Self-identifying as British (was: UKer)

[Damien Hall]

It's not quite true that the only UKers to self-identify as British are the
Northern Irish.

That's actually an important question in the project I currently work on,
Accent and Identity on the Scottish-English Border (our website is in my
signature, the one ending in 'aiseb', if you're interested). We are working
in four towns on the English-Scottish border, two on each side, and at one
point ask interviewees about their personal identity, and give them a list
of adjectives to choose between and rank according to how they feel about
themselves: 'Scottish' or 'English' depending on the town, 'British',
'European', 'Borderer', an adjective describing origin from that town
('Berwicker' etc), and an adjective describing origin from their part of
their nation ('Northerner' etc). People can choose any of these that are
important to them, and have to place them along a line from 'Most
important' to 'Least important'. We find that a significant number of
people don't include 'British', but by no means all of them - so a good
number of English and Scottish people on the border do self-identify as
British these days.

Alas, it's also no longer true that citizens of the UK are referred to as
'UK subjects' - not since 1983:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_subject#After_1983

There is one very restricted category of people who are still subjects, but
the mere fact of being a citizen of this particular monarchy doesn't make
one a subject any more, as once it did.

Damien

--
Damien Hall

Accent and Identity on the Scottish-English Border
Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York

Tel. +44 (0)1904 322665
Fax  +44 (0)1904 322673

http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb
http://www.york.ac.uk/language/staff/academic-research/damien-hall/
http://www.york.ac.uk/hrc/

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