A5.1. Gaelic Corpus Planning Bodies
4. Decisional: What do we need to do to move on from here?
The FC is designed and led by a facilitator whose role is to create an environment in which the participants feel comfortable and in which their knowledge and experience is respected and valued. The facilitator asks questions to lead the participants through each of the above phases, giving the opportunity for reflection and moving towards understanding the values that lie beneath opinions. Carrying out the conversations in groups allows peer-to-peer sharing of experiences and the establishment of consensus, not as unanimous agreement, but as an ability to move forward together. Because of the interactive nature of the conversation, where participants listen to each other rather than individually completing a survey, the method also has the effect of allowing each participant to come away from the conversation with a greater understanding of, and insight into, their community.
Focused Conversations are an ideal method for engaging with the theme of Gaelic corpus planning: a topic which arouses strong opinions in many people. It allows people not only to share their experiences and have their feelings about these experiences recognised and validated, but also gives them an opportunity to situate these experiences and feelings in the wider context of Gaelic language development, and then to reach some kind of resolution. It was in the last of these that we hoped to see a majority consensus emerging as to what kind of linguistic foundation and institutional support is appropriate for Gaelic corpus planning. This enabled us to rank the competing language corpus principles which are most appropriate in the Gaelic context and to make recommendations for a linguistic foundation for future Gaelic corpus planning which would be of practical benefits to all Gaelic users.
During phase 2 of the Dlùth is Inneach project, we planned, organised and ran a series of Focused Conversations. Within the constraints of time and funding, we canvassed opinion from a wide range of people and organisations. The conversations were predominantly conducted in Gaelic and ranged in size from one to fifteen participants.
The first step in this phase of the project involved developing and refining an appropriate Focused Conversation Schema, i.e. a ‘roadmap’ for an FC, consisting of a list of topics to be covered and questions to be raised during each of the four phases of the Conversation. The FC Schema we came up with will be discussed in detail in sections B1.3 and B1.4. We chose to develop the Schema in two separate parts, one for linguistic foundations, and one for institutional frameworks. Each part of the conversation was designed to be around 50–55 minutes long, held in succession.
What follows is a summary of participation in the FCs. As all participants were given the option of anonymity (which two thirds of participants chose), the details of locations and groups must be kept deliberately vague.
The project originally planned to hold 15 FCs, however, in order to canvass as broad a range of opinion as possible, further workshops were arranged.
Total number of Focused Conversations held: 39
Locations: Glasgow, Inverness, Lewis & Harris, Uist, Skye.
Types of groups:
2 Primary schools (teachers & other staff)
2 Secondary schools (with teachers & other staff)
1 Secondary school (with pupils)
3 Local authorities
2 Local History societies
4 Higher Education Institutions
4 Broadcasters
2 Arts groups
6 Public Meetings
Total number of participants: 184
Age range from 14–81:
- 14–17: 29% (i.e. 53 / 184) - 18–19: 0.5% (1)
- 30s: 13% (24) - 40s: 13.5% (25) - 50s: 17% (32) - 60s: 9% (16) - 70s: 3.5% (6) - 80s: 1% (2)
Participants were asked to describe themselves according to their Gaelic language abilities, with the following responses:
Native speaker: 134
Learner: 28
Other: 22
Fluent (speaker): 5
Part native / part learner: 2
Native learner: 2
Fluent learner: 8
‘Gaeliconly household from age 8’: 1
‘Irish > Scottish Gaelic’: 1
‘Keen speaker’: 1
‘I have been speaking / learning Gaelic since Primary 1 but wouldn’t say that I was fluent.’: 1
no answer: 1.
Some participants work in Gaelic development organisations, but took part in an individual capacity, not as officials ‘representing’ their organisations.
A range of non-language professionals (e.g. not working in Gaelic education, broadcasting, publishing or for language developments agencies) were also represented including retail, transport, fishing, care work, finance, tourism, and local government. Some participants were also retired (six participants were aged 70+).
B1.2.1. Successful aspects
There were three particularly successful aspects to the methodology.
of the conversation allowed participants to drive the discussion and to determine what was important for them to discuss. This meant that factors which the research team had not anticipated, such as the negative impact of the lack of peer-to-peer support, were able to surface.
2. The structure gave those who rarely think about metalinguistic issues a path into the discussions. The first task (opinions on animal vocabulary) was particularly successful in providing a simple ice-breaking exercise for everyone to contribute to, before expanding the discussion onto wider contexts.
3. The group dynamic allowed participants to exchange knowledge and sometimes challenge each other’s approaches and beliefs about the language.
This was most successful in peer groups where participants already knew each other. The examples and questions chosen to structure the conversation were successful in stimulating discussion and eliciting the expressions of values and language ideology that formed the evidence gathering basis of the research. They also allowed for reflection on the relative importance of these issues for language maintenance.
B1.2.2. Limitations
Public participation, rather than organisational participation, was more difficult to obtain.
Obvious possible reasons were the difficulty for individuals to make time and the difficulty in explaining the nature of the event in a clear and attractive manner on a poster. On one occasion, someone who was happy to talk one-to-one to the Research Assistant remarked that they would not go to an organised event as taking part in group discussions was ‘not their kind of thing’.
Greater success in getting beyond the usual stakeholder involvement of official groups was achieved by working with existing community groups rather than open public events.
For these reasons, however, twelve conversations took place as one-to-one conversations.
Although these lacked the benefits of the group dynamic, the method was still successful in eliciting discussion and the facilitator could make reference to the viewpoints of previous participants to reflect on diverse perspectives. Although they were not planned in the design of the project, these individual sessions often allowed participants to go into more detail, and speak honestly about deep concerns in a way that they might be reluctant to do with colleagues or friends in a group setting.
Foundations
As one expected area of interest was terminology, two exercises based on vocabulary were designed. Another exercise to elicit discussion on grammar and syntax was also formulated.
B1.3.1. Vocabulary
Participants were shown pictures and / or words. The pictures included:
a kangaroo
a hippopotamus
a beaver
a group of amphibians.
The words included:
chemotherapy
compound interest
USB key
fridge
referendum.
The principal questions on vocabulary were:
What is the normal, everyday Gaelic word for these things?
Here are some relevant words from dictionaries, books and recommended by other people. Which do you prefer?
What do you like or dislike about these words?
When schools, universities and broadcasters are using the language, which word do you think they should use?
The follow-up questions included:
How important is it that loan words from English are given a Gaelic spelling?
How important is it that loan words from languages other than English are given a Gaelic spelling?
Are there topics or things where it’s not worth creating Gaelic terms for? Can you think of any examples?
Are there any new words you have started to use in the last few years? What are they and why did you adopt them?
B1.3.2. Grammar
Initially, an example contrasting the following two constructions was used, as Gaelic translations of the English sentence ‘Robert Burns was a poet’; the first ‘conservative’, and the second ‘progressive’:
’S e bàrd a bh’ ann an Raibeart Burns. ‘It is a poet that Robert Burns was.’
This was altered as the B’ e / ’S e tense contrast did little to stimulate discussion. The use of the second, progressive option was considered acceptable by nearly all participants.
Participants were then shown two sentences, both translations of the English ‘The weather was better than I was expecting’; the first progressive, and the second conservative:
Bha an t-sìde nas fheàrr na bha dùil agam.
‘The weather is such that it is better than I expected.’
Bha an t-sìde na b’ fheàrr na bha dùil agam.
‘The weather was such that it was better than I expected.’
The principal questions asked of participants were as follows:
Are both phrases acceptable in Gaelic?
Should education and broadcasting promote the use of one or other or both?
Are there other things that you think are unacceptable which you hear often?
Who has the authority to say whether something is acceptable as ‘good’ Gaelic or not?
B1.3.2 Numbers
A picture was shown to participants and they were asked how they would refer to a group of thirty three instances of that object. The initial example used ‘thirty three sheep’, however, there was some controversy as to what was the everyday plural form of the Gaelic word for sheep – caora or caoraich. The example was thus changed to ‘pipers’, with the unambiguous pìobaire (sg.) versus pìobairean (pl.). Then a list of various ways of expressing ‘thirty three pipers’ was distributed. Participants were asked to:
put a star next to forms they would use
put a tick next to forms that were acceptable to them
put a cross next to forms that were unacceptable to them.
A large number of participants specified that they would use both the vigesimal and decimal systems, depending on who they were talking to. In practice, this presented difficulties for the majority of participants; its format appeared too much like a test and undermined their confidence. It proved difficult to expand discussion from this on to wider issues of language change and planned language development. Focus shifted to the vocabulary and grammar discussions, with the numbers exercise only carried out where time allowed. No useable data was gathered on this question.
B1.3.4. Additional questions
A couple of additional questions were added, whenever time permitted:
What things bug you the most about Gaelic today?
Frameworks
The sessions began with a short presentation of existing language resources and different bodies and individuals involved in creating them. Participants were asked:
Are there any resources or services that are missing? Are there other resources or services that would support you in your language use?
Who should be responsible for creating these resources? An existing group? Who would you trust to provide a useful resource?
The facilitator was careful not to present the creation of a new Gaelic corpus planning institution as a given or an inherently desirable idea. This discussion of resources allowed participants to present priorities and gaps in provision. It led on to discussion of what kind of corpus planning body could provide the resources or services requested. Participants were asked to design such a body, based on the following questions:
What kind of duties should it have?
Which of these should be priorities?
What kind of duties should it definitely not have?
What skills or expertise should people have to be eligible to work for, or contribute to, this body?
What role would you have in relation to this body?
Where should it be located? In one location or across different locations?
Should it be a standalone body or be under the auspices of a different organisation?
Whose needs should it prioritise?
How should it be funded?
What should it be called?
Participants who have experience of working in organisations and who were familiar with the existing institutions were most confident in recommending organisational structures. For other participants questions of funding or organisational structures were more difficult to answer.
Nearly all participants, however, could engage with choosing the kinds of duties it should and should not carry out. They also engaged with the topic of legitimate linguistic authority (i.e.
buy-in) by identifying which people and process would be required in order for a group to function successfully and effectively.