Crowdsourcing and Gaelic corpus development

Mark.McConville@glasgow.ac.uk

Gaelic in Siabost

•A comprehensive survey of Gaelic ability, use and attitudes in 2011 -

• attitudes to Gaelic are extremely positive

• but most parents and grandparents speak to their children in English

• most children enter English-medium primary education.

Tragedy of the Commons

•an unregulated depletable shared resource will be destroyed through overuse, by individuals acting independently and rationally in their own short-term self-interest

•even though everyone knows that the destruction of the shared resource would be harmful to everyone’s long-term interests

•Solution - enclosure, privatisation.

The Gaelic commons•Language is an economic choice -

• English - the language of national and international labour markets

• Gaelic - the language of local self-identity.

•Gaelic development requires an economic solution -

• parents need to be persuaded of the tangible, short-term economic benefits of raising their children as Gaelic-speakers.

Gaelic development

•Acquisition -

• more Gaelic-speakers

•Status/usage -

• more Gaelic-speaking

•Corpus -

• standardisation and elaboration

• orthography, lexicon, grammar, . . .

Gaelic corpus: 1900

•The Gaelic Bible -

• New Testament (1767)

• Old Testament (1801)

•Literature - prose and poetry

•Prescriptive grammars -

• Forbes, 1848

• Cameron Gillies,1896

Gaelic corpus: 1970

•Perceived decline in standards -

• increase in inconsistency?

• more demand for consistency?

•Tragedy of the Commons -

• the Gaelic corpus as an unowned, rapidly depleting resource

• privatisation - GOC

Gaelic Language Academy?

•National Plan for Gaelic 2007-2012 -

• commitment to a coordinated approach to Gaelic corpus planning, including a Gaelic Language Academy

•But very little progress has been made -

• no Gaelic Language Academy is in sight.

•Why?

Partnership approach?•The National Plan commits BnaG to a

partnership approach to Gaelic development.

•Plethora of Gaelic development organisations -

• BnaG, CnaG, An Comunn Gàìdhealach

• Gaelic Books Council, Gaelic Arts Agency, Gaelic Learners Association, MG Alba, . . .

• Gaelic language plans

• SQA, Education Scotland, Stòrlann, BBC, BCSS, . . .

The Tragedy of the Anticommons

•a resource cannot be exploited effectively because there are too many owners,

•all of whom need to agree on how best to proceed.

•Solution - “bundling”, either by government, or by market forces.

•Obstacles - ideological factors, lack of trust, rent-seeking

Crowdsourcing

•commons-based peer production (cf. firm production and market production)

•Web 2.0, user-generated content, wikis

•diversity trumps ability

•Can we crowdsource corpus planning for Gaelic?

•A “wikademy”?

Reasons for optimism?

•OED, English orthography

•Fòram na Gàidhlig, Gàidhlig-B

•Broadband

•Web 2.0

•Strong grassroots interest in Gaelic corpus planning

Community of practice

•Gaelic language professionals

• CPD

•Academic linguists

• open science

• social impact

•Amateur enthusiasts, language activists

http://comhla.wikispaces.com