Fiona O'Hanlon

Public Attitudes to Gaelic and the Debate about Scottish Autonomy

Abstract Scotland seems to be a counter-example to general theories of the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism. These theories point to three components in the ideology of language and nation—that being able to speak the national language is necessary for full national membership, that the national language is a core part of the nations culture, and that the future of national political autonomy and the future of the national language are connected with each other. In Scotland, it has appeared that language is not central to national membership or culture, and language campaigning has not been central to the political campaigns for autonomy. The article presents new evidence, from the 2012 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which questions these beliefs about the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism in Scotland.

The attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland

The curricular attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland is investigated using surveys of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in the fifth and seventh years of primary school (approximately 9 and 11 years of age) in 2007. The Gaelic-medium survey was essentially a census of pupils. The English-medium survey was a clustered random sample of 25% of pupils. Attainment was assessed in Gaelic reading and writing (for the Gaelic-medium pupils), and English reading and writing, mathematics and science (for both Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils). Science was assessed by tests administered as part of the survey; attainment in the other curricular areas was assessed by teacher judgement. The measures were analysed using multi-level modelling, with pupils grouped in schools (and, for some purposes with multivariate outcomes, with measures nested in pupils), and with controls for gender and social deprivation. While most Gaelic-medium pupils were performing in Gaelic at the level stipulated by the curricular framework, a larger proportion was doing so in relation to English. In English reading more Gaelic-medium pupils had reached the stipulated level than had English-medium pupils. There was no reliable evidence of any difference between the two pupil groups in English writing, mathematics or science.

Public views of minority languages as communication or symbol: the case of Gaelic in Scotland

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 peoples 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.

Factors influencing the likelihood of choice of Gaelic-medium Primary Education in Scotland: Results from a national public survey

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the factors influencing the likelihood of choice of Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland by means of the analysis of a national survey of public attitudes conducted in 2012. Binary logistic regression is used to investigate the association of five dimensions found in previous literature to be associated with the choice of Scottish Gaelic-medium education: (i) demographic characteristics, (ii) exposure to Gaelic, (iii) cultural and national identities, (iv) views on the future of Gaelic and (v) views on Gaelic in education. The present research found views about Gaelic in education and views on the future of Gaelic to have the greatest explanatory power in predicting likelihood of choice of Gaelic-medium education, for demographic characteristics and ‘cultural and national identities’ to have substantial explanatory power, and for exposure to Gaelic to have low explanatory power. The paper uses Baker’s three contexts for the growth of bilingual education in Wales – bilingual education as language planning, as pedagogy and as politics – as its explanatory framework, and shows that these three contexts also underpin the potential growth of Gaelic-medium education in Scotland. Potential implications for policy and for methodological approaches to studying choice of bilingual education are presented.