Why Kenny Can’t Can: The Language Socialization Experiences of Gaelic-Medium Educated Children In Scotland By Vanessa Katharina Angela Will A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Judith T. Irvine, Chair Professor Bruce Mannheim Emerita Professor Lesley Milroy Associate Professor Barbra A. Meek ©Vanessa Katharina Angela Will 2012 Dedication To my family, and To Domhnall Alasdair mac Dhomhnaill 'ic Alasdair 'ic Dhomhnaill Ruaidh 'ic Alasdair 'ic Anndra ii Acknowledgements One day, when I was a teenager, my mother opened my school atlas to the geophysical map of Europe and decided to find the best place to experience what she called the edge of the world for our summer vacation. Her only requirement was that we had to be able to drive there from our home in Berlin, Germany. She set her sights on the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, which we reached after days of driving and several ferry rides. On the island of North Uist, we stayed in a private home providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation to tourists, and I was keenly aware of displacing the owner’s children from their bedroom to cots on the floor of their parents’ bedroom. Our hosts diligently introduced us to all the sights that the flat and sparse landscape of the island had to offer, including the Gaelic-English bilingual road signs that had apparently been the cause of much debate and consternation among the island’s residents when they appeared on island roads not long before. Although the spelling of the Gaelic words on these signs was baffling to me at the time, I found it difficult to understand why something as boring and ordinary as a road sign could cause such controversy. Nonetheless, this memory served as inspiration for field research I proposed to conduct as an undergraduate anthropology major at Vassar College. The maturation of this fledgling research into the study reported in this dissertation depended on the support and good-will of many individuals and organizations, which I wish to acknowledge here On the Isle of Lewis, there are those that I can thank by name, and those who for the protection of their identity shall remain unnamed, though no less appreciated. Neil Galbraith and Alasdair Macleod at Comhairle nan Eilean Siar provided essential logistical support for the various iterations of my research project. The headmaster of Sgoil a’ Chreaig, whom I will call Mr. Maciver, took me under his wings and, in addition to ensuring the success of my research taught me many of the necessities of Hebridean iii life, including shepherding, peat cutting, ornithology, genealogy, and talking about the weather. His sudden and premature death was a huge loss to the district and the world of Gaelic scholarship. This dissertation is dedicated to him, in the hopes that it is an adequate exploration of the thoughts whose seeds he tried to plant in my head. The teachers, staff and pupils at Sgoil a’ Chreaig overwhelmed me with their generosity in sharing their time, experiences, insights and hospitality with me. A large number of families in the district of A’ Chreag welcomed me to follow their daily lives as if having a recorder pinned to their clothes and a video camera perched in the corner of the room was the most natural thing in the world. Indeed, the grace with which all those who participated in my research accepted the intrusion into their daily routines that my research presented was probably the most humbling experience in conducting this research. I will be forever grateful for their help. The Bartlett family of Brue provided an always-open door, much needed secular Sunday lunches (followed by tea, dinners, and puddings), and intellectual stimulation that rivaled the salons of European capital cities, all in the comforts of their home with a stunning view of the machair. Several other families also appreciated the difficulty that the dark and grey Hebridean Sundays present to incomers like myself, and provided antidotes of a social and culinary nature, but because they also actively participated in my research, they shall remain nameless. Their warmth and hospitality enabled me to continue my research while grieving the death of my mother. Mòran taing. The research reported here was made possible by a fellowship from the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and a Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (Award BCS-0413501). In addition to their financial support, I remain deeply grateful for their understanding and flexibility in accommodating changes to my research schedule when I was faced with the terminal illness and death of my mother a few months into my stay on Lewis. Earlier trips to Scotland, which built the iv foundation for the research reported here, were supported by the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for International Research, both at the University of Michigan, and by Vassar College. I owe much gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee not only for the contributions to my intellectual development, but also their patience and continued support. The chair of my dissertation committee, Judith T. Irvine, has appreciated my capabilities since our first meeting, often more so than I was able to discern them myself. I have benefited immensely from her uncanny ability to find something noteworthy in even the messiest of student contributions, and thank her for alerting me to the mental health benefits of focusing on form. I am grateful to Lesley Milroy for drilling me on the historical and social complexities of Scottish languages that form the backdrop against which Gaelic language revitalization efforts operate in Scotland. Barbra A. Meek raised critical questions and concerns regarding theories of language socialization. Bruce Mannheim provided inspirational sparks and essential insights that transformed my thinking at several points in my graduate school career. Despite these scholars’ substantial contributions to my thinking, however, all shortcomings in interpretation of facts and conceptualizations of theory in this dissertation remain my own. I am indebted to my fellow Hebridean researchers, Emily McEwan-Fujita and Julia S. Heath, not only for the sympathetic reception of my stories from the wet and windy trenches of fieldwork on the Western Isles, but also for periodic reminders that my observations were not just figments of my imagination. This dissertation would not have been completed without the intellectual, editorial and emotional support provided by Emily McEwan-Fujita, whose personal mission it has been to make it possible for her to cite my research and whose encouragement to forge ahead with the writing of this document has been unfaltering. If she were not engaged in important research of her own and attempting to reverse Gaelic language shift in Nova Scotia, she would make an excellent professional dissertation coach. I thank Julia S. Heath for lessons in the finer v points of Lewis Calvinism and the history behind consuming candy during church services. I am grateful to several individuals for blending the intellectual and the personal in refreshing, eye-opening, and always humane ways during my years of study. At the University of Michigan, Cecilia Tomori and John Thiels have been my constant companions and unfailing cheerleaders in traversing the heights and depths on the long road called graduate school. Thank you for showing me that compassion, charity and kindness are as much part of the academic ethos as analytical incisiveness and perspicacious criticism. I thank the members of my cohort in the Department of Anthropology, especially fellow linguistic anthropologists Laura C. Brown, Sonia N. Das, Erika Hoffman-Dilloway, Simon J. Keeling, Tam E. Perry and honorary cohort- mate Katherine Chen, for forming an intellectual community in which I was able to grow and test my ideas. Thank you also to Rebecca S. Graff from the University of Chicago for her constant support and for literally seeing me through this process until the very end. In my most recent home of Christchurch, New Zealand, I want to thank Jeannette King at the University of Canterbury for being a sounding board of my ideas and exposing me to a new perspective on minority languages born out of a very different historical and socio-political context. Thank you to Jenny Dewar and Shannon Torres-Sharon for child-care and wet- nursing services at crucial times in the process of writing this dissertation. This dissertation is dedicated to my family: to my mother, Juliane Will, whose linguistic playfulness and creativity I sorely miss to this day. To my husband, James Degnan, for unwavering support and never-ending patience for me in this endeavor. And to my children, Tess and Quinn Degnan, for putting it all in perspective. vi Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures viii Chapter 1. Introduction 1 2. Situating the Research: Sociolinguistic Landscape and Concepts of Community 21 3. Situating the Research, Continued: Understanding Language Shift 44 4. The History of Gaelic in Scottish Education 73 5. The Political Economy of Codes in the Gaelic-Medium Classroom 98 6. The Socialization of Literate Speakerhood 126 7. Performing Gaelic Speakerhood 159 8. Gaelic Language Socialization