Introduction

This book represents the first attempt to provide a sociolinguistic history of Scotland, an analysis based around what languages people have spoken and speak in this country, to whom and in what contexts. Were all linguistic varieties spoken at any one time given equal social status? Why have some varieties ceased to have native speakers, while others have thrived? Do social, economic and political forces cause or affect these circumstances? Before we engage with this set of themes and analysis, however, some introductory information is necessary in relation to the physical realities of the sociolinguistic apparatus which underlies this book. In addition, a brief description of the physical nature of Scotland will be given.

Language and Society: Some Introductory Concepts

The theme of this book stands at the interchange between the study of history and the study of language in society – both well-established fields, the first rather better-known outside its scholarly heartland than the latter. Because of this relatively circumscribed knowledge base, some of the central concepts of (macro-)sociolinguistics (otherwise, the Sociology of Language) will be discussed here. Despite the distinction made here, however, I hope that it will quickly become apparent that the two fields, of history and sociolinguistics, are, in fact, connected in a range of ways; the latter in particular cannot really function without at least some degree of knowledge of the former.

A central caveat needs to be established before we begin our discussion, however. While human beings have not changed much since ancient times either physiologically or (we assume) psychologically, their societies and societal norms and mores have. Their access to technology (and, perhaps more importantly, what technology this was and is) and the economic structures and limitations of the societies in which they live have also changed immensely over time. In ninth-century Argyll, for instance, the ancestor of Modern Gaelic was spoken by people who were only one harvest away from dearth and two away from famine. A hierarchical social structure existed (so that, to be blunt, some would have taken longer to starve than others) with a king at its summit, but a king whose authority was normally highly localised.