Scots in decline? The Modern Age

Abstract

Abstract Due to changes in politics, culture, and economics of Scotland, Scots was replaced by English as the primary written medium in the country during the course of the seventeenth century. Almost all Scots who did not have Gaelic as their primary medium remained Scots speakers well into the eighteenth century, however. As part, to a considerable extent, of the Enlightenment experiment, the urban upper middle classes, and their imitators among the urban lower middle classes, began to abandon their native vernacular for Standard English. This change was broadcast to their imitators in other parts of Scotland but was never complete. Scottish Standard English comes into being during this period. Changes in agricultural practice and technological developments at this time led to the urbanization and industrialization of a large part of the country’s population. From early on in the nineteenth century, however, language attitudes developed among the middle classes which celebrated rural dialects while stressing the ‘slovenly’ nature of the urban. These prejudices continue to be held and have fed into education policy for the country. Increasing number of middle-class Scots abandoned their native variety in favour of English. To a considerable extent Scots became a class-based dialect. The chapter concludes with a discussion of language policy in the wake of devolution. Discussion of the plantation of Scots speakers in Ulster in the seventeenth century and later language use in those regions is also given.