From: cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk (Colin Wilson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Accent, Dialect and Language, the politics thereof
Date: 12 Nov 92 15:30:56 GMT
Organization: BT

In article <1992Nov11.135623.21487@sei.cmu.edu>, firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
|> How many times do we have to try to get the point across?  Yes, John
|> Keats spoke Cockney dialect, and Burns spoke Scots dialect.  The
|> difference remains: that one is revered for the poems he wrote, and
|> the other for the dialect he wrote them in.

I will repeat: it is a mistake to talk about "Scots dialect" as if
Scots was a single dialect. There are a variety of dialects of Scots
spoken in the various regions of Scotland.  These cannot be bracketed
with the regional dialects of England (of which Cockney is one) for a
number of reasons.  These include: the fact that Scots was previously
the official spoken and written language of the kingdom; the quantity
of respected (in some cases, internationally respected) literature
written in Scots, both before 1603 and afterward; and the linguistic
hiatus at the border between Scotland and England, which has no
counterpart either within England or elsewhere in the English-speaking
world.

To address the specific point about Burns: it would be an absurdity for
any writer's work to be admired simply for the language or dialect that
it is written in, and I do not accept that this is so in the case of
Burns.  Throughout this debate, no-one on this "side" of it has sought
to place him as any better than Keats or any other writer, and all that
I personally have sought to claim for him is that he is one
internationally-respected writer who used Scots. Many people who read
his work do so in translations into languages other than Scots, and
whatever their reason for wanting to read it, it can hardly be for the
medium in which he originally wrote it.  

I am guessing, of course, but I suspect that the way in which you
perceive Burns has been coloured by the rather crass (in my judgement)
personality cult that has grown up around him. This has more to do with
his image as a womaniser and a drinker than with the merits of his
poetry, of which the particants have generally no great understanding.
However, they still recite it at their gatherings, often execrably
pronounced by people who would not dream of uttering a word of Scots in
daily life, and who regard it as uncouth. I agree that most of the
adherents of the Burns cult have little real appreciation of his work,
but it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that they have
either any great respect for the language that he used, of for him for
using it.

The personality cult aside, Burns remains a respected writer, both within
Scotland and elsewhere.

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