Introduction - Gaelic in Contemporary Scotland

It seems apt to open this volume with a quote from Nancy C. Dorian, whose work on the Gaelic spoken in East Sutherland has not only profoundly shaped scholarship on Scottish Gaelic sociolinguistics as a whole, but has guided research on language shift and maintenance for decades now. In 1987 Dorian wrote:

In the fifteen years during which I was constantly visiting the East Sutherland district of the northeast Scottish mainland or living there, actively studying its distinctive and unique flavor, I was asked many times whether my activities or indeed anyone else’s could make any difference to the ultimate..