SCOTS Project - www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk

Document : 48
Title    : Inaugural speech by John Kirk to launch the Scottish Corpus of
Texts and Speech
Author(s): John M Kirk

Copyright holder(s): John M Kirk
                     SCOTS Project

Audio transcription


F606: Ehm, I'd just like to welcome you all to the launch of the SCOTS
Corpus Project. This is a a big day for us; I mean it's especially a big
day for me cause I seem to get to make three speeches. [audience laugh] Eh,
but they're all on this sheet of paper, so [inaudible] courage. [audience
laugh] Ehm I'd like to give an especial welcome to our first event which is
the talk by Dr John Kirk from Belfast, He's well known to all of us as an
authority on both Scottish and Irish English and also for his pioneering
work at the early days of computational linguistics and later on corpora.
Many years ago when he was involved in setting up the International Corpus
of English, he kept appearing in Glasgow trying to persuade us to take on
setting up the Scottish part of that. At that time we didn't feel we were
quite ready for it. I don't know if we're really quite ready for it yet,
but at least we are now making a start on a corpus of the languages of
Scotland. And so that makes it very fitting that John should be our first
speaker. Also that he should very kindly have agreed to be on our advisory
board for the Project. And also that he should be our first victim, because
he has very kindly agreed that this talk should be recorded not merely in
sound but on video, so that it can then be made available to the world for
erm linguistic analysis. So thank you, John.
M087: Well, thank you Christian for these these very kind words, and it
certainly is an absolutely genuine pleasure to be here today. There's a
Latin say-, saying "Bella scriptum [?]amet[/?]" and it certainly can take a
lot of time before eh funding for good projects comes through, but it it is
a delight to see that there is a Scots Corpus eh getting off the ground;
not necessarily as a component of the International Corpus eh, but but in
its own right. However, coming to Glasgow to talk about corpora in Scots,
especially coming to talk about Scots, feels as though "I'm cairryin saut
tae Dysart", eh with all these eh a- all these distinguished experts in the
field, here, I wonder in my few remarks what I can possibly say. Though I'm
reminded that ehm revivalists are very keen to go back to ehm, to Germanic
expressions, erm, so so that would take us erm [laugh] "Eulen nach A- nach
Athen tragen", I'd be "taking owls to Athens" and, among all these learned
owls of Scots, I'm just the the "queer gowk", eh eh, but I certainly hope
that the few remarks eh that I I'll make this afternoon will, will go some
way to, ye know [laughs] performing, to to fulfilling the intended
performance act of launching the project. 
 
Of course, this is not the first corpus of Scots, erm I learned the word
from Jack Aitken and he was probably influenced by the structuralists such
as Harris and Hill in the nineteen fifties, who ehm who saw the collection
of data as er as as as as it was once put, as the "explicandum of
linguistics": you linguists had to explain real data, eh eh intuition
wasn't enough, and so you had to collect data and explain it and hence we
have the DOST corpus, erm which is reflected qualitatively in and, in some
sense impressionistically, quantitatively in, in the dictionary, erm
different from the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots where Anneli
Meurman-Solin is is very keen to count every realisation, of every form of
every spelling of every form and give you statistics that the, as it were,
Scots lies somehow in the statistics, rather than in in the texts, and erm
er the latest issue of "Scottish Language", which hit the mailbox earlier
this week er has good examples of this dealing with gender and age in
Middle Scots writers. And I suppose, in a sense, behind the Scottish
National Dictionary there's a corpus, the sixty odd bibli- pages of
three-column bibliography at the end was a corpus, which I think it would
be true to say David Murison had actually read [laugh], I remember the
first time we got a an electronic edition of "Dubliners" in the department,
there was great excitement and I I I I looked up the word "spirit" and
there were eleven occurrences of the word "spirit" and lots of people said,
"Oh, that's very interesting", and the concordance could show how the word
"spirit" was being used, what grammatical structures, what col- lexical
collocations and erm, one of my long-serving s- er colleagues er remarked,
the way that David Murison probably would have remarked, "erm, gosh, I
could have told you that!" [laugh] [audience laugh] "I've read it and
remembered it" [audience laugh] and of course erm eh eh, you'll allow me to
say, I actually have both the word "corpus" and the word "Scots" in the
title of my thesis, ehm for wh-, as part of which I created ehm a corpus of
dramatic texts from Glasgow eh and that's been available from the "Oxford
eh Text Archive" ever since, although I don't think anybody's ever
consulted it, eh, but I would be very, very happy to to to to to offer to
donate a version of this as the first handsel eh to this corpus project,
and along the way, in a moment of enthusiasm, ehm I I created a corpus of
Biblical texts as well, so there will be a second handsel and, had we not
been in the middle of an examining period this week and lengthy boring
meetings, I might have used my time more productively actually to bring
these and hand them over, but I hope I I did dress for the occasion, 
[audience laugh] [laugh] [audience laugh] bu- but didn't come bearing, as
it were, the hu- not exactly the "hog de l'annee", but the "hog du projet".

 
Of course corpora are more than literary texts and more than collections,
eh whether it's English or Scots, corpus linguists want to study the whole
language, but can only do so on the basis of a sample, and so the central
critical question is always the adequacy of the sample as a representation
of the whole. Now there are exceptions; a corpus of Old English, when your
sample is the entirety of of the language, but that is is is is is is is is
an exception, ehm and ehm i-i- it's a probably a debatable question whether
we could have our corpus as the entire eh collection of writing in Scots,
[inhale] but I think part of that question would be whether it was
worthwhile or not eh whether eh it might be possible, but would it be
desirable? Of course there's lots of issues erm er in in designing a corpus
an an an th- some of these you've already addressed; you're going to
include speech as well as writing, and that's good, because ye ye know
speech is nature, is the natural phenomenon, eh and writing is the
nurturing of the speech into certain ways that have been codified by by the
culture of of the country erm and eh I want to talk a bit more eh later eh
about about some of the difficulties, I think, in in simply collecting a a
a corpus of simply of written Scots, erm easier though that might be. Erm I
mean s- when you think about it, you know, speech is about interaction,
about having one's speech determined by what someone else has just said,
and therefore can be very difficult or or or very funny. Scottish people
love this type of interaction, and they've even a whole vocabulary for it:
"argy bargys", "flytings", "crack", "patter" erm, so these are certainly,
not that I would like your corpus to become the corpus of patter but, erm,
corpus of flytings, but I I don't think these can be ignored. 
 
In designing the British National Corpus, they went for ninety percent
writing, ten percent speech, but that's a very large scale, but your
scale's not probably not gonna be much less. In the International Corpus of
English we went for sixty percent speech, forty percent writing erm, eh,
exhale and and so so th- that that balance is something that that needs to
be thought out. I mean, almost certainly it's because Scots has survived as
a spoken language that that Scottish literature has survived on its back, I
think, the the chicke- the egg has been, if it's the egg that comes first,
eh, has has been the speech and and and writing the derivative from it.
Erm, eh, eh, there are lots, as I say th-th-th-th-, how much you collect is
is is a problem, how much of any text you correc-, collect, are you going
to be like the Bank of English, s-s- stoke everything that you can find
into it, and let the total rise? Three hundred and fifty million was the
latest figure I heard. Er people, corpus linguists of English are now
considering the internet as a corpus and now there's a huge debate, "Well,
how big is the internet?", and erm [laugh] what erm eh [?]Herman[/?]
[inaudible] I think he estimates about thirteen billion words. But when ye
think about it, I mean, eh the answer to that is almost well, ye know, e-
in due course, everybody's going to be on the internet, how many speakers
of English have ye got, there's billions and billions of them, how many
words can a speaker have, and you get to far more that thirteen billion
quite quickly. It's staggering when ye get into these figures, but th-, ye
know, the earlier point you want it all as it were, big might not be
beautiful in that case. Ehm in the ICE project a text whether s- written or
spoken is only two thousand words, we want excerpts and we want ranges and
diversities and diversities of speakers, so maybe two thousand words of
this talk might be enough! [laugh] 
 
Ehm eh ehm and erm speech eh, as as we're we're witnessing, has its own
difficulties of recording and and transcription Ehm, I wonder if any of you
share my horror eh that in in these austere dictionaries for foreign
learners like the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionaries informal words
have become lexicalised and dignified as as as as as headwords "wanna" an
"gonna" and "havta", eh and I I I'm sure I, if you sought under ehm word
you thought of as a preposition "of" you might even get it to find these
days as a form of the verb "have". If you look up the British National
Corpus, the spoken section, the frequency of "of" used a- in the context of
"have" is staggering, because Longman typists in Harlow, Essex simply were
typing in a in a conventional way, audio typists, "I could of done it", and
they heard "of", and [claps] transcribed it as "O F", so big problems
there. Ethics, getting permission to record, easy if you're one on one with
the likes of me this afternoon, but dealing with the with the with the
media is is is not so easy, eh, and and beyond that legality, eh securing
and operating not only within copyright but within performance rights
legislation, which is actually getting worse and tougher, better in terms
of the performer, but harder in terms of the user. An I think this is an
issue, I I raised it, Mike was there, eh eh at the AHRB in London eh just
before Christmas, where we're all being encouraged to use IT and all being
encouraged to digitise speech, but actually the ha-, and and therefore the
technology and the possibilities are better and easier, but some of the
hidden issues are getting harder and and tougher.
 
And of course, speech is summed up by the words variation, variability,
individual varies in different circumstances and the same circumstances can
be realised very differently by different individuals. Style, individual
manipulation of style eh, the reality is always variety and variation eh at
every realisational level, and Scots here is bound up within English. You
can't analyse Scots ultimately without looking at English as well. So in
the sea of macro-issues and micro-decisions my advice such as it would be
worth, would be to aim big and high and to maximise, to include, but also
eh, Fiona doesn't wanna hear this to use extensive mark up, to capture all
the relevant situational and social factors. And therefore you can let the
analysis of the corpus determine how things really are. You don't prejudge,
you don't preselect, anything that's from Scotland goes in there. 
 
Well so much for collection, erm, I I I was going to erm erm eh extol the
virtues of taking a corpus linguistic approach to eh t-t- to language study
but I I think for for reasons of time erm I-I- I'll miss those out cause
I'm sure you want some Scots [laugh] more than on corpora, Erm, eh, what,
you might ask, is the purpose of this corpus? I'm sure when you wake up at
five forty-five, I gather, tomorrow morning on Good Morning Television with
Fiona's answer to camera to that question. What use is this corpus? Is it
about synchronic descriptions, historical developments, both, something
else, is it to outdo the SND corpus for lexicography or lexicography? Ehm
in a book I edited eh last year, la- linguistic politics, arising from the
symposium held in Belfast in August. This this volume contains six eh
papers in Scots, six academic papers. So I made a little corpus of these
six papers, six very talented, gifted writers, eh Caroline Macafee, Dauvit
Horsbroch, Gavin Falconer, Andy Eagle, er Ian Parsley, and er and who have
I missed out, erm and eh, oh Dauvit Horsbroch again [laugh] two bites at
the cherry. And eh, I thought we might eh, want to see just, ye know, as a
small example, what might come out of of this. Erm eh, of course, the erm,
we've got eh, traditional dialect words in abundance, got "wee", "big",
"biggins", "biggit", "ding", "dingin", "dingit", "diggins", right [laugh]
coming out, but you get other words, traditional words in unusual uses;
"curcuddoch", defined in the CSD as "sitting close together, side by side",
we're all sitting curcuddoch [laugh], but, "looking at the top line of
table yin, the figure for Scotland o'er aa ye'll see that Murdoch's figure
is muckler.  His maithodology wis mair intensive than curcuddoch.  I'm
inclined to believe that his figures are mair lik the truth". Well, that
methodology should be curcuddoch.  Er perhaps "advisement" is is more an an
example of of traditional uses. "The main prior advisement not for the use
of leids [?]inner[/?] nor Inglis in the Stormont assemblie, and though as
saucht as [?]gentiness[/?], this isnae ay gaen [?]an ay mich[/?]".  
 
One of my favourite words in this collection is the word "stewartry". I
think this is the answer to all political problems, the recovery of
"stewartries", because in this new ideology of revivalism, Scotland is a
stewartry and Northern Ireland is another stewartry, so ye're talking of
twa stewartries. It's a very handy term to refer to these two Scots
speaking areas: Northern Ireland and eh and and and Scotland. That might
solve the Unionist problems. Just [inaudible] here and hope that Jacobite
cause [inaudible] put everyone in there. 
 
Erm "heis" is a word that's eh used over and over again, anything you want
to support, eh [laugh] or or or in any kind of way "gie a heis tae
something", right? "This will tak an els tae heis Scots up tae [inaudible]
an the considerit chairter."  Eh, "Scots Ulster's been heised up abin Scots
as a haill [inaudible] as the richt". 'Heis' in Scots, but eh it's being
used very very widely in in Northern Ireland a- at the present moment, erm
eh of course in in my little corpus we get the neologisms that have to do
with language study, [inaudible] "fowk gate", "word buik", "word form".
You'll get lots of these perhaps and that's just what the SNP's looking
for. 
 
And of course revival goes back to Germanic patterns, so we get
overproduction of prefixes for speakers "forgaitherers", "forleits",
"forordinar", "forstan", "furth" words, "ower", "owersettins", it's perhaps
well-known of [?]starts[/?], "steerers", eh we get eh we get lots of words
erm "inlat" for "invitation" is a good one. Erm whether, whether you'll
have enough, I mean, potentially you've all of Scots, then you can outdo
everybody erm. Erm, my favourite dictionary at the moment is erm, er I I I
I was mischievous enough to give a paper and essay last year asking whether
the dialect dictionary had its day. I have to say I said "No it hadn't" but
it might [laugh] eh it it might need new forms and and one of the forms eh
that that I think is a [inaudible] way forward and in many ways the Scots
thesaurus is more exciting than the Scots, as I saw it, 's dictionary. And
one of the best thesauruses is Glen Price's eh dictionary of of building
and and, you know, these wee drawings that that show you, you know, the
vocabulary of a Scottish house, for which there is no other word. That any
builder, whether it's Scots or English, whatever his grammar, he has these
words or or the structure of a town. Erm, I mean, you you get the idea ye
can always spot out something there erm in in this dictionary. Absolutely,
like even a window frame. Some of these words, ask any joiner, he has no
other word and yet it's a Scots word. Eh but they're fascinating, these
words. Some of my favourites, if I can indulge them, I don't know if
they'll come up in your corpus, I don't know. A "clink" is, u-u- usually on
leaded roofs, eh when you're joining two pieces of metal together, but
newer techniques, when you've got newer materials like copper, apparently
the technique's known as a "clinch". So the newer the material the more
anglicised the word becomes.
 
And then "deafening" eh I mean eh "deafening" eh you know is s-s- somehow
an active motion th-th- that, ye know, comes towards you, but there's this
"deafening" that you, [laugh] [?]if a building's hazardous[/?], you keep it
away from me. Erm, and "soldiers", ye know, in this ye know denotative use
really as as something eh holding up a a structure eh of any sort, metal
o-o- or or wooden. Erm I I I think that that th-th- they're brilliant. And
and I think that these ways offer very sound evidence that that er Scots is
very much a- alive. Erm I I mean another another example is is in
agriculture eh y- when you, and these are comparable between Scots eh
Scotland and Northern Ireland. Sandy Fenton's book on the No- farming in
the North East er words work "the seasons round", ye know, "When judged dry
enough the swathes were gathered into long winraas by means of a rake or
tummlin-tam." I think this is actually on the blue handout, eh "and the
rows were gathered sideways into clumps by the same implements eh to assist
folk who were coling". Eh, ye know, these I think are are are dialect words
par excellence because there is no other word, there is no English cognate.
It's not the h- "house", "hoose", "home", "hame" er cognate syndrome.  
 
And we've got this in Northern Ireland too. Jonathan Bell and Mervyn
Watson's marvellous book "Irish Farming 1750 to eh 1900". I feel like
setting this as a set book for students, each, about "flaxen" for instance,
you've got "beet" and "sheaf" and "beets" and "bands" and "retting". There
is no other word, and those who who have memories of it, eh even my
students, these are the words they they they they have and are kept alive.
And so this leads into eh the short story about the eh the the cutting the
linen in that appeared i- in this wonderful collection, Ulster Scots
collection by James Fenton, "Thonner and Thon" eh, The Lake, And I thought
you might like a little bit of Ulster Scots erm that'll do it. Ehm "Naw a
lock o guid tae the yin, an naen ava tae the ithers, wuz the shoart fine
lint, lake wunnlestray, moistly and scrappy and hung'ry, mostly an scrappy
an hung'ry grun; yit if saft, flush lint wuz chancy for the fairmer, frush,
affen, unther the hannles, it garred the pooer wat the loof, ettlin ta get
weegin. Sae thing tal an firm o itself wud dae baith weel.  Ay, weegin,
bennin an stretchin, weegin an pooin, cross the face o the braid flet, ye
wrocht. An wrocht, for it wuz sore gaun, ill on the bak on the hans an
airms, even wae hoagers tae hinther the scourgin." And I'm sure an Aberdeen
farmer wouldn't be too far away in in reciting that eh t- too. 
 
Eh well there are exciting prospects then for eh both lexicology and erm
and and lexicography out of the corpus ahead of us erm, I'm skipping a bit
here, eh erm erm erm. Though though eh eh if we turn then to eh phonology
eh in my little corpus erm, these s- spellings although very diversified
actually throw up many central issues in pronunciation in in Scots, eh and
and force you to think what's, what is the rule and what's going  on erm,
the, i- in terms of stress, placement, in terms of realisation, in terms of
er environmental conditioning on the realisations, "arreengements",
"authenteecity", "comattee", eh "commeesioned", "commeesioners",
"condeetion", "creetics", "creeticise", "creeticism", "eedition". I mean
these're just eh f- v- very eh a few examples from the very early part of
of of of the word list eh and wordlists have wonderful uses when you
generate them from a corpus, eh y- you you do get a feeling of of something
going on there but what's the rule and you've got plenty of evidence.
You've got evidence for loss in the spellings, "assemlie", right, where
you've got s- consonantal simplification there. Or where in English the
final syllable part of the the the suffix would be a a a a weak vowel is is
elided altogether, "dictionar", "leeterar", "ordinar", "necessar",
"vocabular", right? What's going on there? The loss of weak intermedial
syllables in in in in "intrist", "Margrit", erm a-a- "reglur", "patrins",
right. But at the same time we've also got built in there metathesis,
"modren" eh eh "patrins". Erm, David had an extract from the, David
Horsbroch on the handout, "govrened" eh, an an "leitratur" eh you've got
metathesis coming in there. Erm, in in in in this writing suggesting this
is still very active in the speech community, erm, loss of erm weak i-
initial syllables er "gree", "greeance", "greed" coming up there from the
phonology. You can do, you can you can do a lot eh with with the corpus
evidence even at that level; there's a concordance o o "modren" there erm.
I almost find the way Scots being represented in these these texts that we
we we've got, it's not simply a question of glottalisation, the "t" is
being glottalised, but almost we have a glottal a glottal consonant as part
of the system in in in in in all these words in in final position. So
there's a lot can can can come at that level, the phonological level, erm
from a corpus of Scots as well. 
 
And turning then to eh grammar, erm it's it's well known erm that in in
Middle Scots a distinction was made between the present participle and the
gerund, and and here in my little sample we get this eh we get this
displayed for "bairn [inaudible]" and "has a bairn", that is still active
in my little corpus [inaudible] or or or, is it. There's plenty of
examples; some of these are from the Helsinki Corpus as these references
show, abundant examples of those [inaudible] the Edinburgh History of Scots
of that eh group of Scots participle construction. But when we look at
individual authors erm, we find that they deal with this problem in a
different way so Dauvit Horsbroch, this is on your handout, underlined, he
tends to go for both both both par- both the present participle and for the
gerund ending in "IN" erm but in Ian Parsley writing in Ulster Scots, does
make the system eh discrete, distinct eh, "The forehannd pynt A wis for
makan at this confeerence wis at the steerars o Ulster Scots haes a chyce,
politicisation or survival. Sae this isna juist a moral chyce o forderan
the leid, sae as aa can uise it an no juist Protestants or Unionists, but
it is a straight chyce between uisean the leid as a political fitbaa an
watchan it dee or takan the leid awa fae politics an aw a frae, politics
awa frae the leid an sae giean it a chance o survival. A wis fur giean
ensamples eh frae screeds as haes been sat furth in Ullans no sae lang
syne. But A'm thinkan ither fowk haes aye shawed whitwey monie sic texts
gaes agin the tradeetions o guid Scots or guid Scots writein". And there's
the "good Scots writing" in, aye, in there. And eh in the next paragraph
you've got "gif we gae bak to the beginnin wi the Lord Laird". So that
construction is still in existence and therefore the corpus forces you to
deal with these problems. 
 
Now coming closer to home, I felt I couldn't come to Glasgow an not mention
Tom Leonard [laugh]. What does he do with this construction? "A thinka must
be gon off ma nut.  Av ey thoat though leasta always seemta be thinkin,
either A'm jist aboot ti go off ma nut or else A'm awready off it.  Even
jist sitn dooin writn" [laugh] and erm "hawlin aw thi books ootma cupboard
tryn to find oot hooit wuz, eh [laugh]. It takes me that long lookin fur it
it's so annoyin" eh "A know that A'm sayn whut A mean". And and so
sometimes an "n" sometimes an "i-n" and and used in- inconsistently, but
maybe that's not what he is about. We we do get double modals erm in my
little corpus eh "micht", "micht" could do it in in different ways. Eh
throughout all these these these writers erm in my corpus of dramatic texts
in Glasgow there were no double modals of this sort an I I take that to to
be inf- editorial influence this this offended [inaudible] standard English
and was ruled out. I I I didn't find any eh f- concord rules either in that
corpus and I I wish now eh coming back here and thinking thinking of
Glasgow an thinking of Falkirk, eh you've got not just double modals but
double, double auxiliaries, ye know, "A'm urnae doin somethin" [laugh] just
terrific, it offends all rules but seems so so intuitively acceptable, erm
but but it does force you because corpus evidence is inescapable. I mean,
what is it "maybe" or "maybes", and a lot of writers do have that "s" on
"maybes", so what's going on, what's the rule? Erm, ye know, is the
"maybes" a- analogous with the "aiblins" "s" th- that we we we get, erm and
interestingly "aiblins" we find in my little corpus only in Ian Parsley
that erm seems to be almost, Ian where there's historical choice he's going
for it. Eh, I'm sure if we went out into Byres Road and asked the next
hundred people "What does "aiblins" mean?", "Who use, d'you've "aiblins" in
your street?", might not know what we're talkin about, er there's little
consciousness of it, er so these are some examples of eh what could come
out of y- your microcorpus erm erm on the basis of my my my recent eh eh
little little academic corpus. Now how're we doing for time? Do you want me
to
F606: We're running out.
M087: shut up? [laugh] Erm well erm. Right, couple of minutes more. Erm erm
I mean the the other problem you you have in dealing with a corpus of Scots
is is is not just the data itself but ideology surrounding the data and eh
effectively an I I I'll just mention this, there are really three three
three models. Th- there might be more; I can only think of three though.
When I stuck out my neck and published eh in 1998, the convergence model,
the dialectalisation model, the anglicisation model, right, Scots an
English all one as Anglo-Saxon, the two diverged, national language, all
converged together, and present day English, were all were all varieties of
English one way or another. Erm C- Caroline, for whom Glasgow eh, coming
back to it er er after a while, ye know, has a word "superficial", the
differences in Scots are really superficial, cause they're all part of the
overall English system. Eh, Caroline's latest idea that's in this
Linguistic Politics book is eh is to argue against the dialectalisation
model and go for language death. And that dignifies Scots, retains all the
varieties of of of of of of of of separate autonomous linguistic status, so
it's a deein, a deein leid. Eh but of course that raises other questions,
therefore we're in a situation of language contact and therefore we've
probably forced ourselves into a an analysis of of of of acrolect for
English and basilect fo- for Scots. 
 
Erm, the third model is to forget about the linguistics altogether and
jus-jus-jus- just to invoke attitude and a perception; people believe that
it's a language, and this twinkle in the eye that Scots people can have
[inaudible] a language. But there's just no harm to believe it, sort of
thing, and we're all descended from Mary Queen of Scots, heavens, whether
it's true or not, it's it's good to think. We like these kind of myths and
and and and and and why ever not? The difference is in Ulster, that the
people who say "Och, Scots is a language, course Scots is a, in fact we've
got two languages in fact: Ulster Scots is the second language". You know,
deadly seriousness. It's it's more of an issue to to to to counteract. So
this project that's being launched eh, ye know, eh there might've been a a
a eh, it might've been a long time coming but the time couldn't have been
better because eh to provide efforts are are at an unprecedented high.
There's unprecedented momentum at the at the desire to revive and at the
experience of reviving, both in Scotland and in in Northern Ireland. Eh,
and I think eh that the six papers in eh in in in Linguistic Policy poli-
Politics are unprecedented eh in in in their publication: six academic
papers in Scots totally, totally answering the challenge that Scots is
purely sociolectal, because in these papers your interest above all in this
is the message and not the messenger, and I think that practice is the
answer to that challenge that Scots is just eh d- is is just a social
dialect th- that's removed. 
 
But of course there's [?]action away[/?]. The Good Friday agreement and
subsequent legislation commits Northern Ireland to revival, whether you
like it or not. If you don't like it you have to change the policies,
right. That's that's a hard one, that's not a good option really because
there's too much else involved, and a lot that's far more important than
providing Scots in the Good Friday agreement. So the best we can do is
influence the policy and and go for the best experience, the best example
and I think that's where a broad consensus is emerging an coming through
the language and politics symposia that that I've been organising i- in in
Belfast. The UK government is, and Scotland is part of the United Kingdom,
is committed to supporting Scots eh in terms of the measures erm outlined
in part two of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The
UK government and, therefore has to follow the Scottish Executive, eh has
undertaken and is committed to recognising the value of Scots and promoting
its study, taking resolute action to promote the use of Scots, committed to
fostering cross-border links with other users of Scots in Northern Ireland,
elsewhere, and to foster mutual understanding between users of Scots and
the national language, English. 
 
And if you read elsewhere quite clearly, another commitment is to avoid any
discrimination against Scots, and that's a wonderful challenge for us all
to face. What they've not done is eh recognise Scots under part three of
the European Charter, to recognise Gaelic and to recognise Irish in
Northern Ireland, and activists in Northern Ireland are very eager to have
Scots in Northern Ireland recognised under part three of the European
Charter, erm and this is clearly the way forward for what has now come into
existence as the cross party committee, the cross pairty curn, o the Scots
leid, in the Scottish Parliament, and so I'd like to end eh, if I may, eh
by by reading you eh, really erm eh a a mandate eh for the UK government eh
for the Scottish Executive that that that eh David Horsbroch has come up
with and which, eh I I'm a member of the curn, but I could envisage the the
curn putting forward eh very soon and you might want to follow this on the
handout, page one of the handout. "Whit Scots Wants Fae Govrenment. Sae nou
A come tae ma pirlicue an a short leit o whit the Scots leid wants fae
Govrement. A'm shair that the twalmonth bygane haes brocht supporters o
Scots naur tae the things thay want for Scots. We can awreadie see some
forderment in Ulster. But whit we want nou is for the leid as a hail tae
get equal staunin fir the follaein tae tak place. One, yin, the Unitit
Kinrik Govrenment, ower marked tyme, tae mak part three staunin in the
European Chairter for Leids o the Curn patent tae Scots. Twa, the Executive
o Scotland tae mak Scots a subject in its ain richt in the scuils alang wi
siller for trainin teachers in the leid. Three, the Executive o Scotland
tae mak a meinister for Scots that sees the leid fordered an weil-plenished
in public lyfe". A minis-, imagine a minister for Scots. "The Executive o
Scotland tae tak on the follaein in Govrenment in Scotland. A, Scots signs
in the Scots Pairlament biggin an admeinstration that wad gie the leid a
richt recognition in the daeins o govrenment. B, Tae gie oot antrin
govrenment leitratur wrutten in Scots. C, Tae sponsor a dictionar o Scots
terms sib tae parliament for tae gie it a lift tae the uiss o the leid in
admeinistration an the political warld. An fither, the Executive o Scotland
tae foun a bodie for makkin Scots medium braidcaisting wi its heidmaist
remit as programmes for younkers. Six, a jynt bodie for Scots in Scotland
an Ulster for tae bring thegither the policies in the baith an mak siccar
the wrutten leid is conformed to tradition, tentie o spoken language.
Heizin Scots tae part three staunin in the European Chairter would cuiver
maist o thir heids, but Govrenment wad hae tae pit thaim in place first. It
cuid dae nae mair waur the nou as pit a whein Scots signs up in the
pairlament, alang wi Scots leitratur, an leuk again at the way it deals wi
the leid, wi the ae leid on baith sydes o the Sheuch. Sae athoot a sair
fecht it cuid dae awa wi the warst discrimination an brings the leids til a
guid accord." 
 
So, at the outset of this wonderful new project, the SCOTS Corpus Project,
here in the University of Glasgow, I'd love to say, but it's hard as
someone from the University of Edinburgh, to say the best university in
Scotland, eh [laugh] where eh where knowledge of Scots has never been
greater, the status of Scots in Scotland has never been more controversial.
Politically, vis-a-vis the European government rela- ratifying the European
charter, it's still a cause without a champion, and there's a real danger
of it becoming a party political issue along nationalist lines, but let's
hope the cross part curn will will will will will defuse that one.
Socially, Scots still seems an issue that insufficient people feel strongly
enough about, or feel that they benefit from, or about which they want to
remove the causes of stigmatisation. But writing in Scots an doubtless
broadcasts like Fiona's tomorrow morning, will help remove some of that
stigmatisation. Economically, Scots seems an issue without central funding,
a hundred and ten thousand per annum, it's a pittance for government these
days, and probably this project got more than that, in itself, eh, from the
Engineering and Physical Research Council. 
 
Emotionally, there there is the fear of the unknown in in that is Scots to
be championed in addition to English or instead of English as it once was?
But if it's in addition to English, why bother? Unlike Northern Ireland at
least, and happily, what is not controversial is that Scots is not a marker
of politics. Most Unionist party supporters are conservatives, labour,
liberals, in Scotland that is: Unionist party supporters in Scotland speak
Scots. Or religious: Catholics as much as Protestants speak Scots and
nobody can tell the difference, an anyway it doesn't matter if they do or
they do not. Again, unlike Northern Ireland. Nor is Scots socially divisive
in terms of territory or ethnicity, even second gene- generation immigrants
speak fluent Glaswegian. Nor is Scots viewed as oppositional with or
confrontational to Gaelic, in a if-them-therefore-us syndrome.
Nevertheless, still unlike Northern Ireland, Scotland stands more happily
in a state of some preparedness towards revival. There has there has been
thought of revival in at least two books, the the "Scots Language Planning
for Modern Usage", which arose out of a conference here at the University
of Glasgow more than twenty years ago; some of you perhaps can recall that
event, and Derrick McClure's "Why Scots Matters". There's an active
literary scene, there's been discussions and proposals for a standardised
orthography. 
 
There has been strong urging by academics, perhaps most recently through
the proposal for an Institute of the Languages of Scotland, which certainly
deserves to be funded in full as an immediate priority, an which, if funded
as it should be, would instantly raise the annual funding for Scots many
hundredfold. 
 
And so, to conclude, Scots in Scotland is currently much better off
linguistically ah than in Northern Ireland, but much poorer in No- off
politically than in Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement has
provided a language policy for Northern Ireland, including a Bill of Rights
which contains language rights. Scotland has no language policy although at
least the European Charter of Human Rights has been incorporated into Scots
Law. Collectively and individually, we must urge the Scottish Executive to
create a language policy for Scotland as a matter of urgency, for Scotland
will not remain unaffected by the unstoppable momentum in Northern Ireland.
The recent review of the first year of the Scottish Parliament published by
Her Majesty's Stationary Office, Hassan and Warhurst 2000, there's no
mention of language let alone a language policy. As far as Scots is
concerned the Good Friday agreement necessitates and commits large scale
revival to implement and fulfil the agreement's human rights. It will
require ideological persuasion as well as the creation of practical
communicative resources; to change the policy seems nigh impossible. The
best we can do is influence the implet- -mentation. One of these is to
certainly to avoid the worst excesses of Ullans. There will nee- there
there will be a need to deal with prejudice and ignorance on all sides. I
believe, however, that if, an it's a big if, a sufficient critical mass of
the population becomes persuaded of the worthiness of the revival of Scots,
revival is potentially all achievable, however bad it might appear to some,
and that nothing is impossible, assuming, often against tremendous odds,
the survival of the Good Friday agreement, and that's needed for lots more
far more important reasons. Each of us, eager for the maintenance of the
imperative present peace in Northern Ireland must work in our individual
ways to ensure the implementation an maintenance of the provisions of the
Good Friday agreement and that therefore includes the language policy.
Scotland needs to watch as Northern Ireland needs to watch it. There may be
lessons to learn. If the child can be the father of the man, perhaps the
vestigal dialect in the colony could yet prove to be the father of the
revived language in the homeland. //Thank ye very much.//
F606: //[audience clapping]//


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The SCOTS Project and the University of Glasgow do not necessarily endorse,
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Information about document and author:

Audio
Audio audience
Adults (18+): Informed lay people: Specialists: For gender: Mixed
Audience size: N/A

Audio awareness & spontaneity
Speaker awareness: Aware
Degree of spontaneity: Partially scripted

Audio footage information
Year of recording: 2002
Recording person id: 612
Size (min): 45
Size (mb): 259

Audio medium
Other: Public address

Audio setting
Education: Recording venue: University staff club
Geographic location of speech: Glasgow

Audio relationship between recorder/interviewer and speakers
Speakers knew each other: N/A

Audio transcription information
Transcriber id: 625
Year of transcription: 2002
Year material recorded: 2002
Word count: 6982

Audio type
Lecture/talk, sermon, public address/speech: Other: Inaugural public address for the SCOTS Project


Author
Author details
Author id: 87
Forenames: John
Initials: M
Surname: Kirk
Gender: Male
Decade of birth: 1950
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 18
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism
Occupation: University Lecturer
Place of birth: Falkirk
Region of birth: Stirlingshire
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Belfast
Region of residence: Northern Ireland
Father's place of birth: Brightons
Father's region of birth: Stirlingshire
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's place of birth: Brightons
Mother's region of birth: Stirlingshire
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At home
Language: German
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 
Language: Scots
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At work


Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 87
Gender: Male
Decade of birth: 1950
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 18
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism
Occupation: University Lecturer
Place of birth: Falkirk
Region of birth: Stirlingshire
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Belfast
Region of residence: Northern Ireland
Father's place of birth: Brightons
Father's region of birth: Stirlingshire
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's place of birth: Brightons
Mother's region of birth: Stirlingshire
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Stlg
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At home
Language: German
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 
Language: Scots
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At work


Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 606
Gender: Female
Decade of birth: 1940
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 18
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism
Occupation: Academic
Place of birth: Edinburgh
Region of birth: Midlothian
Birthplace CSD dialect area: midLoth
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Glasgow
Region of residence: Glasgow
Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's place of birth: Leith
Father's region of birth: Midlothian
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: midLoth
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's place of birth: Edinburgh
Mother's region of birth: Midlothian
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: midLoth
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: All
Language: Scots
Speak: No
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Work