Synopses & Reviews
This volume presents a comprehensive overview of sociolinguistic research in Scotland and showcases developments in sociolinguistic theory, method and application, highlighting Scotland's position as a valuable 'sociolinguistic laboratory'. Dealing with all levels of language, each chapter focuses on language use in different regions of Scotland, including Aberdeen, the Borders, Edinburgh, Fife, Glasgow and the Shetland Isles. Topics include the study of variation in towns on the Scottish-English border, the acquisition of variation by non-native speakers, lexical erosion in rural communities, and Gaelic and English code-switching. Other chapters focus on the history of sociolinguistic research in Scotland, the study of syntactic variation using the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech, the influence of the media on language change, and changes in language attitudes in Shetland. Bringing together chapters written by a range of international scholars, this book provides an insight into Scotland's contemporary sociolinguistic landscape and is a key resource for advanced students and researchers interested in language use in Scotland.
About the Author
Robert Lawson is Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the School of English at Birmingham City University, UK. His research interests include language in Scotland, language and masculinity, and the use of ethnographic approaches in the study of linguistic variation. He was the recipient of the Fulbright Scholars Award in Scottish Studies in 2012/13.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Jennifer Smith
1. An Overview of Language in Scotland; Robert Lawson
2. A Short History of Sociolinguistics in Scotland; Ronald Macaulay
3. Accent Variation and Change in North-East Scotland: The Case of (HW) in Aberdeen; Thorsten Brato
4. A Socio-Articulatory Study of Scottish Rhoticity; Eleanor Lawson, James M. Scobbie and Jane Stuart-Smith
5. Sociolinguistic Variation in the Scottish-English Border Area; Dominic Watt, Carmen Llamas and Daniel Ezra Johnson
6. Hitting an Edinburgh Target: Immigrant Adolescents' Acquisition of Variation in Edinburgh English; Miriam Meyerhoff and Erik Schleef
7. Vowel Variation in Scottish Standard English: Accent-Internal Diferentiation or Anglicisation?; Ole Schützler
8. Phonological Repetition Effects in Natural Conversation: Evidence from TH-fronting in Fife; Lynn Clark
9. Language and the Influence of the Media: A Scottish Perspective; Jane Stuart-Smith and Claire Timmins
10. What Can Ethnography Tell us about Sociolinguistic Variation over Time?: Some Insights from Glasgow; Robert Lawson
11. From Speech to Naming in a Scottish Pakistani Community: The Interplay between Language, Ethnicity and Identity; Farhana Alam and Ellen Bramwell
12. Change in the Fisher Dialects of the Scottish East Coast: Peterhead as a Case Study; Robert McColl Millar, with the assistance of Lisa Bonnici and William Barras
13. Syntactic Variation: Evidence from the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech; John Corbett
14 . Code-Switching in 'Flannan Isles': A Micro-Interactional Approach to a Bilingual Narrative; Cassie Smith-Christmas
15. 30 Years Later: Real-time Change and Stability in Attitudes towards the Dialect of Shetland; Mercedes Durham