“Quite an Innocuous Thing”: The Select Committee on the Greater Use of Manx Gaelic and language revitalisation in the Isle of Man

Abstract

Over the past several decades, Manx Gaelic, the indigenous language of the Isle of Man, a small island in the British Isles, has undergone a profound process of revitalisation and reintegration into the life of the community. At the forefront of this revitalisation process has been a dedicated group of language activists who saved the language following the death of the last native speakers. More recently, however, the Isle of Man government has supported the revitalisation of Manx, mainly through education planning and support for cultural programming. This article examines the Select Committee on the Greater Use of Manx Gaelic, a committee of the island’s parliament, Tynwald, the internal and external contexts that shaped its deliberations and recommendations and the role it played in signalling a change in the attitude of the government towards Manx in the mid-1980s. The Select Committee highlights the important connection between the political (governance) and social (identity) dimensions of islandness in the revitalisation of an Indigenous language in a small island context.