The Native and non-native linguists in Réunion and Scotland

Résumé En

This study deals with native and non-native linguists in the research of local languages in Réunionand Scotland. In Réunion, a French island next to Madagascar, the local language RéunioneseCreole coexists with French while, in Scotland, the local languages Scots and Scottish Gaelic coexistwith English.These territories are comparable (McDonald 2021) as they exhibit similar forms ofsituations of unequal linguistic plurality (Bretegnier 2016), which may be considered to be non-Fergusonian diglossia (Lüdi 1989: 260) with a high degree of bilingualism (Fishman 1972) andinterlect (Prudent 1981), especially for the pairs Scots-English (Görlach 2008 [2004]: 221; Maguire2012: 53) and Creole-French (Georger 2011: 48), but also the Gaelic-English diglossia (McEwan-Fujita 2020 [2005]: 185).The concept of native speaker is relevant as it relates directly to language, despite thedifficulties in the definition (O’ Rourke & Ramallo 2011: 140). I also refer to ‘native linguistics’,conceived of by Catalan linguists like Aracil and Ninyoles (Lebon-Eyquem 2007: 65) and adopted byFrench Caribbean researchers like Prudent (1981).The objective of this study is to compare the place of the native and non-native linguists inthe research of the indigenous languages in Scotland and in Réunion i.e. which proportion of thelinguists are native? How do these linguists position themselves with respect to their (non-)nativeness? and, above all, How does their (non-)nativeness influence their research?I use primarily bibliographical research to determine whether a scholar is native or not,whether in their own writing or in biographical articles. I then proceed to an analysis of the rolesof the native and non-native scholars.I expect to discover to which extent native and non-native linguists participate in theproduction of research on these languages, the change over time, the origins of the non-nativelinguists and some indications of (non-)native speaker status influence.