Gaelic Scotland: Bilingual Life in the Twenty-First Century?

Abstract

This opening chapter contextualises the key themes of the book within the sociological and historical setting of Gaelic in Scotland, introducing the central issue of language revitalisation. Building on this key theme, the chapter then discusses the role assigned to bilingual immersion education in current initiatives to maintain and renew minority languages. It then outlines the overall structure of the book, with a view to situating the wider study against this conceptual backdrop. Gaelic has been spoken in Scotland for over 1500 years, and was used over a major part of northern Britain in the medieval period, yet the language has now been in a state of decline for almost a millennium. This chapter considers policymakers’ response to this contextual backdrop in order to introduce the key themes of the monograph.