Dialect '04

Dialect ’04

This conference, with its published papers and ensuing dialect promotion effort, must be seen as a turning point in establishing the current direction of dialect promotion in Shetland. It contains both a paper given by me, and one in which Shetland archivist Brian Smith used my writing as a bad example.

My paper (standard English version) is here:

Shaetlan is Daed, Lang live Dialect

And Smith’s is here:

http://www.shetlanddialect.org.uk/wir-ain-aald-language

All of the papers are, or at least were, available in a printed booklet.

The conference was opened by Shetland archivist Brian Smith who, with a reference to Thomas Hardy, placed the Shetland tongue squarely within the category of English dialect as spoken in counties of England, implying that the peculiar Shetland agonising over dialect is unnecessary. Other indicators of his stance are his use of the word ‘dialect’ as a category distinct from ‘language’; his view that Shetland dialect is not dying out, and his appeal to its use in literature to support this; his mentioning of Norn only to get it ‘out of the way’; his use of a phrase of mine as an example of a ‘horrible abortion’ with correlative implications for the ‘fitting use’ of ‘dialect’ (I wasn’t pawned off by his praise of a poem of mine, verse being the acceptable use of dialect in his world view); and his non-interventionist stance which, I would argue, is paradoxically perhaps the most influential in Shetland attitudes to ‘dialect’.

His comment that ‘dictionary dredging’ should only be done by those such as W. J. Tait who can be seen in retrospect to have been geniuses, and his comment that ‘Eels’ by James Stout Angus turned out to be a good poem in spite of having been intended as a linguistic exercise, demonstrate an attempt to escape from the implication that the best Shetland writing may depend upon precisely the sort of linguistic development to which he is diametrically opposed. His comment that Jakobsen knew perfectly well the differences between dialect and language is correlative with his use of ‘dialect’ as a category distinct from language and thus subject to different treatment.

Smith’s idea that literature is a guide to the health of Shetland dialect is stated explicitly as ‘A better way of gauging the health and prospects of Shetland dialect, I suggest, is to consider the written and literary versions of it, and the debates about it, that have appeared during the past 130 years or so’ and is offered as a counter to the perception that dialect is dying out. The idea of using written material as an indication of the prevalence of dialect, almost by definition a spoken medium, seems to me to be bizarre and obscurantist. I heard a similar comment on TV once, where a Shetland inteviewee stated that in contrast to fear that the oil boom would destroy dialect, it had given a boost to it. In my estimation, this is a confusion between the upsurge of concern about dialect - giving rise to more being said about it and written in it - and actual use, obscuring the fact that more and more children are growing up speaking, not a depleted dialect which was the scenario that Smith was arguing about - although that happens as well - but simply Scottish Standard English. The real scenario is more usefully seen as one of relatively sudden language death, much as described by Barnes in his postulated scenario of the death of Norn within a few generations, which Smith refers to, and which makes Smith’s comments about Jakobsen’s knowledge of the difference between language and dialect all the more ironic. The same factors apply in the replacement of one mode of speech by another, whether it is perceived as a language (Norn) or as dialect (modern Shetlandic.) Indeed, whether Norn was perceived as a language at the time of its demise is a moot point.

Recently, in a discussion on a Scots language forum, I challenged Smith as to whether he still believed that Shetland dialect wasn’t dying out, and still thought that those of us who say it is are ‘Jeremiahs.’ To this he replied that there was no use ‘seiching’ (sighing) about it if the only alternative was to brainwash children. This comment contained the obvious inference that teaching ‘dialect’ would fall within the category of brainwashing, whereas the ongoing teaching of standard English as ‘language’ would presumably fall within the category of education. When I challenged this, he implied that he was being facetious and questioned my sense of humour. I have included the exchange in this section as Tait vs. Smith

Briefly, other matters of interest were the lecture given by a Faroese professor to which nobody paid any attention at all (I mean, the fact that nobody paid any attention to it is a matter of interest) and the particular character (‘devoid of substance’ would be my obviously biased view) of the presentation by Mary Blance and a colleague, which was singled out as the highlight of the conference by the journalist who covered it for the Shetland Times, and which became the basis for ongoing dialect promotion. Other papers which warrant a more detailed analysis are the individual viewpoint of Robert Alan Jamieson, which emphasises the value of dialect as primarily a vehicle to be moulded to the individual voice of the literary writer (in his case using what I think of as a pseudo-Nordic orthography bearing little relationship to the underlying phonology of Shetlandic as a whole) and the emphasis of Laureen Johnson on the use of dialect in texting by young people - which, in a later radio interview, she regards as valuable because it avoids the problem of spelling (as indeed does phoning, for which texting is largely a replacement.) All of these papers, with the exception of the Faroese contribution, are consistent with the promotion of the Shetland tongue under the 'dialect' umbrella, and are indicative of the direction taken by ShetlandForWirds and within Shetland society in general.