Some Reflections on the Language of Contemporary Scottish Prose
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.2.1-2.45-56Keywords:
Scots, Scottish English, literature, standard ScotsAbstract
A northern variety of Old English developed in Scotland into what has become known as Scots. This language of the Scottish court and literature prior to the Acts of Union was abandoned by both king and poets after the Union with England. English replaced Scots in public institutions, to schools and literature. The most fatal development was the change of attitude of the Scottish themselves, who came to regard Scots as an inferior variety of English. There have been repeated attempts by Scottish writers, to revive Scots as a national language of Scotland. Since the 1970s a number of projects have been launched to study the present state of Scots with the aim of initiating a language policy which would reintroduce Scots into public life as one of the national languages of Scotland. A number of Scottish authors have used Scots in their works. This paper will examine the language of some contemporary prose texts seeking to establish the density of Scots elements and estimate their place on the scale between Standard Scottish English and Scots, which may be one of the means of establishing an acceptable standard variety.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal ELOPE by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
