Free online access to "Gaelic Crisis" book

Aberdeen University Press have published an electronic edition of the ground-breaking "Gaelic Crisis in the Vernacular Community" for free open access.

This book emerges from the work of Soillse's Islands Gaelic Research Project (IGRP) conducted between 2015 and 2017. Soillse was a research collaboration, established between founding members – the University of the Highlands and Islands, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow – to provide a much enhanced research capacity to inform public policy towards the maintenance and revitalisation of Gaelic language and culture. This publication provides contemporary data and analysis of the societal and spatial extent of Gaelic speakers and Gaelic speaking in the remaining vernacular communities in Scotland. The survey modules examined: census demolinguistics; preschoolers' language practice; teenager data; three indicative communities and speaker typologies, providing qualitative and quantitative information on community, family, school and individual language acquisition and practice.

While Soillse is now dissolved, legacy work continues through the UHI Language Sciences Institute. The Institute places particular emphasis on community engagement in respect of Gaelic language policy and planning, and so welcomes this development in the interests of making the research findings as widely available, and as easily accessible, as possible. Since 2020 the terms of the Gaelic development debate have clearly shifted to some degree, under the influence of this publication. It remains important reading as Scotland now contemplates a new legislative framework to support its languages.