were grouped, using statistical cluster analysis, according to their views of the communicative and symbolic roles of language. Indicators of membership of the resulting clusters were then used as explanatory variables in linear regression models to assess the relative importance of the communicative or symbolic view of Gaelic in explaining variation in attitudes to policy issues concerning Gaelic. Both sets of views of language were independently associated with attitudes to nearly all aspects of policy, but the view of Gaelic as symbol was mostly more strongly associated with attitudes to policy than the communicative view.
Highlights
Both sets of views about the role of language are associated with attitudes to specific policy or other issues affecting Gaelic, but views about symbolism generally explain more of the variation in attitudes on these issues than do views about communicative rights, except where the policy issue itself might be interpreted as being directly about Gaelic speakers’ communicating through the medium of Gaelic when receiving public services
Such evidence shows that specific issues may be linked in the public mind to the communicative or symbolic social roles of languages
The advantage of developing the analysis in terms of statistical clusters is that they each comprise a group of people who share particular combinations of views about the social role of Gaelic
Summary
McEwan-Fujita (2011) noted the existence of two discourses of Gaelic language revitalisation which treat the language as a symbol of identity – the sense of ‘Gaelic as ancient’, and, following MacDonald (1997), its place as ‘a national language of Scotland.’ These symbolic uses might be ‘external’ to language as a mode of communication, as Chapman (1978, 131) argues when he describes symbolic appropriation as a process ‘in which Gaelic culture, language and life have become the focus of sentiments and associations not intrinsic to an autonomous Gaelic life, but required by the external discourse of the English language.’ Oliver (2005, 22-3) contrasts symbolism with what he calls the instrumental role, in the sense of being able to speak Gaelic and using it ‘pragmatically’ to communicate. Following from this theoretical, policy and research background, the paper aims to better understand the relative influence of the communicative and symbolic social roles of language in public attitudes to policy for Gaelic in Scotland
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