Nancy Dorian

Nancy C. Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the death of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland is considered an important and detailed study of language death.

Dorian first went to study in East Sutherland in Scotland in 1963. Noting that a declining localized speech form offered a chance to find out what sorts of changes took place as a speech form passed out of use, she began a long-term study of variation and change in the local Gaelic. The language in question, East Sutherland Gaelic, is an isolated dialect, with substantial differences from other dialects of Scots Gaelic, preserved in three small communities of Scottish fisherfolk. In the early years of the study there were more than 200 speakers of the dialect, including one parrot. Although traditional practice calls for anthropologists to change fieldwork settings, health challenges led Dorian to continue study of East Sutherland language development, a situation that had the beneficial side effect of producing a study of unprecedented scope and continuity. This study has continued into the first two decades of the twenty-first century, when only a handful of speakers remain. She has also studied young people who could speak Gaelic but didn't speak it often ("semi-speakers") and noted their ability to quickly return to fluency with effort.