Introduction

We have chosen this topic because many people feel alienated from learning, cultural and political spaces because of the way language is used there. And because minority languages in Scotland are under threat of extinction and there is not a shared awareness of how or why to fight for them. In this section we explore the history of language in Scotland, what impact language loss has on society, what language resistance has looked like and why it's still important today. 

Many political movements around the world recognise the importance of language as part of resistance. Dr Doris Paton, language keeper and teacher of the Gunaikurnai people of so called Australia said 'Language defines who a people are'. Whilst Pádraig Pearse an Irish language activist said Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam ("A country without a language is a country without a soul"). Frantz Fanon said “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” And Khelsilem, a First Nations activist whose grandmother was a residential school survivor said "All the elders that talked about how the language is important … and this is what it means to be Skwomesh. Anytime I speak the language I can see them, I can feel them, I can hear their breath speaking with me." 

People who relate to their struggle as anti-colonial view language as a way of retaining identity, history, culture, relationship to land and relationship to their ancestors. These are the things which colonialism (has) tried / tries to strip away, because they give people a sense of power and agency. All of the quotes above are from communities who have been impacted by Scottish colonialism as we will explore further in Topic 9. The internalisation of colonial worldviews happened here first, we learned that our own culture and language were both worthless and dangerous, and then we enforced this self hatred on the rest of the world. 

Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o said "The biggest weapon wielded... by imperialism against the collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves".

Many people in Scotland have what Sheena Wellington a Scots language advocate described as ‘hoose spik, aind skill spik’. Hoos spik ranges from various Scots dialects, traveller Cant, Scots Gaelic, Urdu, Hindi, Polish, Romani, Shona and the many other languages which migrant and refugee communities have brought to these shores. Kids in council estates around Glasgow flip between broad weegie, English and Somali with total ease. But unlike many countries where being multi-lingual is either normal or celebrated, here it is hidden and often layered in shame. ‘Proper’ English is the language of education, the state and media. Speaking in another language or dialect is associated with being uneducated and stupid. On his BBC program ‘Class Wars’ Darren McGarvey says “my own Glaswegian accent is considered amongst the least attractive in the UK’ because it is associated with a specific working class stereotype. How you speak has real consequences in terms of access to education, employment, welfare and social spaces. 

Tobar and Dualchais contains many accounts of people's experience of education and language. ‘My father was in the school and got punished for speaking Gaidhlig’ - John Henderson, Arran. "Gaidhlig was more or less prohibited, we only spoke it when we got together in the playground, it wasn’t taught you see.’ - Alasdair Cameron, 1968. Gaidhlig was banned in schools until the 1980s when Gaidhlig medium education was established. The impact of this on communities has been huge, parents encouraged their children to speak only English out of fear of punishment and a desire for them to access opportunities. Gaidhlig was associated with being poor and uneducated and therefore carried a lot of shame. When the language revival movement kicked off in earnest in the 1980s it often overlooked the psychological and class elements of language. Working class people were now shamed for not speaking the language that their parents were beaten for, and Gaidhlig was something you could fail at in school. Though less documented, the experiences of other minority language speakers in Scotland, follows a similar pattern, and when we speak about language as part of resistance it's important we consider the impacts of both class and race. 

The main way that any language has survived is because ordinary people have spoken it, sung it and taught it to younger people in their communities. In ‘Doras gun Claimhean’ Murchadh MacPhàrlain said ‘Och, nach fhaicinn iad cruinn,/ Eadhon aon oidhch’ a-mhàin,/Comann m’òige is mo linn/ ’S na stùil is a’bheing is iad làn,/ ‘S cànan àrsaidh linn Fhinn/ Ga cluinntinn aig seanair is pàist. (O, to see them gathered together/ Even if only for the night,/ The community of my youth and generation,/ The stools and the bench full,/ To hear the ancient language of Fianna/ Bening spoken by both elder and young person.)’ In ‘She Settled in the Shields’ oral histories from migrant women such as Shagufta Ashiq document the lifeline that letters and then phone calls were, because they allowed you to communicate in your native language. 

Organised language resistance has taken a specific form in Scotland because, unlike other contexts, it isn’t generally viewed as part of an anti-colonial struggle. The preservation of the Gaidhlig language has always taken a socially conservative and institutional approach through things like the Gaelic Language Society of Inverness, founded in 1871, and the Royal National Mòd founded in 1892. So much so, that as Cass Ezeji revealed in her documentary "Trusadh: Afro-Gàidheil" the first Gaidhlig-English dictionary was partially funded by money from the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Likewise, Scots and other minority language campaigns have focussed on legal recognition, policy change and education as strategies for recognition and access to resources. By comparison other resistance movements have focussed on cultural events, integrating language revival into frontline services like community meals and making the political nature of learning language explicit. When we consider what language resistance in Scotland to look like, it is important that we are willing to critique what has happened in the past. 

“They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.” ― N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn

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