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Gaelic in Siabost
•A comprehensive survey of Gaelic ability, use and attitudes in 2011 -
• attitudes to Gaelic are extremely positive
• but most parents and grandparents speak to their children in English
• most children enter English-medium primary education.
Tragedy of the Commons
•an unregulated depletable shared resource will be destroyed through overuse, by individuals acting independently and rationally in their own short-term self-interest
•even though everyone knows that the destruction of the shared resource would be harmful to everyone’s long-term interests
•Solution - enclosure, privatisation.
The Gaelic commons•Language is an economic choice -
• English - the language of national and international labour markets
• Gaelic - the language of local self-identity.
•Gaelic development requires an economic solution -
• parents need to be persuaded of the tangible, short-term economic benefits of raising their children as Gaelic-speakers.
Gaelic development
•Acquisition -
• more Gaelic-speakers
•Status/usage -
• more Gaelic-speaking
•Corpus -
• standardisation and elaboration
• orthography, lexicon, grammar, . . .
Gaelic corpus: 1900
•The Gaelic Bible -
• New Testament (1767)
• Old Testament (1801)
•Literature - prose and poetry
•Prescriptive grammars -
• Forbes, 1848
• Cameron Gillies,1896
Gaelic corpus: 1970
•Perceived decline in standards -
• increase in inconsistency?
• more demand for consistency?
•Tragedy of the Commons -
• the Gaelic corpus as an unowned, rapidly depleting resource
• privatisation - GOC
Gaelic Language Academy?
•National Plan for Gaelic 2007-2012 -
• commitment to a coordinated approach to Gaelic corpus planning, including a Gaelic Language Academy
•But very little progress has been made -
• no Gaelic Language Academy is in sight.
•Why?
Partnership approach?•The National Plan commits BnaG to a
partnership approach to Gaelic development.
•Plethora of Gaelic development organisations -
• BnaG, CnaG, An Comunn Gàìdhealach
• Gaelic Books Council, Gaelic Arts Agency, Gaelic Learners Association, MG Alba, . . .
• Gaelic language plans
• SQA, Education Scotland, Stòrlann, BBC, BCSS, . . .
The Tragedy of the Anticommons
•a resource cannot be exploited effectively because there are too many owners,
•all of whom need to agree on how best to proceed.
•Solution - “bundling”, either by government, or by market forces.
•Obstacles - ideological factors, lack of trust, rent-seeking
Crowdsourcing
•commons-based peer production (cf. firm production and market production)
•Web 2.0, user-generated content, wikis
•diversity trumps ability
•Can we crowdsource corpus planning for Gaelic?
•A “wikademy”?
Reasons for optimism?
•OED, English orthography
•Fòram na Gàidhlig, Gàidhlig-B
•Broadband
•Web 2.0
•Strong grassroots interest in Gaelic corpus planning
Community of practice
•Gaelic language professionals
• CPD
•Academic linguists
• open science
• social impact
•Amateur enthusiasts, language activists
