From: cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk (Colin Wilson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Date: 12 Nov 92 13:38:23 GMT
Organization: BT

In article <A.Grant.28.721489819@ucs.cam.ac.uk>, A.Grant@ucs.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:
|> Anyway, it makes no difference to my argument,
|> which is that Burns is the first representative (in the printed era) of
|> a particular type.
|> 
|> An interesting comparison is with the Australian poet Banjo Patterson.
|> Several of his poems are internationally famous ("Waltzing Matilda") and
|> have even been filmed ("The Man from Snowy River"). Yet as a poet he is
|> the absolute pits. Burns is a serious poet, but suffers from the same
|> inflated hype from people who want to claim him as their own. You only have
|> to compare him with his nearest English contemporary, William Blake, to
|> see how narrow the range of his work is.

Thank you for clarifying your argument. I have no particular axe to grind
regarding the relative merits of Burns and any other writer. The statement
that I made in a previous posting, and by which I stand, is that Scots has
been used as a medium by writers of international standing, of which Burns
is one.

|> >Some of the implications of Grant's remarks here - that English, or any
|> >foreign language should be despised; that Scots and Gaelic are
|> >languages fit only for peasants, as if peasants were a lesser form of
|> >life - are simply appalling.
|> 
|> No, I implied that pushing Scots and Gaelic into the service of national
|> identity might _make_ English despised. I'd lay bets that the more extreme
|> Welsh or Quebec nationalists would be prepared to say that they despise 
|> English.
|> 
|> And it is you who believe that by 'peasants' I'm referring to a lesser form
|> of life, and then have the temerity to attribute this to me. The French don't
|> believe peasants are inferior, merely that they are narrow-minded, parochial,
|> traditional, and short-termist. Some people may think these are virtues, but
|> with the country on the brink of economic collapse, I don't.

I don't consider peasants to be a lesser form of life: I accept that
these words are mine and I accept that I may have exaggerated the
connotations of your original remarks. However, I do not see how you
can deny that the remarks themselves were highly pejorative, or even
"offensive", as someone else put it.

I know nothing of French peasants, but if they possess the negative
qualities that you attribute to them, then they will do so regardless
of the language that they use. Moreover, people in Scotland will not
acquire them merely through using Scots or Gaelic instead of English.

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