| Chapter 1: | The Dying Gael |
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The last section of my literature review summarizes the historic uses of language policy to protect, foster, and revive language cultures, offering closer attention to examples that illustrate how language policy in the educational system has been used to support language cultures that otherwise may well have been subsumed by a dominant language culture.
The research question that informs this book has to do with how formal education institutions and informal organizations are assisted in the revival of the Scottish Gaelic language: What are Scottish Gaels doing through formal and informal educational efforts to keep Gaelic alive? Building on the arguments in favor of heritage language education that are detailed in part I, in part II I describe the actual implementation of these ideas and measures in the context of Scottish Gaelic.
Secondly, I ask the following question: What are the perceptions and beliefs of Scottish Gaelic educators regarding the formation of this new educational system and the potential for the education movement to achieve its goal of language survival? I attempt to answer this question through a series of interviews with a select group of Gaelic educators.
Organization of the Study
Following Patton's (2002) model for the study of the “whole phenomenon…understood as a complex system…[with]…complex interdependencies and system dynamics that cannot meaningfully be reduced to a few discrete variables and linear, cause-effect relationships” (p. 41) the method of analysis in this study is composed of a triangulation, not so much of data sources, but of analytical perspectives (Creswell, 1998; Patton, 2002). It places the findings in a “social, historical and temporal context,” (Patton, 2002, p. 41) varying from the historical