Nancy Dorian
Nancy Currier Dorian (1936–April 24, 2024) was an American linguist who carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo.
Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death.
[7] She was a Unitarian Universalist; her hymn Dear Weaver of our Lives' Design won a prize for celebrating feminine imagery of the divine.
[9][12] Previous researchers had focused on the NORM (non-mobile old rural male) speakers, who had more conservative language, at the expense of the wider speech community.
[15][13] Her book The Tyranny of Tide: An Oral History of the East Sutherland Fisherfolk blurred the lines between linguistics and ethnology, revealing how these fields help illuminate and complement each other.
[25] Certain types of syntactic distinctions, such as grammatical gender, case markings, and the two passive constructions, were lost gradually, rather than erased wholesale, as some theoreticians had predicted.
[23][22] Another important factor, Dorian found, was the presence of prosperous English-speaking incomers which caused the poorer Gaelic speakers to connect the English language with economic success.
[29] Dorian was inspired to organize this collection of essays when she realized that there were no conferences or journals dedicated to the study of language death, where scholars in the field could share ideas.
In addition, the book was described by Carl Blyth as a "milestone" because it "establishes a more coherent agenda in a disparate and still emerging field".
[34] Dorian notes that on her arrival, many people were bilingual in Gaelic and English—this led to further documentation in linguistic changes such as speech patterns and overall reductions in skill and proficiency.
[38] Grenoble also highlights the usefulness of publishing a book of these collections that allows for easier access where tracking down older articles may be difficult.
[39] Carl Blyth wrote in 1994 that Dorian "deserves foremost credit for consistently drawing the attention of linguists and anthropologists to the importance of endangered languages".
