Telling the Monolinguals from the Bilinguals: Unrealistic Code Choices in Direct Quotations within Scottish Gaelic Narratives

Among the Gaelic-English bilinguals of East Sutherland, Scotland, code choice is made above all according to interlocutor. When the chosen code is Gaelic, the community norm for rendering direct quotations within a narrative is to produce them in Gaelic, regardless of which language was used origina...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The international journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior cross-linguistic studies of language behavior, 1997-03, Vol.1 (1), p.41-54
Main Author: Dorian, Nancy C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bilingualism
English
Foreign Countries
Language Choice
Language Usage
Monolingualism
Quotations
Scotland
Scots Gaelic
Speech Communication
Uncommonly Taught Languages
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Summary:Among the Gaelic-English bilinguals of East Sutherland, Scotland, code choice is made above all according to interlocutor. When the chosen code is Gaelic, the community norm for rendering direct quotations within a narrative is to produce them in Gaelic, regardless of which language was used originally and regardless of whether the quoted person was actually capable of speaking Gaelic. Examples are given to illustrate this quotational norm, but factors that can override it are identified and exemplified as well: a quoted monolingual's deeply ingrained identification with the landed gentry, the presence of profanity in the original English, or a particularly strong negative or positive resonance in the English original that a narrator wishes to reproduce. English remarks rendered as direct quotations in Gaelic narratives may show evidence of an unrealistic code choice in slight grammatical deviation or in the presence of more phrasal code switches than average, but in the more usual case local narrative practices make it impossible to distinguish monolinguals from bilinguals on the basis of their quoted remarks.
ISSN:1367-0069
1756-6878
DOI:10.1177/136700699700100104