Overview

Based on an eight-year study of a family on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, this book explores why the children in the family do not often speak Gaelic, despite the adults' best efforts to use the language with them, as well as the children's attendance at a Gaelic immersion school.

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9781137521804

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Reviews

This brief but incisive and insightful study makes an important contribution to the emerging field of family language policy and to our understanding of the dynamics of language shift more generally. -Wilson McLeod, Professor of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK This book has much to teach those who hope to halt the shift process that threatens the survival of many small and especially indigenous languages around the world. Read this book to learn why the final page does not foresee a completely dark future for Gaelic in this family or predict general failure for efforts to reverse language shift. -Nancy Dorian, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Bryn Mawr College, USA

The volume is a pioneer in the study of FLP and its relation to language shift. ... as the first book-length treatment of FLP, this work will be a great resource for both undergraduate and graduate students in language education, sociolinguistics and bilingualism, as well as for researchers interested in minority-language development and maintenance, language socialisation and linguistic ideologies. (Juyoung Song, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Vol. 38 (1), March, 2017)

Author Information

Cassie Smith-Christmas is a research fellow for Soillse, the inter-university Gaelic language research network. After completing her PhD at the University of Glasgow, Cassie took up her fellowship with the University of Highlands and Islands and has also held a fellowship at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK.

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