Rooted in Myth? Scotland's Images from Late Modern Times to the Third Millennium (original) (raw)

Scots and the (re)invention of Scotland 1

2011

In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a language, and how discourses surrounding the issue of Scots might seek to contribute to the creation of a new Scottish society. I whish to show how history is used as a legitimating discursive device by the various components of the Scots language revitalisation movement. The question of the very possibility of a history of a language is in itself particularly interesting. History itself, serving as a people’s grand narrative in the context of modern nation states, has been described by anthropologists as ‘simply a modern myth’ (Eagleton, 1991: 188). In fact, according to Woolard, “representations of the history of languages often function as Malinowskian charter myths, projecting from the present to an originary past a legitimation of contemporary power relations and interested positions” (2004: 58) Histories of languages, as socially situated narratives, can thus be seen ...

Language history as charter myth? Scots and the (re)invention of Scotland

In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a language, and how discourses surrounding the issue of Scots might seek to contribute to the creation of a new Scottish society. I whish to show how history is used as a legitimating discursive device by the various components of the Scots language revitalisation movement.

Second Angus McIntosh Lecture: Scots as a language of European civilisation

Scottish Text Society, 2010

The form of the Scots language reflects its wide European roots, and in particular its rootedness in the civilised Mediterranean as well as in the barbarous north. We can also see in the content of the language the participation of Scotland in European culture. The vocabularies of coinage, weights and measures, and fabrics are explored to illustrate this.

'Sassenach', eh? Late Modern Scottish English on the borders of time and space 1

The complex relationship that has always existed between Scots and Gaelic, and indeed between Gaelic and English, has often been the object of studies in language contact and 2016). Moreover, the historical events that have underpinned the external history of these languages in Scotland are intertwined with important literary developments at all stages. This is particularly true of Late Modern times, when Highland life and culture became the object of both idealization and stigmatization (see Dossena 2005: 83-133); within this framework, literary accounts of the Jacobite rebellions contributed significantly to the spread of Gaelic vocabulary outside Scotland. In this contribution I will focus on Celtic borrowings into (Scottish) English at a time when language codification was pervasive, but in which popular culture and indeed literature played a very important role in the creation of persistent cultural images. To this end, my analysis will rely both on dictionaries and on literary and manuscript sources.

Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900

2017

Can Scotland be considered an English colony? Is its experience and literature comparable to that of overseas postcolonial countries? Or are such comparisons no more than patriotic victimology to mask Scottish complicity in the British Empire and justify nationalism? These questions have been heatedly debated in recent years, especially in the run-up to the 2014 referendum on independence, and remain topical amid continuing campaigns for more autonomy and calls for a post-Brexit “indyref2.” However, postcolonialism cannot be reduced to politics: cultural concerns are equally important. Focusing on the first centuries of the British Unions, Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination also offers a general introduction to the emerging field of postcolonial Scottish studies, assessing both its potential and limitations in order to promote further interdisciplinary dialogue. Accessible to readers from various backgrounds, the book combines overviews of theoretical, social, and cultural contexts with detailed case studies of literary and nonliterary texts. The main focus is on internal divisions between the anglophone Lowlands and traditionally Gaelic Highlands. Central to the ‘internal colonialism’ debate, these divisions also play a crucial role in Scottish–English relations. This study shows how the image of Scotland’s Gaelic margins changed under the influence of two simultaneous developments: the emergence of the modern nation state and the rise of overseas colonialism. Both sparked intense debates over ethnic hierarchies, progress and development, cultural intermixture, exploitation and resistance. Examples are drawn from novels, travel writing, poetry, political and administrative documents, writings by missionaries and educators, historiography, journalism, and anthropology.

An Examination of the Process by which Scotland became an English-Speaking Country

The purpose of this dissertation is chiefly to examine two periods of Scottish history - the Reformation period, and the period surrounding the Union of the Crowns - and try to ascertain at which point the English language can be said to have overtaken or the Scots language as the language used in the vernacular and the writing of the Scottish Lowlands. Utilising contemporary sources such as manuscripts, publications and correspondence, in addition to modern scholarship from linguists and historians, this dissertation examines the journey that Scots has undergone from a recognised and respected language used in royal, legal and common venues to what became regarded as a dialect of English or even merely slang. Special attention is also paid to the attitudes that important figures in Scottish history had towards Scots, and how these attitudes might have affected its use and disuse in wider Scottish society.

(guest ed.) Anglistik 23:2 (2012) - Special issue on "Scottish Studies: A New Agenda for the Field"

There is no such thing as an academic discipline that represents a stable field of knowledge -on the contrary, academic disciplines always are, and arguably have to be, contested domains. To argue on similar lines, there is no such thing as an academic discipline (or indeed, an epistemological practice) that can exist in even relative isolation from the global horizon of cultural production and knowledge formation. Scottish Studies, a relatively young discipline, whose field directly intersects and partly overlaps, among others, with English, Celtic and Nordic Studies (and, through its involvement in the British Empire, with postcolonial scholarship) is no exception. And yet, it is important to acknowledge here, at the very beginning of this special issue, the specific history of this discipline, both as a contested territory, and in its changing relationship with other established or emergent disciplines -it is in fact only through an awareness of its shifting borders, and of its many fissures and tensions, and also with a memory of its past that we can gauge our present concerns and look forward. It is indeed this double intent -to engage with a critical analysis of the discipline's history and to evaluate new paths and approaches -that underlies the present collection of articles.