Order 1111627: Scottish English

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Chapter Three:

Diverse nature of Scottish English

The aim of this chapter is to examine the methodology used to come up with the conclusions of the study. The first section seeks to explain the fieldwork process involved as well as the demographics of the respondents that were chosen to take part in the study. For the second section, a questionnaire will be developed and the nature of its contents WIIL BE discussed.

3.1 Design of the analysis and tools used in data collection.

Collection of data was done in a six-day trip to the Portree town, in Scotland. Selection of the respondents was done with the help of a member of one of the oldest families who was a member of the founders of the original social groups in Scotland. The member Mrs.Speckhan took analysts to one of the functions of the local community where she introduced members that matched the study's age group and gender requirements. In addition, she accompanied them to one of the local contacts who have strong ties making it easy to make a good rapport within the community. The analysts made sure that they personally conducted the interviews in order to record all the details that they needed for the study. Questionnaires helped in reaching out to the respondents that could not make it to the one on one interviews. Most interviews were conducted at the respondents' homes and made sure to invite multiple respondents in order to save time as well as to get the most out of a short period of time. Here is not source

The fact that most of the analysts had an inherent status of the United States America and were interested in their culture intrigued them very much and they were more open and welcoming to share all they knew about their culture. Most of them were very surprised that the analysts were interested in studying how the Scottish English developed. However, the interviews were met with shortcomings. Since most of the respondents were quite old they preferred speaking the native Scottish Language and thus creating a language barrier (Kingstonedata: 315-347). However, they were well prepared and took it upon themselves to make sure they had someone interpret for them the questionnaires into a language they well understood.

Portree was settled in the early sixteenth century and the inhabitancy mostly practiced fishing as a way of life. However, when the fishing industry started falling apart, natives of Portree did not suffer as was seen in other coastal towns. They had gained interest in the oil that had been discovered in the North Sea during the 1970s and their attention shifted from fishing to oil. However, though the interaction at the oil rings would have caused an alteration in their dialect, the local language persisted and was highly differentiated. This was attributed to the strong ties and dense network the community had to its natives (Schutzler data: str). Portree’s rich cultural identity makes it the perfect location to begin the perceptual study on the Scottish Language.

Most of the respondents had to have been born and raised in Portree. The respondents tallied to a total of 50 with most of them having years ranging from 35 to 85.

They were later divided into four groups according to their age brackets:

35-45years (10 respondents), 46-59 years (19 respondents), 60-77 years (15 respondents) and 78-85(7 respondents). It was essential that the last group of respondents which constituted of the oldest people to have more than one translator so that we could communicate effectively the communication was effective. The respondents were composed of 27 men and 23 women. 70% of the population of respondents was born and raised in Portree while the remaining 30% were born in Portree but raised in towns away from Portree. However, among all the respondents, no one had spent more than ten years away from Scotland. Five of the respondents had spent a couple of years away from Scotland; three of them spent 3 years in the United States while two of them spent 4 years in England.

Additionally, the respondent education levels reflected their low geographical mobility. Only 10 of the respondents had a chance to go through post-graduate education, thirty of them completed high school while the remaining 10 did not finish high school. Most of them worked as oil ring crew members while the few who were in the fishing industry were employed by companies offshore (Kingstonedata 315-347). A minority of their population had once in their lives worked in the administrative positions and others as teachers thus leading to the validation of the Scottish English varieties.

3.2 Questionnaire

The questionnaires developed included six pages which the respondents were required to fill out. It involved a section for background information and short answer questions concerned with the Scottish language.

3.2.1 Background information

The first page was concerned with gathering personal information about the respondents such as their age, sex, their occupation, the part of Portree that they were raised, their highest education level and if so the number of years they had lived away from Portree. In addition, the other few pages dealt with how well they knew the community in Portree, what were their contributions to the growth of Portree and whether they still had any relatives in the same town.

3.2.2 Scots language

The Scots Language was composed mostly of a series of questions to that gather short-answers to further understand their perception of the present language situation in Scotland as compared to 20 years back situation. The section allowed free-form responses where respondents could write as many answers to the questions as they wished.

The questions were as follows:

1. What is the main language(s) that are spoken in Scotland?

2. What language(s) do you speak?

3. Are there people in your community that speak or sound differently from you? If so, who? What are the differences?

4. What is Scots? Please describe it to the best of your ability and provide examples of it if possible; do people in Scotland currently speak Scots?

5. Do people outside of Scotland speak Scots? If so, where? and whether or not you believe Scots is spoken today, was there ever a time when Scots was spoken in Scotland? If so, when?

The main purpose of the questions was to assess whether the Scots concept is considered a language or dialect. Furthermore, the questions aimed at understanding whether the respondents could separate Scots from English through the different stylistic variation, i.e. code-switching and style-drifting.

3.3 Scots language analysis, results and discussion

In order to analyse the data by the respondents concerning the Scots language, transcription was done on a spread sheet for all the responses to each question. Afterward, the responses were coded in order to allow more quantification of the results to be done. In the end frequencies of the coded responses were analysed, compared and summarised in form of a table

3.3.1 Results

According to the data collected in the table, it was evident that most of the respondents speak English and claim that most of the people they interact with speak English too. When the respondents were asked to list the language that is spoken in Scotland most of them listed multiple languages but the common ones included Gaelic, English, Doric and Scots most. However, it is noted that non-local languages such as Chinese, Polish and Portuguese among others formed part of the non-local languages that were spoken by a small number of people in Scotland. This is a reflection of the immigration that occurred as well as the great interaction of different people from all over as they worked in the oil rings (Kingstonedata 315-347).

The question, “what language do you speak” had a very interesting answers. This is because most of the respondents claimed that Gaelic was the language spoken in Scotland but none of them appeared to speak the language.

The question of whether people in Scotland speak Scots explained the description of Scots. From most questionnaires, the respondents answered that Scots was a language spoken mainly in lowland Scotland.

An overall view of the respondents’ answers would clearly show that the main language that is spoken in Scotland is English. This is because a majority of the respondents speak the language and claim that they know most people who speak the language.

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3.3.2 Data Explanation

According to the data, it seems that the most popular language in Scotland is Gaelic. However, most people in Scotland are English speakers. The reason for this seems to date back to 1700 when Scotland political arena took a turn an accepted the Union of parliament to take over thus Scotland becoming united with England (Boyledata 98-104). It is then that most languages such as Scots ceased to be the language of law and government. The language was diminished to the extent that it was spoken in the lower levels of Scotland and English from England took over as a national language. However, the English language was affected by the Scots language where the people were not very fluent and the English contained some Scottish dialect in it (Boyle 98-104). Thus the reason for the language to be called Scottish English. Later on, it was described as Standard Scottish English. According to Wells Standard Scottish English was Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent. It is, therefore, a modified form of Standard English that is spoken in Scotland. However, from the two native languages in Scotland both the Gaelic and Scots there evolved two distinct Scottish English accents. The one influenced by Gaelic accent is popular in the Highlands and is commonly referred to as the Highland English while the latter which is influenced by the Scotts’ being referred to as the Standard Scottish English (McClure 1994: str). Though, SSE the common form of English in Scotland, there are a specific group of population that speaks British English. This is as a result of the influence of education in private schools where British English is taught. The British accent is commonly referred to as the accent of the landowning class who are described by McClure to be “Anglicised".(data:str)

4. CONCLUSION

From the data collected it is quite evident that there is a multi-faced attitude towards the Scottish language. This is explained by the fact that though Scots is perceived to be spoken throughout Scotland, it was not considered as a separate language. Rather most of the languages that are spoken in Scotland are considered as Scottish varieties.

More often than not respondents chose to speak English as opposed to Scots which was a clear indication that the Scottish English had taken root and had been adopted by most people even those that were geographically immobilized (Wells 1984:str). This shows that the language had taken root and although the local accents are present in the respondents while they are speaking most of them seem to slowly accommodate British English in their speech.

The age group between 35-45 years that seemed to be more intellectual than the other age groups had more seemed to be more conversant with the Standard Scottish English. This is a clear indication that the younger generation in Scotland would face out the native languages and adopt the British English as the commonly spoken language throughout Scotland.

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