Sociolinguistic History Of Scotland

Robert McColl Millar examines how language has been used in Scotland since the earliest times. While primarily focusing on the histories of the speakers of Scots and Gaelic, and their competition with the encroaching use of (Scottish) Standard English, he also traces the decline and eventual 'death' of Pictish, British and Norn. Four case studies illustrate the historical development of North East Scots, Scottish Standard English, Shetland Scots and Glasgow Scots. Immigrant languages are also discussed throughout the book.

This book provides a thorough yet approachable history of the Scots language, a close relative of Standard English with around 1.5 million speakers in Scotland and several thousand in Ireland, according to the 2011 census. Despite the long history of Scots as a language of high literature, it has been somewhat neglected and has often been treated as a dialect of Standard English. In this book, Robert McColl Millar explores both sociolinguistic and structural developments in the history of Scots, bringing together these two threads of analysis to offer a better understanding of linguistic change. The first half of the book tracks the development of Scots from its beginnings to the modern period, while chapters in the second half offer detailed descriptions of Scots historical phonology and morphosyntax, and of the historical development of Scots lexis. A History of the Scots Language will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students of the modern and historical Scots language, but will also be of interest to those studying the history of English and other Germanic languages.

This book provides a thorough yet approachable history of the Scots language, a close relative of Standard English with around 1.5 million speakers in Scotland and several thousand in Ireland, according to the 2011 census. Despite the long history of Scots as a language of high literature, it has been somewhat neglected and has often been treated as a dialect of Standard English. In this book, Robert McColl Millar explores both sociolinguistic and structural developments in the history of Scots, bringing together these two threads of analysis to offer a better understanding of linguistic change. The first half of the book tracks the development of Scots from its beginnings to the modern period, while chapters in the second half offer detailed descriptions of Scots historical phonology and morphosyntax, and of the historical development of Scots lexis. A History of the Scots Language will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students of the modern and historical Scots language, but will also be of interest to those studying the history of English and other Germanic languages.

A Social History of English is the first history of the English language to utilize the techniques, insights and concerns of sociolinguistics. Written in a non-technical way, it takes into account standardization, pidginization, bi- and multilingualism, the issues of language maintenance and language loyalty, and linguistic variation. This new edition has been fully revised. Additions include: * new material about 'New Englishes' across the world * a new chapter entitled 'A Critical Linguistic History of English Texts' * a discussion of problems involved in writing a history of English All terms and concepts are explained as they are introduced, and linguistic examples are chosen for their accessibility and intelligibility to the general reader. It will be of interest to students of Sociolinguistics, English Language, History and Cultural Studies.

Sociolinguistics in Scotland presents a comprehensive overview of sociolinguistic research in Scotland and showcases developments in sociolinguistic theory, method and application, highlighting Scotland's position as a valuable 'sociolinguistic laboratory'. This book is a key resource for those interested in language use in Scotland.

Sociolinguistics provides a powerful instrument by which we can interpret the contemporary and near-contemporary use of language in relation to the society in which speakers live. Almost since the beginning of the discipline, however, attempts have been made to extrapolate backwards and interpret past linguistic change sociolinguistically. Some of these findings have influenced the discussion of the history of the English language as portrayed in the many textbooks for undergraduate courses. A consistent application of sociolinguistic theory and findings has rarely been attempted, however, despite the specialist literature which demonstrates this connection at specific points in the language's development.This textbook provides students with a means by which a previously existing knowledge of a linear, narrative, history of English can be deepened by a more profound understanding of the sociolinguistic forces which initiate or encourage language change. Uniquely, it discusses not only the central variationist tendencies present in language change and their analysis but also the macrosociolinguistic forces which act upon all speakers and their language. Chapters investigate the political, cultural and economic forces which affect a society's use of and views on language; language contact, language standardisation and linguistic attrition are also covered. Discussion is illustrated throughout by apposite examples from the history of English. The volume enables students to develop a deeper understanding of both sociolinguistics and historical linguistics; it is also be useful as a primer for postgraduate study in the subjects covered.

This book is devoted to comparisons of the linguistic situation established by English and Scots in Lowland Scotland, with situations observed in the East Slavic countries and constituted by pairs of closely cognate languages, i.e. Russian, on the one hand, and Ukrainian and Belarusian on the other. Such comparisons have become a popular approach in the field of Scots studies. The process of language change evolving along with social changes in Scotland is are studied. In this respect, East Slavic languages, which are closely cognate, provide abundant material for observation. It is their closeness manifested by mutual intelligibility as well as the closeness of their fortunes and the way they co-exist in today's Ukraine and Belarus that make East Slavic languages quite appropriate for comparisons with English and Scots in Lowland Scotland. The first five chapters of the book are devoted to just that. The focus is on some historical and sociolinguistic parallels between Scots and Ukrainian as well as Scots and Belarusian, and it compares the key stages and trends in their social history proceeding from the Middle Ages to the present day. For all the structural and functional dissimilarity and geographical remoteness of Scots and the mentioned Slavic languages, one can make interesting observations regarding their social development. A number of sociocultural factors are used to effect the development of the native languages in Scotland and in the East Slavic countries. Some of them are singled out and compared from a historical perspective. Three other chapters of the book deal with the sociocultural interaction between Scotland and Russia, focusing on the toponyms derived from Scottish personal names found in the territory of the former Russian Empire. As is known, Scotsmen constituted a considerable part of the Western immigrants in Russia, as they were active participants of all the major historical events in Europe. There is a number of toponyms of Western European origin in Russia, some of which date back to Scottish personal names. Such place-names constitute a humble, but noteworthy part of the Scottish legacy in Russia. Some of them luckily survived the Soviet Unions epoch and its passion for renaming. Quite surprisingly, this stratum of the Russian toponymy has never been systematically studied. Here, the author summarises some observations regarding the Russian place-names of direct and indirect Scottish origins, tracing back their history as well as the history of the families behind these names. A morphological analysis of the place-names is provided to reveal the word-building patterns involved. Finally, the author includes a short chapter dealing with a striking example of parallel lexical development in Shetland Norn and Old Russian resulting in two words, which are not necessarily immediately related, but are very close in form and meaning to one another. This peculiar instance of lexical likening can shed more light on the universally recognised etymologies. The topic of this chapter matches those of the previous ones in terms of geography, as the phenomena described in it also refer to Scotland and the East Slavic world. The abovementioned material has never been considered at this angle, and this is what makes this study new and topical.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, RWTH Aachen University, course: Geographical varieties of English, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the topic ''Scotland'' and is written behind the background of geographi-cal varieties of English. Thus we focus on the main topics historical development and present day language situation in Scotland, linguistic issues and sociolinguistic characteristics. In order to point out what differences between Standard English and Scottish English exist we take a closer look on the multicultural history of Scotland, which reflects in the many different dialects that used to be spoken in Scotland. French, Roman and Celtic influences made the Scottish language so versatile. This reflects not only in its vocabulary, but also in its grammar and phonology. Another important point is the geographical division of Scotland that also exerts influence on the Scottish language, because people on the mainland and the islands use to speak different languages. Finally we want to show that today there are only slight differ-ences between Scottish English and English English that mainly consider the prestige of the languages and the function of identification, but that there used to be differences in the past that are important to the Scots as individual and independent nation.