Language

Given at the launch of the Parliamentary Cross-Party Group for Scottish Writing and Publishing, 7 June 2005 |

Are we the only people in Europe who need to be educated about ourselves? Nothing about us is good enough. Our language has been consistently undermined and denigrated and our literature is not considered suitable or distinguished enough to be taught in our schools, despite the fact that in Robert Burns we have the world’s most celebrated poet.

Burns begins a litany which is as depressing as it is familiar. James Hogg’s Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a masterwork of world literature. Walter Scott invented both the historical and romantic novels. Conan Doyle gave the world its most famous detective. Robert Louis Stevenson invented the psychological novel. Hugh MacDiarmid was considered one of the greatest European writers of the 20th century, and for more than 10 years before his death in 1978, two of Europe’s leading writers were native Scots, living in Scotland: Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley Maclean. And Muriel Spark is surely a candidate for the Nobel laureatship.

Liz Lochhead has properly instructed us that Anon was a great woman writer, and according to Edwin Muir, ballads, which is the nearest we have to a specific female form, contain the greatest poetry Scotland has produced: “They bring us back again to the Scottish people and its part in the making of Scotland,” he said, “for it was the people who created these magnificent poems. The greatest poetry of most countries has been written by the educated middle and upper classes; the greatest poetry of Scotland has come from the people.” Muir’s continual reference to the ballads as poetry presupposes he hadn’t heard them sung, or that he considered tunes unimportant.

Firstly, we should stop giving prizes for Burns recitation, then tell the weans to speak properly, or to call it slang when they use the words they were rewarded for saying so well.

Artists want people to see their works and musicians enjoy playing to an audience. Writers would like to be read. We should therefore make this as easily accessible as possible, and not just for the benefit of the writers.

The present thinking implies that since reading standards have fallen it is a pointless waste of money sending books by Scottish writers or books about Scottish writers into Scottish schools. The fact that our present generation of writers grew up without exposure to the work of any Scottish writer and it has done them no harm should also be dented.

Books by Scottish writers should be in every Scottish primary and secondary school. We not only need books by dead Scottish writers, male Scottish writers, women Scottish writers, middle class Scottish writers or even the muddled crass Scottish writers, we need the works of living Scottish writers to be made available so that pupils can make informed choices, based on understanding rather than hope. Again, not just for the writers’ benefit.

We have a language which for more than 250 years has been disparaged by the people who speak it, yet its literature is internationally distinguished. And now supernational forces threaten our voice because language is the last stand against globalisation. Spoken and written Scots has miraculously withstood a cultural onslaught from generations of schoolteachers, but may not survive this present global onslaught. Globalisation cannot deal with differences, it cannot tolerate a separate identity and, as the folk of Catalan and Norway can testify, language is a potent tool of resistance.

This is because it is a collective thing, capable of being shaped to an individual’s needs while retaining its communicative value and relevance to the place where it originated; which, in a sense, defines the act of writing itself.

But the real reason for using our own voice and for promoting literature which uses a variety of these voices, is not that it should articulate everything, but that it can articulate things which cannot be articulated in English, or in any other language, that it articulates its own meanings, which are often beyond translation. Glaikit doesn’t just mean stupid, thrawn does not mean stubborn, nor does scunner simply express disgust, and driech certainly does not mean dull.

Language groupings are no longer national, even for those of us who write with a Scots accent. Language’s function is being redefined and it is possible that somewhere in the future societies will be formed to preserve language which is non-national and non-family based, such as gangsta rap and management speak. Mission statements, sound bites, blue-sky thinking and even smart objectives are under threat because of their ubiquity.

Which could mean a closer relationship with English, which has been happening in literature for quite some time. Most Scottish writers I know are at least bilingual, and the lesson of the Scots accent is that writers often mirror earlier developments, for, as we know, the ability for people to renew their spoken language is astonishingly creative.

No less an authority than the former editor of Scottish National Dictionary tells us the Eskimo or Inuit peoples have more than 50 names for snow. Consider then the following list of Scots words, in common everyday usage:

wastit	swacked	fozie
miroculous	craftie	hertie
blootered	lumed-up	tosie
stotious	roarin	tovie

steamin	chippit	sappie
wambled	bleezin	soopie
swashed	blebberin	roarie
mappie	cornt	reezie

smeikit	stavin	styterin
fankled	molassed	troosert
drucken	moidert	bladdert
drouthie	manky	bleezin

bellowses	fuddled	stotin
slochened	mingin	swittlin
meisled	fleein	fankled
pished	minced	poopin

boggin	blin	paloovious
legless	blitzed	niddle-noddled
jakie’d	guttered	capernoitit
fittered	galraviched	fu

There are, you will notice, more than 50 words here recorded, and there are many others I could mention, mashed, rubber-leggit and wreckit spring to mind, nor have I even considered the lexicon of phrases in everyday parlance, such as Daein the stiff-leggit walk, or Waltzin the alkie two-step, a variety of words and phrases which not only describe the condition, but states of that condition.

How can a language with such precision be useless? And it can describe a lot more. Wouldn’t it be good if we could find 50 words for success or more than 50 ways of raising the profile of an underused and underdeveloped resource, our national literary talent?

The first duty of this or any other committee should be to help Scottish children to be comfortable using and developing their own confident voice, and to give them the understanding that where a Scottish accent or dialect is concerned there is neither left nor right nor wrong.

And there is no more direct route towards achieving this than by raising and in some cases restoring their birthright, which is the raw material that is and has been the legacy of every Scottish writer.

ScotLit 31, Autumn 2004 |

On March 1^st 2004, the Scottish Executive announced that it was investing an additional £4 million to improve foreign language teaching in primary schools. Education Minister Peter Peacock stressed the importance of proficiency in foreign languages for all Scottish schoolchildren, noting that ‘better language skills also help pupils develop an understanding of other cultures, creating the type of outward-looking nation which will make Scotland an attractive place for people from other countries to live and work.’¹ The issue of good language skills also features in the Scottish Executive’s National Statement for Improving Attainment in Literacy in Schools. Pre-school children should ‘be encouraged to develop a curiosity about words, how they sound, the patterns within words and how they are composed.’² Students following the 5–14 curriculum should ‘be able to enjoy and respond to a variety of texts and, in so doing, achieve an awareness of genre and knowledge about language. For writing – pupils will be able to write in three modes (personal, functional i.e. informative and imaginative) and to convey meaning in language appropriate to audience and purpose. In so doing, they will pay careful attention to punctuation and structure, spelling, handwriting and presentation and acquire knowledge about language.’³

The message is from the Executive is clear: language matters. Scottish schoolchildren need to know about language if they are to become literate, if they are to be proficient in modern languages, and if they are to gain a better understanding of their own society and heritage. The question then is how to achieve these aims. How should Scottish children gain knowledge about the structure of language – for this is really what the National Statement is concerned with in its reference to, for instance, ‘the patterns within words and how they are composed’? Where should such a subject appear in the curriculum? One option is to shove it into the English curriculum. This is a bad idea, for a number of reasons: first, you don’t need to have done any Linguistics or English Language courses in order to become an English teacher in Scotland, and most university courses in English Literature teach you nothing about language, so not every English teacher would be willing to incorporate knowledge of language into the English curriculum; second, for those that are willing – those who have taken courses in English Language and/or Linguistics already, or are interested enough to find out more about such subjects – there are insufficient resources and training opportunities; third, there’s too much to do in a literature-oriented curriculum to do justice to the development of an in-depth knowledge about language and how it works (even just in literary texts); and fourth, language is too important to be seen as just an ‘add-on’ to literature: it deserves its own place.

An option at once more radical and realistic would be to create a series of separate Scottish National Qualifications in Language, along the lines of the increasingly popular AS and A2 qualification in English Language, which is available in England and Wales. The specifications for AS/A2 English Language suggest that courses ‘should encourage students to develop their interest and enjoyment in the use of English, through learning more about the structures and functions of English, drawing on their experience and knowledge of language change and variation.’⁴ Such a course would follow on well from the 5–14 curriculum as envisaged in the National Statement for Improving Attainment in Literacy in Schools, referred to above. And it is certainly the case that courses in English Language at AS and A2 are successful: the most popular board and specification (AQA specification B) had 13,040 candidates for its AS English Language exam, and 9,130 for the A2 qualification in the 2003 academic session.⁵ An additional bonus, therefore, is that a Language Higher in Scotland could benefit from the published material for AS and A2 English Language. But the Scottish qualifications both could and should be different from those offered in English schools, and this is not merely to do with differences in the educational systems of the two countries. The situation in Scotland offers many opportunities for students to explore language issues, both local and global.

What issues might a Language curriculum in Scotland address? First, students would require a basic training in linguistic concepts and terminology (within the fields of grammar, phonology, meaning and usage) to provide them with an appropriate framework for linguistic observation and analysis. This training would also serve to help students in their work in foreign languages. It is ludicrous to expect anyone to understand the different uses of French tenses if they have no understanding of what tense as a linguistic concept is. Would students not have a better chance of understanding the syntax of subordinate clauses in German if they had had the chance to understand what a subordinate clause in English is? The 2003 Principal Assessors’ Reports for the Modern Languages made the following assessment with respect to student performance at Advanced Higher level: ‘Across the languages, as ever, the basic grasp of grammatical accuracy was disappointing.’⁶ Giving students the opportunity to explore the wonders of grammar – and it is genuinely wonderful – will enable them to become more proficient in mastering the grammars of their own and other languages. This knowledge, then, is not merely relevant for foreign language learning (otherwise such work could be dealt with exclusively in the Modern Languages curricula.) Greater awareness of language entails greater literacy and awareness of style: students who know more about the nitty-gritty of their own language are able to manipulate it for greater stylistic effect.

Second, students should apply this conceptual knowledge to an investigation of linguistic issues in Scotland, past and present. There are so many topics which could be covered: accents and dialects in Scotland, and the language of Scottish literature, are obvious candidates, but one could also imagine a module on multilingualism in Scotland, which would allow for discussion of a number of critical linguistic issues, such as: language planning (for both Scots and Gaelic); minority languages in Scotland (Scots and Gaelic again, of course, but also other languages such as Urdu and British Sign Language); and English in Scotland (both now and in the past). If Scottish students are encouraged to engage with the linguistic situation that (a) surrounds them now and (b) influenced their culture in the past, they will come to a greater understanding of the diversity of language and of certain factors influencing linguistic change. Such topics are central to a liberal arts curriculum and yet are currently marginalized in the Scottish educational system. This is a disgrace.

Third, students should be encouraged to explore differences between spoken and written language, and again this could be achieved in a number of ways. One option might be to have a module on original writing, to show how different linguistic techniques can be employed in writing to serve different purposes and audiences. Another might be to have this topic assessed by project work, where a group of students take a topic (for example, the war on terror) and collect data from a range of spoken and written sources (speeches by Blair and Bush, editorials in The Herald and The Daily Record, web discussion groups, a class debate, a radio interview and so on) and then each individual topic analyses the data in a different way – one looks at the language of persuasion, one looks at grammatical characteristics of spoken vs. written language, one looks at broadsheet vs. tabloid style and so on. This is merely one way in which project work could be incorporated into a Language Higher, but it would be a great way of getting students to engage with linguistics and its applications.

There are many other topics which might be considered (language acquisition, for instance); and it must be said that some of these topics are already addressed in the ‘Language Study’ module of the English Advanced Higher. Notice, however, that the language module in that qualification is an option, whereas the ‘Literary Study’ module is compulsory, and the range of topics addressed is necessarily much narrower than that which could be available to a student were a separate Language (Advanced) Higher in place. But the purpose of this article is not to lay out a curriculum. Its purpose is to highlight the following:

An understanding of language is a necessary part of Scottish school education. Knowing how language works leads to improvements in literacy and greater competence in foreign languages.
At present, there is no possibility of a rich and systematic treatment of language issues in Scottish classrooms. This is not the fault of teachers, but a fault of curriculum design.
In order to allow for a systematic treatment of language, therefore, a separate curriculum must be designed, and adequate training and resources must be provided for teachers.
Such a curriculum should be negotiated by school teachers, university academics, and representatives from local and national government, as well as representatives from autonomous agencies of the state, including especially perhaps professionals concerned with testing, qualifications, awards, and career development. Greater dialogue between those employed in Scottish universities and those employed in Scottish schools, and who have an interest in linguistic issues, would be a useful first step. The absence of such dialogue is as much a fault of the universities as it is of the schools.

Graeme Trousdale is a lecturer in English Language at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a member of the ASLS Language Committee.

Notes

¹ Source: National Grid for Learning
² Source: National Statement for Improving Attainment in Literacy in Schools (Scottish Executive publication), Part 1, page 1
³ ibid., Part 2, page 3
⁴ Source: QCA Subject Criteria for English AS/A Level
⁵ Source: ‘A-Level English Language: a collection of facts and figures’, by Professor Richard Hudson
⁶ Source: Principal Assessors’ Reports 2003 (Assessment Panel: Modern Languages)

MACDOUGALL, Carl, ‘Notes for a Manifesto’

TROUSDALE, Graham, ‘Language Matters’

Archives

Footer

Archives