ABSTRACT

In trying to interrupt the language of drama and catharsis, Bertolt Brecht developed the Lehrstucke, a form of pedagogical theatre which could educate people as to the suffering and material basis of that suffering for common people worldwide. A language of great beauty but also of perpetuating and perpetual violence and specifically the violence of the mosque attacks, English is muted, silenced, replaced, by the very languages it over-wrote through the times of settler-colonialism. The first signs of the renewal of Gaelic, disrupting the priority given to English, appeared in the dual-language railway station signs and road signs, using the green of Gaelic or italicising it, bringing the language, albeit in “bowed” unemboldened form, into sight. The Gaelic Language Act of Scotland has brought a public duty to Scots, to listen again to the land, first through place names then through the gradual reintroduction of Gaelic into public life and public duty.