ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some aspects of social class and diglossia in Scottish and Irish Gaelic communities. The chapter determines the recent revitalisation efforts and their implications for fitting Gaelic into a diglossic paradigm. Within the diglossic paradigm, the H (High) language indexes power and prestige, and is used in H domains, which normally encompass higher education, national media, religion, government and the workplace. The chapter describes how two sociolinguistic constructs social class and diglossia are difficult to apply directly to the case of the Gaelic languages. The Gaelic languages began their sociolinguistic decline as a consequence of English's rise to dominance in the polities within which they are spoken. The chapter examines assumptions underlying the variable 'social class' as well as discuss how social class does not necessarily correlate with certain linguistic practices. Since Labov's landmark New York City study, the variable of 'social class' has become an important construct used to demonstrate the link between language and society.
