LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 13.JUL.2000 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 13.JUL.2000 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 12.JUL.2000 (02) [E]

Stefan wrote:
>
>Ron, responding to John Tait about Shetlandic, cited
>the greater prestige of Scots as a cause for Norn's
>decline.  Linguists have been abandoning prestige as
>too vague and misleading a term; identity and
>association come closer.

As Ron said, this was me replying to Criostoir.

>Many looked-down upon vernacular varieties, such as
>Cockney, Black English and many other varieties of
>stigmatized social groups continue to exist or even
>thrive, despite stigma, despite ample access to more
>mainstream varieties.  These speakers often take local
>pride in their variety, giving it what linguists have
>called 'covert prestige', but many badmouth their own
>vernacular, are ashamed of it-- but won't give it up.

The sociolinguistic model is of dubious value in analysing the Shetland
situation, where there is little social stratification in any case, and even
less identification between such stratification as does exist and language. It
is one of the ironies, in the modern analysis of Scots and its dialects, that
linguists almost always base their studies on areas such as Glasgow, where the
dialects are most depleted in relation to traditional Scots, rather than on
areas like Shetland and Aberdeenshire, where the dialects are less socially
stigmatised and more like traditional Scots. It is almost as if, having
adopted the Labovian model for analysing speech, the linguistic establishment
must force all varieties of language into that mould.

It is important to realise, when discussing Shetlandic, that Shetland speech
is not socially stigmatised at all in Shetland, and that therefore the model
of covert prestige is scarcely applicable. It is true that Shetlandic is
sometimes characterised as 'bad English', but this has little or no effect on
whether people choose to speak it or not. Shetlandic, at least until _very_
recently, was the natural and unquestioned speech of almost everyone born in
Shetland, and insofar as it expresses identity it is simply Shetland identity,
rather than that of any sub-group within Shetland.

It may be that this very lack of a 'covert prestige' factor will hasten its
decline. As more young people in Lerwick grow up speaking standard English,
the identification between Shetlandic and Shetland identity will probably
become less clear cut; and, there being no social reason to continue to speak
Shetlandic, it may simply be abandoned. It is not difficult to imagine a
similar set of circumstances leading to the death of Norn.

>The variety you speak helps define for you and others
>what group you're associated with.  If you want to
>belong to the group, you usually need to reflect that
>in your speech (and clothes etc.)
>If you stop speaking your group's vernacular, your
>group takes that as rejection, you're "getting to good
>for us" (or too hickish/plebian etc.).  If you can
>make the jump from your in-group to another group you
>want to join (the middle-class, or a biker gang etc.),
>it's worth changing your speech, but it's not worth it
>if you offend your old support group without being
>accepted by the new group.  Nor is it worth it if you
>don't feel the need to leave your in-group to begin
>with.

Again, such groups scarcely exist in Shetland. It may be that there are some
such differences now, but these are likely to be regional - Town and Country -
rather than social. I am told that some English-speaking Shetlanders from the
town begin to speak more Shetlandic when they move up to secondary school and
start to mix with children from the country. I don't know whether the opposite
tendency also exists.

  Is it documented how Shetlanders viewed Norn as
>it declined?

No. The Norn verse I gave is the only example I know of, and it is uncertain
where this came from. The other example - from the Orkney witch trial - of
course reflects the views of the ruling Scottish classes rather than the
natives.
>
>Prestige and identity are superficially similar
>concepts, but I think you'll find that identity is the
>more accurate and revealing one.
>
>We might ask more precisely, why did Shetlanders want
>to or need to signal greater connection with Scots
>speakers around 1700, (I think that's the transition
>period) and not earlier.  Greater economic integration
>etc. with the mainland and declining contact with
>Norway-Denmark would be a likely factor for
>Shetlandic.

This is exactly the reason which is usually given.
>
>We see a similar case e.g. in north Germany: growing
>economic dependence of post-Hanseatic Germany on High
>Germany seems to have been a major factor in the
>increasing shift towards bilingual High German/Platt.
>Economic/military dependence on High Germany after
>Napoleon helped drive many North Germans to entirely
>abandon Platt; I don't believe Shetlandic shared that
>pressure.  Educated Platt speakers of the 1600's added
>High German to their Platt, and then French, in part
>to distinguish themselves from the uneducated.  Do we
>know if Shetland society stratified that way, en route
>from Norn to lowlands Shetlandic?

I don't think this is sufficiently documented. Certainly there was a
stratification between Norse-speaking natives and Scots-speaking clergy and
landowners, but I don't think there's enough evidence to show how this would
have affected the speech of the population as a whole.

Modern Shetland is, as I say, generally characterised by its lack of social
stratification. When I was growing up (1960s) the only English speakers on a
typical Shetland island were incomers - the district nurse, the minister, and
maybe the teacher (though many teachers also spoke Shetlandic outside of
school). Almost everyone born in Shetland spoke Shetlandic, and speaking
English for purposes of affectation was almost unknown - at any rate, so rare
that I was amazed to find out that one of my classmates who spoke English was
actually a native Shetlander - the case was so unusual that I did not have any
mechanism with which to explain it. This lack of a social distinction in
language is of course in sharp contrast to most parts of Mainland Scotland,
almost all of which - even the North East - have a class of natives who speak
English (for example, in the NE anyone who becomes a lawyer or a doctor tends
to be English speaking, whereas this is not true even now in Shetland).
Shetland is no more socially stratified now than it was then. Nevertheless,
there has been a sharp switch to standard English in the town of Lerwick, and
there is a much increased tendency for parents to speak English rather than
Shetlandic to their children.

The reasons for this are likely to be complex. If a single reason must be
emphasised, however, I suspect it lies in the fact that - because of the
absence of a standard written form and scant representation in the media -
Shetlandic is associated with the traditional, whereas most young people wish
to be modern. The following passage (which I'm afraid I have read only as a
quotation in another paper) is probably near the mark:

'the decline [of minority languages and varieties] derives from a rejection of
the language associated with a negative identity that links with the
relegation of the language and the language group into a world which is
conceived of as 'traditional' 
 such 'traditional' worlds are social
constructs which are highly effective in persuading those who carry the
attributes of these worlds, be they language or any other dimension, to
distance themselves from these attributes in simultaneously denying the
'traditional' and claiming the 'modern'  (1996: 22-23).'

Nelde, Peter et al.] (1996) Euromosaic.  The Production and Reproduction of
the Minority Language Groups of the EU Luxembourg: Office for Official
Publications of the European Communities.

John M. Tait.

----------

From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 13.JUL.2000 (03) [E]

Criostoir responded to John Feather on "Language
varieties" 09.JUL.2000 (01):

>> It seems to me that the idea that a bilingual
>> generation grew up in the Danelaw actually
contradicts the notion of the
>> development of an English/Norse hybrid.
>
>I can't quite understand the basis for this
assertion.
>Surely the existence of cognates or synonyms from Old
>English and from Old Norse demonstrates that
>bilingualism must have been evident?

The misunderstanding lies with what we call
bilingualism: you can be fluently bilingual (the more
common meaning of bilingual, at least among
linguists), or non-fluently bilingual.  My estimation
is that only a fraction of the Anglo-Saxon population
were ever fluently bilingual (mostly those growing up
in mixed communities; there is a little evidence that
the Norse settled different soil and thus probably did
not intermix rapidly).  Bilingualism obviously spread
among the Norse settlers at some point, before they
abandoned Old Norse, but it may have been rare for the
first generation or more.

It does not take fluent bilinguality to borrow words:
if two groups use a pidgin, that's still enough for
vocabulary to be borrowed.
Also: if two populations speak closely related
varieties, they may just each speak their own language
at the other, e.g. Swedes and Norwegians.  They don't
understand each other perfectly, but they may not go
to additional bother.   This is presumably what
happened in the Danelaw.
If they'd been bilingual, there would only be
borrowings, but the collapse of the complicated
grammar suggests that both sides were simplifying
their language on a routine basis, to get their
meaning across.  The same process happened when
Norwegian-Danish-Swedish radically simplified their
grammar a few centuries later (1100-1500) due to
contact with the Platt-speaking Hanseatic league.

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

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