Is there Doric in your attic?
October 2005
by Wendy Anderson
How’s your Doric? No, I’m not talking about classical styles of architecture here, but about language. The Scots project, based in the Department of English Language at the University of Glasgow, aims to provide a snapshot of the languages of Scotland today, to be used as a resource for linguistic and cultural research. In the first instance we are focusing on modern-day texts in Scottish English and all varieties of broad Scots, from Doric to Lallans, and from Shetlandic Scots to urban varieties. To compile this valuable corpus, we are reliant on contributors who can offer texts in any of these varieties.
We launched a version of Scots on the internet on St Andrew’s Day 2004, and have updated it regularly. The latest version contains over 500 texts – nearly 800,000 words of written and spoken language. Over the next two years the corpus will grow to four million words. The resource is freely available and you do not need to register or use a password.
The word ‘corpus’ comes from the Latin meaning ‘a body’, and electronic corpora have been used in linguistic research for several decades now. One benefit of relying on a corpus rather than one’s own intuition, is that a corpus shows language as it is actually used, rather than as one person thinks it is used. The two can differ surprisingly.
Intuition is an unreliable guide to language: we tend to notice the unusual, the comical, the strange, and to overlook the commonplace. There are many reasons why one might want to focus on unusual words (fernie-tickles, bubbly jock), amusing idioms (fur coat an nae knickers), or striking turns of phrase (Awa an bile yer heid), but to understand the nature of language itself we can’t ignore all the rest.
A corpus is designed to sample a defined population of texts; in our case the language produced in Scots and Scottish English. If the sample is carefully constructed, then we can
generalise findings to the language as a whole.
A corpus won’t provide a definition of a word, but it will show the word in its immediate context, and this in turn helps us to understand its meaning: as the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein said in his Philosophical Investigations, “the meaning of a word is its use in the language”. To understand the meaning of ‘forfochen’, for example, it is helpful to know that it is often paired with ‘fair’: “A’m fair forfochen wi the flu.”
Scots is making progress, but we’re not there yet. The resource contains a fairly wide collection of literary texts, including poetry, prose fiction, and drama, by some well-known authors as well as lesser-known writers. Just as important from the linguistic perspective is non-literary writing, and Scots contains a selection of business letters, personal correspondence, emails, essays and informational texts. Twenty percent of the corpus is made up of spoken language, which you can access through the website as an audio or video recording linked to a written transcription. This allows researchers to investigate pronunciation and accent.
A unique feature of Scots is that every text is accompanied by generous additional information; data such as the author’s birthplace, age, educational background, the year in which the text was written, whether spoken language was planned or spontaneous, and so on. This data enables us to investigate variation and make links between linguistic features and the context. Is the word ‘haiver’ used all over Scotland? Do younger people use as wide a range of specifically Scots words as older people? Do people in Aberdeen really say ‘Furryboots’, or is that purely a stereotype? In answer to this final question, the word certainly doesn’t yet appear in Scots.
Everyone has personal preferences when it comes to language, and it is often the subject of heated debates. What has emerged most clearly so far is the sheer variety of language usage in Scotland. Variety is perfectly natural – indeed a language could arguably not survive without it. The varieties spoken around Aberdeen and the North-East are well known for being distinctive. Scots will help us to see just how distinctive they are.
Let’s consider a few examples, taken from a recording of four teenage girls in the Aberdeenshire area. The girls were aware that their conversation was being recorded, and began rather self-consciously, exaggerating their pronunciation, and using a number of North-East or generally Scottish forms which more or less disappeared later in the conversation:
“I’m probably packin cos I’m awa ma holidays tae Tenerife next Thursday…”
“So [forename], ma pal, what are ye wantin to dae when you leave school, ma Scottish friend?”
“I dinna ken.”
“Sae, [forename], fit dae ye want to dae when yer elder?”
Also interesting in their language, although not specific to Scots or Doric, is the use of ‘like’ to introduce a quotation: [talking about her father] “And he’ll come out with words, and I’ll just be like, ‘What’s that mean?’ and he’ll be like, ‘You don’t know?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, and?’ ”
“Cos, they have side-effects. I was like, ‘Okay, let’s not go there!’”
“I do it, but I hate it. I’m like, ‘Grr, grumble, grumble’.”
‘Like’ is used in this way in a number of conversations, almost entirely in the speech of young people. Older people tend to use ‘say’ in this context, as in this example of an elderly lady from Dundee: “And I says but, I says, ‘can you be half a wean?’ ”
The girls’ conversation is also notable for the frequent use of intensifying adverbs, to draw attention to particular parts of a sentence:
“Scotland is actually getting a bad name wi drugs. They actually are.”
“She was totally guilt-trippin me.”
“I’m nae entirely happy wi the course choices this year.”
There is also one example where all four girls end in chorus: “Right, so guys, do you think that’s been a really good conversation? Yeah, I think it’s been absolutely fantastic!”
The content of the conversation as well as the language is interesting, particularly when they move on to the topic of the Scots language and their own views on it. They claim to have little idea of what Scots is: “But when you say like Scottish, dae ye mean, ‘A da ken, fit ye daein?’ or dae ye mean like Glaswegian?”
“Is Scottish words like ehm ‘thou’, ‘tis’, ‘aye’, ‘ken’?” “No, that’s Shakespeare.”
However, they are easily able to describe the language they use and hear around them: “My dad’s still got the Scottishness.”
“I think it’s dyin out, because you don’t use as many Scottish words.”
And on Scots and English: “But they’ve just kind of been merged and we speak a lot more English than Scots.”
“We’ve just got a Scottish accent, like a twang, but we don’t actually say the words.”
They even suggest motivations, rightly or wrongly, for perceived changes in language, such as when they attribute the prevalence of glottal stops – the omission in pronunciation of the ‘t’ sound as in ‘bu[tt]er’ or ‘I[t]aly’ – to the new technologies of mobile phones and text messaging.
To be able to take such questions further and suggest answers, what Scots needs is more evidence, and more diverse evidence. This is where we hope readers of Leopard can help us. If you think you might be able to offer texts for inclusion in the corpus, or would simply like more information, please contact us, either through our web-form at www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk, by email to scots@arts.gla.ac.uk, or by mail to Scots Project, Department of English Language, University of Glasgow, 12 University Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8QQ. We’re keen to increase our collection of all types of text, written and spoken, including correspondence, fiction and non-fiction of all types, journalistic texts, recorded conversation, etc. And not just Aberdeenshire Scots, but all varieties.
So have a rummage in the attic, dig out those old letters, literary pieces, memos, articles, and so on, and your language can help improve our understanding of Scots and Scottish English as they are used today.
*See the Dictionary of the Scots Language, available online at www.dsl.ac.uk, and also the Concise Scots Dictionary, from the Scottish National Dictionary Association.
Dr Wendy Anderson is research assistant on the Scots Project in the Department of English Language, University of Glasgow. Her PhD was in French Linguistics, and she is particularly interested in phraseology in language, translation, and the French lexical legacy in Scots.
This is an article from the October 2005 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.