Gaelic Scotland and Ireland: Issues of class and diglossia in an evolving social landscape

This chapter uses examples from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic sociolinguistic situations to examine how these communities differ from the urban majority language communities that are typically the focus of mainstream sociolinguistic research. Specifically, the chapter discusses how the paradigms of social class and diglossia unfold differently than in mainstream sociolinguistic research. The chapter argues that in the case of Scottish Gaelic, social class is not a useful construct when looking at language use and that in the case of Irish Gaelic; it is difficult to correlate linguistic practices with social categories. The chapter then posits that in the case of diglossia, there is evidence of the possibility of a H(igh) variety existing without a L(ow) variety in Scottish Gaelic. The chapter then concludes by discussing how the expected correlates of register and prestige play out differently than in mainstream sociolinguistics, as in both Scottish and Irish Gaelic, the association of the H(igh) register with L2 speakers de-valorises it, thus reversing the expected dimensions of prestige and domain.