Spring Semester Begins

I can't believe we're already approaching week 3! With school back in full swing, I've been doing a lot of research on the preservation of the Scottish Gaelic language and trying to uncover case studies in which cultural institutions in Scotland contribute to the language's preservation and revitalization. As I've mentioned, I decided to focus on Scottish Gaelic for my research, rather than doing all three (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh). The reasoning behind this is to focus my research and delve in deep without overwhelming myself, especially given the thesis deadlines and how fast the semester will go by. I spent my winter break gathering preliminary sources on Scottish Gaelic, and now I'm working on reading through them and refining my searches.

As I look ahead, I believe my challenge will be trying to define success in order to propose suggestions for how museums can preserve and revitalize endangered languages. Because this seems to be a relatively new area of study (the intersection of cultural institutions and endangered languages), the possibilities are exciting, but it also makes it difficult to evaluate shortcomings and successes. For example, there are language policies that have been enacted within the past couple years. But, if success were to be hypothetically based on number of speakers, you'd have to wait for the next generation to grow up to see if they're passing on the language to their children and compare that to the number of speakers before the language policies were put in place. Or, I could base success on something more in the moment, like visitor engagement in cultural institutions with bilingual signage, for example.

I'm keeping all of this in the back of my mind as I research. I'm hoping that the more I read and find case studies the clearer this will become. I am also considering reaching out to museums to inquire about more information on Scottish Gaelic from their viewpoints of actually interacting with the public in Scotland.