Nancy C. Dorian is an American linguist[1] 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.
She received her Ph.D from the University of Michigan and is a former professor in linguistics and anthropology at Bryn Mawr College. Working for the Linguistic Survey of Scotland in 1963, there was little expectation at the time of finding Gaelic locally spoken but Dorian found over 200 Gaelic speakers. Her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland is considered an important and detailed study of language death.
She 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.
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She observed the discomfort and hostility shown by some of these speakers, 'Who wanted nothing more than to be inconspicuous'.