ABSTRACT
Studies of language-death/shift indicate a special ‘role’ for gender in the social process. This chapter seeks and assesses evidence concerning the role of gender (‘en-gendered’ decisions) in the transmission and eventual death of East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG). In East Sutherland, as documented by Dorian, there was a linguistic lag between the fishers and the non-fishers. What made the death of ESG observable was the language’s relative longevity. Its death was not a protracted one: it happened and was confirmed within the lifetime of individuals. In the world of ESG the death of the language and the lifetime of individuals ran the same course, occupied the same semantic and physical space. In the local folk-model of language-death the death of Embo Gaelic is very closely identified in the late 1980s with the physical death of individuals. East Sutherland Gaelic had become a social and historical ‘text’ to be commented on, to be admired, to be recalled, but not to be lived.
