This recently completed ESRC-funded PhD project investigates the interaction between beliefs about language and structural variation in language use among New Speakers of Manx. Manx is the Goidelic Celtic variety spoken in the Isle of Man, which ceased to be spoken as a ‘native’ community language in the 20th century. However, thanks to recent language revitalization efforts, a community of New Speakers of Manx now exists. The project employs ethnographic observation, sociolinguistic interviews through the medium of Manx, and language questionnaires to collect a corpus of spoken data for structural linguistic analysis, and to explore speakers’ beliefs about Manx, good language use, and what it means to be a Manx speaker. It finds that language attitudes and ideologies are a major force shaping language variation and emerging norms in Manx, which has implications for how variation is formed when language varieties are being ‘born’.

Read the thesis here.

For more information about this project, please contact the author at erin.mcnulty@glasgow.ac.uk.