LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 11.MAR.2000 (01) [E]

Sat Mar 11 21:24:21 UTC 2000

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From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsley at highbury.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 10.MAR.2000 (07) [E]

John,

I agree with every word of what you say regarding standard Scots grammars.

The major problem is, of course, 2 (b). Certainly we have a massive problem
here with people using words wrongly ('speir' is the perfect example). There
is a severe lack of real linguistic competence within the Ulster-Scots
movement, and a genuine failure to realise how serious such mistakes can be
(because essentially they mean that what is being written is 'invented').

Most people in the movement seem to think we need an Ulster-Scots dictionary
(this appears early on the list of chief desires of most members). I say
bunkum! Yet another Scots dictionary is the LAST thing we need. What we need
is a dictionary of Scots usage, where common mistakes or misunderstandings
are listed and explained.

Even I, with no intention of deliberately differing from English, have on
occasions seen something written, thought it came from another dialect, and
then begun using it myself only to find later that the usage is not
traditional at all! Now THAT's a problem!

Best,

-------------------------------
Ian James Parsley
http://www.gcty.com/parsleyij
"JOY - Jesus, Others, You"

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Language politics"

> From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
> Subject: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 06.MAR.2000 (02) [E]
>
> the pressure will all be in that direction. However, as the entire fashion
> in linguistics and literature is opposed to 'correctness' in language, but
> doesn't effect that concept as far as it applies to standard English, the
> results can be easily imagined.

[Note that for the sake of clarity in the following, I'm using "Scots" as an
example of a minority language and "English" as an example of a standardised
language, one could probably substitute "Low Saxon" and "German"
respectively, or any other such analogy, or "minority language" and
"official majority language".]

This is one of several closely related contradictions that's bothered me
from time to time in reading articles on Lowlands-L.  Contributors (and I'm
sure I do the same as everybody else) on the one hand, disapprove of
objections to the way certain people speak (e.g. people should be able to
use "ain't", double negatives and any other constructions that happen to be
part of their natural idiom) no matter what the rules of standard English
are, yet when it comes to a minority language such as Scots, I think most of
us tend to be offended at "incorrect" usages. There have also been
objections to variant usages from standard English: for example, the use of
"infer" for "imply" in standard English raises strong objections, while the
use of such "opposites" in dialects (e.g. "learn" for "teach" or "harken"
for "whisper") is defended.

I've been wondering recently if this apparently contradictory behaviour
amongst language/dialect enthusiasts in fact addresses the (possibly
misguided) question of whether Scots is a language or a dialect. The
dichotomy suggests that language /dialect enthusiasts, concsiously or
unconsciously, adhere to the following definitions:

A _dialect_ is a mode of communication in which the rules are determined
only by whatever the inheritors of the dialect consider acceptable.

A _language_ is a mode of communication devised by
governing/academic/educational institutions (although sometimes based on an
evolved literature) to enable a large number of people to communicate as
easily as if they spoke the same dialect. This "language" might be based on
a single agreed dialect (e.g. Melanesian Pidgin), or composed from common
features of a set of dialects (e.g. traditional literary Scots), or
completely contrived (e.g. Esperanto, Dutton Speedwords, Klingon).

These two definitions seem to me to explain why objections are raised to
certain variations from the accepted standard English (or Englishes), but
not others. You can question a "standard" as spoken by anybody - it should
be spoken the way it's taught, or else it's an error or slang, but you can't
question a dialect when spoken by an inheritor of the dialect, because the
inheritor's speech is what defines it.

Perhaps a lot of this seems obvious, but its value becomes apparent when
it's applied to the recurrent question, "Is Scots a language or a dialect?"
I think the answer in the first instance is, "It depends what you mean by
'Scots'."

This breaks down to the connotations attached to the words "Scots" and
"English" by most Britons today. When you say "English" we immediately think
of a reasonably clearly defined and easily recognisable method of
communication, whereas, when  you say "Scots", the answer is not so clear -
some, more familiar with existing literature in and ideas about Scots, will
see it as a language, whereas those who only have a vague acquaintance with
various speakers of Scots, or have a closer acquaintance with various
dialects but can't see a way of bringing them together as a common mode of
communication, will see it as a dialect (or "them" as dialects).

This means that the question "Is English a language or a dialect?" is
unproblematic because people take the word "English" to _mean_ the
well-formulated language rather than any of its dialects. Whereas the
question "Is Scots a language or a dialect?" is problematic not because it's
a poor question in its logical form, but because the term "Scots" isn't
agreed on in the way the term "English" is.

But taking the definition of a language as given above, as a _formulation_,
something institutionally devised, the question can be phrased more
constructively:

"Can English be formulated as a language?" The answer being yes, it has been
done.

"Can Scots be formulated as a language?" The definition of "language" is now
inherent in the question, and while the answer may still not be clear to
some, it does at least take the benighted out of the arena of their
preconceptions of what the word "Scots" means, and into an arena of
possibilities and potential.

Certain other things become clear - for example, a set of dialects is more
likely to be perceived as a language if they have a common literature. This
is true as long as the literature serves to unite rather than divide. Both
types of literature exist side by side in Scots today - "traditional" as
opposed to "dialect" and "slang". To answer the question of whether Scots
can be formulated as a language, one classifies the literature into
"dialect", "slang" and "traditional", notes that "traditional" can be read
equally by all Scots speakers with some education in traditional literature,
and that the dialect and slang can't, simply because they emphasise
differences rather than similarities between the dialects. But with the
formulation of the question I'm proposing, this doesn't matter. The
"traditional" literature shows how Scots _can_ be formulated as a language,
and therefore the answer to the question is an unqualified "yes".

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
http://www.fleimin.demon.co.uk

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