Zocker, Şeker, Azúcar. Sugar packets as evidence of a changing power balance.

Another thesis done! This is a link to the full thing.


Me with 4 of the copies on the train. Photographer: Gintarė

Abstracts (English, Nederlands, Español):
The position of a language in society is a type of discourse. Even the most banal artefacts with language choices on them are not just results of but participants in that discourse, and they can reinforce it, or challenge and transform it. In this thesis, sugar packets are presented as small samples or fossils of historical language power balances, which can be used to reconstruct shifts in those balances. As a form of ready-collected data, a number of online sugar packet catalogues are used, from which some key information is however missing such as manufacturing dates and finding places. The thesis' methodology is an attempt to utilize the potential of the data by investigating it through four different approaches. After a global overview of differences between the used catalogues, the scope is limited in two different ways. First, the focus is on one city, The Hague, for which the language choices on old and new sugar packets are compared. Next is a comparison of the packets released during the history of three different Dutch department stores. Finally, the study zooms in on a single sugar packet, to trace in detail its journey and the choices made during it. The data show a clear difference between “linguistic fetish” type use of foreign languages, whereby they are employed to call up positive connotations, and “instrumental” use, which is directly related to the companies' cross-border activities. Specifically this “instrumental” multilingualism occurs ever more often, as a result of the dynamics of franchising and foreign expansion during the period which is researched.

De machtspositie van een taal in de maatschappij is een diskoers. De taalkeuzes in of op welke tekst, uitspraak of onbeduidend object dan ook zijn niet alleen resultaten van dat diskoers, maar nemen erin deel, door het te herhalen en voort te zetten, of door het aan te passen en een nieuwe richting te geven. In deze scriptie worden suikerzakjes aangegrepen als kleine staaltjes of fossielen van historische taalbalansen, die kunnen worden gebruikt om de verschuivingen daarin te reconstrueren. Bij wijze van kant-en-klare data maakt de studie gebruik van een aantal door verzamelaars bijeen gebrachte online catalogi van suikerzakjes, waarin echter bepaalde cruciale informatie mist zoals wanneer de zakjes zijn gedrukt en waar ze zijn gevonden. De methodologie van de scriptie is een poging het potentieel van de data tot bloei te brengen met vier benaderingen in toenemende mate van detail. Na een overzicht van onderlinge verschillen tussen de catalogi volgen twee verschillende manieren om het bereik van de studie te beperken, eerst met een focus op suikerzakjes uit één stad, namelijk Den Haag, waarbij taalkeuzes op nieuwe en oude zakjes worden vergeleken, en vervolgens met een vergelijking van de suikerzakjes uitgebracht gedurende de geschiedenis van drie Nederlandse warenhuizen In de laatste analyse wordt de focus verscherpt op één enkel suikerzakje, om het door het zakje afgelegde pad te traceren en de daarbij gemaakte keuzes in hun context te plaatsen. Uit de data blijkt een onderscheid tussen „dwepend“ gebruik van vreemde talen – waarbij ze worden ingezet om positieve associaties op te roepen – en „instrumenteel“ gebruik, direct gerelateerd aan grensoverschrijdende economische activiteit van de bedrijven. Specifiek deze „instrumentele“ meertaligheid komt steeds meer voor als gevolg van het ontstaan van franchises en toenemende internationalisering van bedrijven tijdens het door het onderzoek beslagen tijdsbestek.

La posición de un idioma en la sociedad es un discurso. Cada texto, objeto o acto de habla, junto con las selecciónes de idioma que se encuentran en estos, incluso en los más triviales, no son solamente resultados de este discurso sino que también hacen parte de éste y pueden reforzarlo, rebatirlo y transformarlo. En esta tesis, los paquetes de azúcar se presentan como muestras o fósiles de equilibrios históricos de poder lingüístico, cuyos cambios pueden ser reconstruidos mediante el análisis de estos vestigios. Como “corpus prefabricado” se utilizan catálogos en línea de paquetes de azúcar, recopilados por coleccionistas. Sin embargo, faltan informaciónes tales como las fechas de producción o los lugares donde se hallaron los paquetes. La metodología de la tesis busca aprovechar el potencial de dichos paquetes desde cuatro enfoques de investigación diferentes. Se empieza presentando un panorama general de las diferencias entre los catálogos y entre los sistemas nacionales de distribución de azúcar. Luego, para limitar el alcance de los datos, se comparan las selecciones de idioma hechas, en primer lugar, en paquetes nuevos y antiguos de la ciudad de La Haya, y, en segundo lugar, en los paquetes creados a lo largo de la historia de tres almacenes neerlandeses. Por último, la investigación se enfoca en un único paquete para observar en detalle su recorrido y las decisiones tomadas en este proceso. Los resultados muestran una clara distinción entre el uso de idiomas extranjeros de dos maneras: como “fetiche lingüístico” y de forma “instrumental”. En la primera, los idiomas son usados para evocar asociaciones positivas, mientras que la segunda está directamente relacionada a las actividades transfronterizas de las empresas. Este tipo de plurilingüismo “instrumental” particular occure cada vez más seguido, como resultado de las dinámicas de creación de franquicias y de expanción internacional durante el periodo investigado.

Great Service from the Customar Service

From the collection "Intimacy Under the Wires" by Sivan Askayo, taken from Ignant.de

I have compared the first page of the translation to Ulster Scots of the "Customer Service Standards2007-2008" of the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) to the original (English) version. From my analysis it is clear that this translation does not follow the "strategy for Ullans" which Kirk has recorded after reading the DARD “Hannlin Rede 2010-2011”. This strategy consists of the following steps:

·     Avoid French- or Latin-derived vocabulary

·     Avoid abstractions lexically and at every other level

·     Avoid mass nouns

·     Maximise dynamic actions or activities

·     Use lexical obsolence

·     Use dialectisms, including any Ulsterisms

·     Maximise synonyms or alternatives

·     Maximise use of alternative syntax

·     Maximise respellings (use eye dialect)

(Kirk 2013: 295)

In the DEL “Customar Service Staunarts” French- and Latin-derived vocabulary is not avoided, as the title already shows. Within the excerpt we find among others: depairtment, qualitie, pairticular, access and formats.

The “Hannlin Rede” explicitly sets out the vision (spaesicht) of the DARD, while the “Customar Service Staunarts” talk about specific rules and measures for the treatment of DEL customers. The “Hannlin Rede” is therefore on the whole a level of abstraction higher than the “Staunarts”, which is reflected in the language use by fewer abstract references or mass nouns. This makes it a bit hard to compare, but overall it seems like abstraction is not avoided in the DEL translation. The abstraction employment is translated to employ. Employ is only listed as a verb ("to make use of") in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL), indicating it may be a recent coinage, possibly modeled on the French emploi. It bears the same degree of abstraction as employment. The abstract terms service and commitment  have been left untranslated.

The translation cannot be said to maximise dynamic actions or activities. Some changes are more and others less dynamic. Expect ("the standards of service that you can expect from us") has been replaced with leukan tae get. Expect in this sentence implies "regard as likely to happen", which is a passive thing to do. Leukan tae get implies much more activity and it is also a change of tone towards the more colloquial. At the other hand tells you about has been replaced with gies you wittins anent, which is more formal and more abstract. Because "giving information" is more abstract than "telling about" it is also less dynamic.

Alternative words and synonyms have not been maximised in this excerpt; such words as business, programs and customar could have been replaced, but have not. One could even ask if it is always justified to leave the original word; for instance for customar the only result in the DSL is "An official having charge of the customs; a customs officer." However if a word with the meaning of the English customer did not yet exist in Ulster-Scots, it seems fair enough to borrow that meaning into the language as it is less obfuscatory than the periphrasis tha yins we'r fennin/dalin wi (DARD 2010: 1).

There are some notable syntax changes. In two instances superlatives are created through adding -maist as a suffix. This is not mentioned in Robinson's grammar guide (1997), however it is mentioned in an online Scots language course: "In words of two or more syllables the comparative is formed by prefixing mair, and the superlative is formed by suffixing maist." (Eagle 2001: Adjectives). 

In some subordinate clauses the finite verb is left out: An us no aible for tae dae it, we will gie an expoun. Verbless subordinate clauses are indeed a common feature of Scots, although  Robinson (1997: 111) suggests they are normally used to express surprise or indignation, which is not the case here.

There is one instance of a verbal concord in the excerpt: Some airts o our business haes customers staunarts relate to aefauld programs. There is also one instance of the form bes of the verb 'to be': We will mak sicar our facilities bes redd up, bien an open. Robinson (1997: 149) indicates that the verb form bes can be used to indicate a "'habitual' or ongoing condition". This means that its use here is appropriate.

Alternative spellings are used, but not maximised; a lot of words are left the same as in the English version. Where respellings are used they are consistent and usually they have precedents in Scots or Ulster Scots literature. Examples are prent/prentit, appyntment (precedent: appeynt, DSL), Inglis. Depairtment is cited in the DSL with several precedents starting in 1985, suggesting that it is an innovation from the current wave of language revival. Caars is a logical, if slightly confusing, adaption of caa which is a precedented way of spelling the cognate of "call" in Ulster Scots, seen for instance in Philip Robinson's poetry. The spelling -fu for the suffix as in helpfu is widely used in Ulster Scots, respelled to reflect distinct pronunciation (See for instance "mournful" in Fenton 2006: 250). Some alternative spellings that have been used in other Ulster Scots texts have note; for instance for is used here, whereas the Hannlin Rede uses fur and service is used whereas the Euraip Chairtèr fur Kintra-pairt ur Unnèr-Docht Leids uses sarvice (DFP 2005: 16).

So, what strategy does the DEL document use? The text can be seen in the context of Jean Ure's explanation of how new registers are developed (see chapter 2). As said, to develop new registers either contemporary registers may be drawn upon and extended; where forms from an earlier period are preserved these provide patterns that may be activated to suit new needs; and other languages may provide models on which new registers can be based. The DEL text employs a mix of these to create a new register in Ulster Scots. Colloquial Ulster Scots (caars, meenit, leukan tae get, helpfu) is mixed with medieval Scots conventions (qualitie, prent/prentit, Inglis, verbal concord), thus extending contemporary Ulster Scots registers and reactivating forms from an earlier period. The English-language original text is translated word for word and phrase for phrase into Ulster Scots, meaning that the conventions of the model register are maintained in the new register in Ulster Scots. The result is clearly Ulster Scots, yet it does not come off as de-intellectualised but rather as suitably formal for the text's purpose. Within the confines of the genre – Civil Service Ulster Scots – this is the best kind of translation one could have hoped for.

The Language Revival Efforts of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

 The Department's promotional image on their Rural Development page.

Now that we have a solid impression of Ulster-Scots poetry, it is time to move on to an analysis of a wholly different genre that has popped up in the last few decades: Civil Service Scots, or official translations from English-language government documents to Ulster-Scots.

1(a) Why was this text created?

The question of why official documents are translated into Ulster-Scots is an interesting one. Especially if the translations contain unprecendented spelling and neologisms that may make the text quite hard to understand to actual Ulster-Scots speakers, the translations appear as unnecessary money waste at best and actually harmful to the development of the language at worst. Gavin Falconer (2004: 68-70) argues that the "minor revolution in official translation" that is underway in Northern Ireland is a result of parity of esteem and human rights discourse gone wrong. He writes:

 "Some of the commissions received by us have been instigated by a single individual's decision to make an issue out of the fact that a document has been translated into one language without any equivalent translation into the other - a precarious basis both for a business and for language revival. Some of our lengthiest translations have been commissioned on the off-chance of such a complaint arising without any intention of publication."

It is not clear that this is the common treatment of translations of all government departments. The DARD states in their 2011 document Language Policy for Irish and Ulster Scots that translations will routinely and pro-actively be done of material if it is intended for wide usage; if it is of particular relevance to Irish and Ulster-Scots speakers, or if it will contribute to safeguarding and promoting the language. Information leaflets do not necessarily need to be printed in all languages, but should be made readily available digitally "when required". Furthermore "when requested", translations of other documents will be considered, "subject to cost and value for money considerations".

Rural cottage in Co. Tyrone, on filmlocations.co.uk

In a later article Falconer (2005: 57) suggests six criteria for what makes a good translation into Ulster Scots:

• Will readers be able to access the information in the text by drawing on a familiarity with traditional Ulster-Scots literature? 
• Since so many users, even of full Ulster Scots, are literate only in English, will readers be able to access the information in the text drawing on a familiarity with the ortographic practices of that language? 
• Is the spelling of the text logical and consistent?
• Is all the information in the English text given in the Scots translation?
• Are the translations used for individual terms consistent, including across different translations, or are they being coined on an ad hoc basis?
• Would a back translation into English produce something close to the original, in a comparable register and without excessive paraphrase?

Is Ulster Scots a dying language?

Nursery rhyme art project by children from the Mall-ard's Kindergarten

Ulster Scots is in intensive contact with English and, to a lesser extent, Irish. Most Ulster Scots speakers are fluent in English and use it frequently both actively (e.g. in school, making it their language of literacy) and passively (e.g. on TV and in newspapers.) English is the more sizable, more dominant and overall more prestigious language. Based on these facts the situation of Ulster Scots makes it very likely that the language is degenerating rapidly, and makes gradual language death a very plausible outcome. We can therefore expect to find loss of registers and associated language forms; loss of lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntactic patterns, and replacement of lost aspects with English equivalents.
It is quite difficult to investigate exactly how and when the language contact with English has influenced the lexicon and structure of Ulster Scots, because few documents survive that were written in Scots in Ulster. This is because English was in the process of becoming the language of literacy already by the time the plantation began.

As shown by Montgomery and Gregg (1997: 584-8), Scots writing conventions gave way to English conventions in Ulster, as they did in Scotland, in the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th. At the end of this period distinctive Scots writing conventions such as quhilk or thir and grammatical features such as the indefinite article ane and the northern verbal concord had all but disappeared.That they had disappeared from writing does not necessarily mean that they had disappeared from speech as well; for instance, the geographical distribution of Scottish settlements during the Ulster plantation is almost exactly the same as the boundaries of Ulster Scots speaking areas found by Robert Gregg in the 1970s and 1980s (Montgomery and Gregg 1997: 578), indicating that the language in fact continued to be spoken by much of the population.

The way that speech has changed is even harder to establish for the plantation period, if not impossible, because there are no spoken records available and we do not know whether surviving texts are a good representation of pronunciation. About speech change in modern Scots we know more. Caroline Macafee (2003: 55) has interviewed urban Glaswegian Scots speakers, which, although not directly relevant to the situation in Ulster, has resulted in a useful overview of the processes of speech change. She focuses on lexicon and finds that indeed, distinctive lexicon is disappearing. While older generations do still have passive knowledge of distinctively Scots words, they do not use them themselves but instead opt for English counterparts and English cognate forms, meaning their children no longer have even passive knowledge of the Scots terms. Scots words lose their full range of meaning, instead becoming specialised to particular senses; some of them are preserved only in compound forms or nursery rhymes.

Thocht-Polis, by Philip Robinson

  

Funny cow number 22, from FunnyPica.com

Full text of the poem: Thocht-Polis, by Philip Robinson.

1(a) Why was this text created?
  (b) What motivations does the author have for his style choices? (Extent of distinctive Scots vocabulary and grammatical aspects; neologisms and other innovative language use; spelling; distinctive form; imagery.)

Philip Robinson is well-known among modern-day Ulster-Scots enthousiasts, for his novels and poetry in the language and his position on various boards, societies and councils for Ulster-Scots (read more here), and importantly for the extensive Ulster-Scots grammar guide of his hand. As well as two published volumes of poetry he has three poetry weblogs, one for contemporary free-verse, one for humorous poems and one for poetry in traditional stanzas. The wide range of genres and styles suggests Robinson is consciously trying to expand the literary "reach" of the Ulster-Scots language.

He grew up in Boneybefore, which is not far from James Orr's native Ballycarry. His language use is similar to that of Orr, but with considerable differences in spelling and noticeable neologisms here and there. His own spelling is not consistent across or even within the poems.

"Thocht-Polis" is one of the poems in Alang tha Shore (published 2005), and it is also featured on his blog Mair rhymin Ulster-Scotch crack, the one with humourous poems, or as Robinson puts it "writ fur a bit o a lach". It brings opponents of the Ulster-Scots language on stage as "tha Flet-Earth Societie". To them everything is black or white, and hence they cannot understand the Ulster Scots, who fall between two traditions; they are "black and white" at the same time just like the Frisian cows.

Differences in spelling between Orr and Robinson's poems include such common words as the, I and they, spelled in that way by Orr. Robinson spells the article tha, the first person pronoun A and for they he variously uses the' (in "Whit ir the' at?" and "The' lach and rage"), they (in "Whuniver they thegither play", "They cannae thole" and "To bigger beece they turn't"). It isn't entirely clear what the distinction depends on, though most likely the' is the unemphasised version. The verse is written in iambic tetrameter, but the they spelling is variously used in the emphasised and unemphasised positions. The' however is only found in unemphasised positions. The spelling of the word what is not consistent either; in the online version of the poem it is spelt whit thrice and once whut. The version that was reprinted in Frank Ferguson's anthology of Ulster-Scots writing uses whit once, whut twice and once what. In other poems he uses quhit as a spelling too, e.g. in The Gaelic Archipelago.

Where Burns and Orr both use ca'  (for call) and a' (for all), Robinson uses caa and aa. He uses thocht while Orr spells this word thocht and roon where Orr uses roun'. Altogether Robinson uses a lot more spellings that mark the words as distinct from standard English. As said the discussed poems by Burns and Orr were both in relatively "thin" Scots. Yet the poem "Donegore Hill" by Orr which was in thicker Scots still contains the same spellings as "Death and Burial" does, it just contains more Scots words than the latter.

Why might Robinson be using more distinctive spelling? It may be just be an idiosyncratic thing; in an unstandardised language much is allowed. But the distinctiveness of his spelling choices seems to be in line with the general rule that the more suppressed a language group feels about their language use, the more they will try to emphasise the distinctiveness of their language. James Orr was writing before the education laws of the 1830s, with a nationalised corpus which enforced use of standard English in the classroom. These laws contributed a lot to the stigma against the Ulster-Scots language, as children were told from early on that their way of talking was wrong. Indeed Thocht-Polis is railing against the stigma on the language. In Tha Gaelic Archipelago, too, Robinson hints at the stigma in the lines "Ay. / Sorry - Yes. / We'r learnt we maun aye say YES."

The extent of distinctively Scots words in Thocht-Polis, as in ones that do not have a cognate word in English, is actually not that big. Gin is used, ocht, thole and blethers and the expression deil a haet. This is still more sistinctive language than used by other contemporary Ulster Scots poets. Charlie Reynolds in his poem Mae Mither's Tunge uses almost exclusively what John Kirk (2013: 283) terms "grammatical respellings" and "lexical respellings", or words which are part both of Ulster-Scots and English, but which are spelled to indicate the Ulster-Scots pronunciation:

Hae daen haes best tae change oor Tunge
Tae him its worth wus joost lake dung,
It wus English, English moarn til nicht
An oor ain mither tunge wus niver richt.

These poems seem to indicate that the distinctiveness of Ulster Scots from English has decreased considerably since the end of the 18th century, although the amount of distinctive spellings used has increased.


2 How successful was this text in reaching its audience?

Philip Robinson is well-known within the Ulster-Scots community for his efforts to promote the language. Outside of the community however he is hardly known at all. For instance, despite having published four novels and two volumes of poetry, Robinson does not at the time of writing have a page on Wikipedia, in English nor in Scots. Arguably though, his audience is those who are interested in Ulster Scots. A selection of his poetry, like Orr's, has been included in Frank Ferguson's anthology of Ulster-Scots writing.

What processes are usually part of reviving a language?

In the following section I argue that revival is one type of language planning, with its own specific difficulties and considerations. Haugen's overall model for language planning is useful here as it provides concepts to understand the revival process. It describes which steps may be taken in language planning, and distinguishes between linguistic aspects of planning (corpus planning) and societal aspects (status planning). He further distinguishes policy planning and language cultivation, although these may be much more wrought up than he suggests. All of the categories and most of the steps outlined in the framework also apply to revival of a language, as I will demonstrate below. They are not necessarily followed in the order given; rather all of them are often ongoing at the same time through different initiatives.

Haugen's language planning model as revised by Kaplan (1997: 29). 

Selection
The selection of languages as understood by Haugen is a top-down decision as to which languages should be used in a society. The problem identification stage consists of considerations made by the political leaders in choosing what languages to promote. These considerations may include: 

• the wish to modernise or to participate in the world economy (which may for instance lead to the promotion of colonial languages in post-colonial states), the wish to retain or promote a distinct identity (such as the promotion of Estonian over Russian in Estonia),
• the connotations of a competing language (such as the rejection of colonial languages in post-colonial states e.g. German in Namibia),
• the actual vitality of competing languages or dialects in the country, the variety favoured by the leaders themselves (such as the spread of the Parisian dialect of French),
• the resources needed to implement and elaborate a language (i.e. a language is more attractive for nation-wide promotion if good teaching materials are already available, meaning a lot if not all countries in the world now opt to teach English at least as a second language),
• and other situation-specific considerations.

Based on these considerations the allocation of norms follows, meaning the decision of which languages are granted what kind of official status and where which language should be used, e.g. which languages official documents will be published in; which languages can be used to communicate with government officials; which languages will be used as a medium and which taught in schools. 

In revival situations, the language may have been promoted from the bottom up before it gains official recognition. The considerations often include a notion that a part of culture will be lost if the language is allowed to die; the rights of minority language speakers whose access to services may be impaired by the lack of recognition of their language, as well as their sense of an identity that they are allowed to feel proud of; and a wish to mobilize aspects of ethnic identity in reaction to or to serve certain political views or goals. 

The crucial difference between the considerations listed above and those of a revival movement is that those listed above pertain to multiple competing languages, whereas revival movements focus on one language that they want to promote. As such the question is not, "which language should be used where", but "how can the usage of this language (in as many domains as possible) be achieved?"

Standardisation / Codification

The standardisation and codification of a language are considered necessary in order to promote and teach the language; they consist of the decision on one correct way of speaking and writing the language. This includes deciding on a writing system and an ortography, in the framework called graphisation; a standard grammar (grammatication) and inventarising the vocabulary of the language (lexication), which to an extent overlaps with terminological modernisation as mentioned in the "Elaboration" category; it may include lexical innovation in order to prepare the language for usage in new domains or in order to emphasize the distinctiveness of the language (for instance in the adoption and promotion of dialectal terms for existing concepts during the synthesis of Nynorsk). The new standards are subsequently codified in spelling guides, grammars, dictionaries and teaching materials.

Which steps are more and which less relevant for the revival of a language depends very much on the extent of deterioration of the language, the amount of written records and the amount of speakers that still speak some variety of it. The attitude of the speakers to the correctness of their own use is also crucial for the outcome. For the formation of the writing system revivalists may draw upon written records of the language, as in Irish, which cultivated a rich literary history until well into the 17th century. They may also consider the way that the language is actually spoken by its community, or which writing system is most likely to be easily understood by the potential learners. Dorian explains that some communities are more prescriptive or conservative about what the language should be like; for instance after the independence of India, Hindi language reformers disapproved of the many loanwords from Persian and English that had started to be commonly used by Hindi speakers, and pressed for grammatical and lexical standards based on Sanskrit. Other communities are more permissive of transformation of the language; they may accept loanwords as a suitable solution to the need to create words for all the new concepts that are created by the world's rapid modernisation ('mp3-player', 'to update', etc.) Although not a language in a revitalisation process, an example would be Dutch, which draws heavily upon English for terms related to new technologies, leaving the English spelling and pronunciation intact but integrating the words into the Dutch morphological system (e.g. 'gedownload'). Dorian argues that purism or heavy reliance on archaic forms of the language may be an obstacle to revitalisation as it can alienate speakers from the language they actually speak, or make them feel that their usage is inferior or not up to standards, thus resulting in a move away from the language rather than renewed vitality. This is in line with the conclusions of Bentahila and Eirlys (1993) who argue that while language revivalers often hope to restore the language to a previous, healthier state, they are more likely to achieve transformation of the language to suit new roles. 

Implementation

The next step is the implementation of the policies that have been decided upon in the previous steps; the adoption and spread of the language by the community. Correction is the (somewhat vague) term used by Haugen for specific measures taken to implement the social aspects of a language plan. In practice this means planning how exactly the language will be disseminated through education and otherwise; the considerations at this stage are how to organise teacher training, how to promote the language to students and parents, what the specific objectives of study should be, and how to fund it all. The implementation has to be evaluated and monitored; how does the population react? Are the teaching materials well-received and effective? Are the study objectives realised?

For languages that are subject to revival, education is often an important target, either to ensure that minority language speakers do not experience disadvantage (for instance if they speak a different language at home than they have to use at school, thus impairing their ability to understand what is being taught - this can lead to a model where children speak their mother tongue in their early primary school years, but transfer to a more widely used language at a later stage of their education); or to ensure the vitality and usage of the language in the future. Some languages are however still very far away from being viable for use in the classroom, for instance due to a lack of available teaching materials, a lack of teachers, or a lack of enthusiasm from within the community. In this case the implementation may consist of awareness campaigns to promote the language and privately arranged language courses rather than ones integrated into the national curriculum. Evaluation may take place in the form of, for instance, questions on censuses to find out how many people use the language at home, or fieldwork by linguists who investigate usage of the language by interviewing speakers.

Elaboration

It is crucial to the maintenance of a language that it is actually used and kept up to date with modern developments in terms of the range of registers available, words for new concepts, and styles to suit different purposes. In the framework this is called "functional development", which reflects the need to adapt the language to new roles and functions. Terminological development is done on a large scale in all living languages, mostly by individual writers and speakers though it may be controlled and regulated by language academies. Words may be borrowed from other languages, coined, for instance by the producer or inventor of a new product or through recombination of existing terms, or archaic terms may be reintroduced to serve new meanings. Sometimes newly introduced words may be very controversial or considered ugly or ridiculous by speakers - see the inkhorn controversies in 18th Century English. However, as the inkhorn terms show, such controversies may not always mean that the changes are halted.

Stylistic development entails that genres and styles are developed in the language. This is the work of poets, authors, television broadcasters, parlementarians, academics and really anyone who puts the language to new purposes; however the government may often grant funding specifically to support this goal. Jean Ure (1982) writes about possibilities for what she calls "developing register range". When a new purpose calls for a new register, the contemporary repertory may be drawn upon, extending the applicability of existing registers, then gradually modifying and differentiating the style to suit the new purpose. She gives the example of video messages of soldiers in the second world war for the people back home, which were shown on cinema newsreels. The soldiers would talk in letter form, starting and ending with letter greetings: "Now bye-bye and love to everyone at home from Johnny." A second possibility is when forms from an earlier period are preserved, either oral or written; these provide patterns that may be activated to meet new needs. Finally, other languages can provide models on which new registers may be based. Here her example is Tok Pisin, which has a narrative register influenced by speaker's original mother tongues and an official register influenced by English.

Kaplan has added internationalisation to the steps listed in this section, as he argues preparing the language for use abroad means it faces new challenges; for instance where subtle cultural differences in writing practises may obstruct interlingual understanding even if the language is the same. However, these are problems for languages in a far stage of development, rather than for minority languages that are struggling to even be spoken in their region of origin. However, terminological development and stylistic development are very important for languages that are being revived, and will be practised more or less in the way described above, with the difference that they are often just starting out on this endeavour and that they still have to develop fairly basic registers (such as appropriate styles to talk to one's teacher, bank teller or doctor), whereas more developed languages such as Italian or Polish can already be used for a wide variety of purposes and already have a long literary history, that they merely need to maintenance.


Perhaps one important aspect has been left out of Haugen's framework, which is nonetheless quite important especially for languages subject to revival; namely the work of linguists in mapping out the grammar and lexicon of a language, or salvaging what is left of a language in far stages of deterioration. An example would be the extensive fieldwork of 19th century linguists on native american languages, which has been crucial in promoting awareness of the languages and in some cases preserving enough of them to allow for a revival later on, as in the case of the Yurok language which is now being taught at schools again. This could be grouped in the codification category, as writing a language down and inventarising it is closely related to codifying it; with the difference that the former aims to be descriptive where the latter is essentially prescriptive.

Guy's knowledge applied to that of Grinevald Craig

Cave house in Cushendun. Photo by David McFarland.

How do Guy's types of language change apply to Grinevald Craig's types of language death?

Change into a different language may happen through internal change or language contact. This can even affect very big, powerful languages such as Latin. Yet internal change is not enough for a language to actually die. A language dies either if all speakers die (Sudden death) or if all of its speakers shift to another language (Gradual death) until the original language is forgotten, its remains sometimes integrated into the language towards which the shift happened. This means that gradual death is inherently a result of language contact, for there has to be a language towards which the community shifts. Whether the outcome of language contact is death of one of the languages in contact, or mere language change, depends on the size, prestige, and dominance of the respective languages as outlined in the post about Guy's article. Sudden death may be through disease, famine, natural disaster or genocide. Some form of language contact may happen in the latter, but with a very abrupt ending. There may not be enough time for the language contact to result in shift or borrowings, nor perhaps the will.

Pathways to extinction

Still from ASCII animation "The Death of Natural Language" by Clint Enns (link to gallery).

What is language death? What different pathways to extinction does Grinevald suggest? Which effects does language deterioration have on language structure?

For the purposes of this dissertation a language is considered "dead" when there are no fluent or partially fluent speakers left and the language is not used anymore for any purposes. The following section considers the concepts described by Colette Grinevald Craig in the chapter "Language Contact and Language Deterioration" (Handbook of Sociolinguistics, pp 257-270) and applies them to the situation of Ulster Scots. She notes that from a linguistic perspective, Latin is not really dead but rather it has changed so much that it cannot be called Latin anymore (but Romauntsh, Italian, Spanish, Romanian etc.) Moreover "real" Latin is still used for limited purposes, esp. by the Roman Catholic church. However a lot of native american languages can be considered really dead as they are not spoken anymore by anyone for any purpose and they did not change into a different language.

Grinevald Craig distinguishes a number of different pathways to language extinction, and outlines the following:

1. Sudden death – this only happens if all speakers of a language are annihilated, for instance through genocide or disease. Radical death is similar, except a few speakers are left who opt to shift to the dominant language out of self-preservation
2. Gradual death, or language deterioration – the result of a “long-standing assault” on the language, which has eroded the support from the inside.
   There are two different routes; typical is the “dialectal” route where the language is no longer used for formal functions and so loses its formal registers; its use becomes limited to the home and eventually is no longer transferred between generations as younger community members shift to the dominant prestige language.
   The other route is what I will call the “liturgic” route, where the informal use declines but the formal functions of the language are preserved, such as use in prayers and rituals. The language may eventually die completely if the religion is not practised anymore. Grinevald Craig indicates this route as "Latinate", which may be somewhat confusing as she also uses the example of Latin to illustrate change into a different language (as described above.) Some other examples of the liturgic route would be Old Church Slavonic, Pali in Buddhist scriptures, and Kallawaya in Bolivia. That noted, the liturgic route does often go hand in hand with change into a different language rather than death, but the old language is preserved in certain contexts due to its high prestige. The insistence of some groups on using the King James bible rather than versions in modern English may give some idea of the reason why old languages would be particularly preserved in religious contexts, because the original (or in the case of the King James version of the bible, simply older) phrasing of the texts is considered sacred and unalterable.

The gradual death of a language impacts on all aspects of its structure and usage; step by step the speaker community either imports aspects of a dominant neighbouring language into their own language, or altogether shifts to the dominant language for ever more  purposes. The extent and chronological order of these changes differs per situation, and commonly includes some or all of the following (here outlined briefly because of its relevance. For a full explanation I refer the reader to the chapter by Grinevald Craig.)

• Loss of registers and language forms associated with them. Most commonly this means that a language is no longer used for formal purposes such as scientific, political, or religious speech  or for education (common to the dialectal route described above). The loss of a register takes with it the styles and words specific to the usage, such as specific verb tenses, or more polite sounding words. Alternatively, as in the liturgic route, a language may lose colloquial registers, taking with them informal styles of speech and only leaving for instance ritualistic phrases or prayers.
• Lexical loss. Lexical items that are easily lost include words for things that are not culturally relevant anymore and words that are so similar to those of the dominant language that they effectively merge. Relexification, or the replacement of words from the one (usually minority) language with that of the other (dominant) language, may be both a cause and an effect of lexical loss; because a non-native word is commonly substituted for a native one, the native one is gradually forgotten, thus reinforcing the need to substitute it.
• Loss in phonology. In the contact with other languages certain phonological distinctions may be lost; Grinevald Craig gives the example of contrastive vowel length in Pipil of El Salvador. The language may also gain new phonics which it did not have before e.g. a language in contact with English may start to utilise the approximant /ɹ/ as well as a rolling /r/. 
• Loss in morphology. A deteriorating language may lose such grammatical aspects as appropriate gender and case or lesser-used tense settings. It could be argued that this also happened to English during its contact with French and Scandinavian, as Old English had a much more complicated system of case suffixes for nominals than any modern variant.
• Loss in syntax. A dying language may lose certain syntactic constructions in that something which was once considered correct is not anymore, or if it is still considered correct it may not used as often. This can go hand in hand with morphological loss as a reduction of cases would necessarily make the syntax more rigid to substitute for the loss of grammatical distinction.

Impact of language contact on language change

Argument 1: Individual bilingual speakers will transfer aspects from their one language into the other.

 Nancy Rourke: ASL at ease, 2011. Website.

What sort of forces cause language change? Summarise the article by Gregory R. Guy.

How does language change? Gregory R. Guy makes a distinction between three major types of causes. Firstly internal or spontaneous change, such as sound change, semantic broadening, narrowing or pejoration, coinages etc. This would happen even if the speaker community was entirely isolated from other languages.  The other two types both arise when the speaker community is not isolated, but is in contact with other language communities. In borrowing speakers of a given language (L1) import aspects of another language (L2) into their own. Imposition or interference entails that speakers of L1 inadvertently use rules and devices from L1 when speaking L2, thus affecting L2.

For both language contact causes there needs to be some degree of bilingualism of some percentage of the speaker community, here understood to mean that speakers speak at least a bit of more than one language, wether learned as a child or later on in life. In order to import words from another language one needs to have some sense of what they are used for in that language first.

Furthermore in contact situations, the relative size, dominance, prestige and degree of standardisation of the languages that are in contact have a lot of influence on the linguistic outcome. If one language has a much larger speaker community, the changes will take longer to filter through to each speaker, although a local variant can develop that shows a lot of influence from language contact in that locality. For a small community, language innovations can reach all speakers of the language more easily. Moreover the motivation for borrowing is often based on status. Therefore the direction of the borrowing will be mostly from the more prestigious language to the less prestigious one, e.g. from that spoken by the upper or ruling class to that spoken by lower and middle class people. Interference is usually not as conscious of a choice as borrowing, and therefore it is not status based. It occurs often in learning or shift situations, where one community has to adapt to the language of another, and where bilinguals are likely to be fluent in their native language but in the process of learning the language that the imposition happens to. However in cases of coexistence of two languages, or for balanced bilinguals, the interference can go both ways. Both languages will influence one another.

I am making a distinction between the dominance of a language and its prestige, dominance describing the status of the language in terms of being used for official purposes and spoken by people with more power. Prestige on the other hand is the "coolness" factor, which language is in fashion depending on current ideology. Often prestige and dominance go hand in hand, as with French in modern France, but social upheaval can lead to resistance against a dominant language and preference for another, which then gains prestige. Such would have been the case in Norway during the rise of Nynorsk, by way of protest against the Danish influence.

The degree of  standardisation of a language is important because a language for which there are authoritative reference guides for word meanings, spelling, grammar and pronunciation will be much less inclined to change.


How is the situation of Ulster Scots in Guy's terms?

Ulster Scots coexists in Northern Ireland mainly with English and also with Irish, although the communities that speak Ulster Scots and the ones that speak Irish can be expected to be fairly segregated, i.e. bilingual Ulster Scots and Irish speakers will be rare. There is a coexistence situation, that is, Ulster Scots has been spoken alongside of English for centuries and speakers are not coerced to shift. Yet English is clearly the more sizable and dominant of the languages, being spoken worldwide by about 340 million speakers as a native language and another 430 as a second language (Ethnologue: English). According to the Ethnologue there are 90,000 speakers of Scots in the United Kingdom and 10,000 in Ireland (Donegal), and there is no separate entry for Ulster Scots. Both in Ulster and in Scotland the language has been relegated entirely to the informal sphere, whereas English is used for education and all official purposes. Sheila Douglas writes: "Many Scots people are still half-stifled by a social environment that frowns on the use of Scots for anything more important than casual conversation." Of the people in the communities that speak Scots or Ulster Scots, 97% speak English as well (Ethnologue: Scots) which makes them bilingual speakers.

Due to the revivals of the past centuries Scots and Ulster Scots are gaining in prestige again. Children who speak the language in the playground would now not be beaten, although they might still be corrected. Ulster Scots has benefited from the Good Friday Agreement with considerable funding and some governmental endorsement, and it has been promoted as a marker of a distinct identity.


What can we, therefore, expect to find with regards to language change in Ulster Scots?

Since the speaker community of Ulster Scots consists mostly of balanced bilinguals who use Ulster Scots for informal registers (provided the other speaker understands it) and English for more formal ones, it can be expected that there will be a lot of cross-influence from Ulster Scots on the local variety of English and from English on Ulster Scots.  Due to the great intensity of the language contact this influence can be expected to be quite far-reaching, affecting all aspects of Ulster Scots i.e. phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon etc. The influence on English as a whole will be small because of English' giant speaker base, and its high degree of standardisation will mean that the local influence is limited to less formal registers as the standard variety is preferred for the more formal ones.

It may be hard to tell apart the effects of borrowing and intereference. Because the speakers are such balanced bilinguals (fluent in both languages) no useful distinction can be made between their L1 and their L2. The only distinction that is then left between borrowing and interference is whether the innovator made a conscious choice to use a certain aspect from the one language in the other, or whether it was a "mistake". Yet this may show variation on a case by case basis - the one's mistake may be another's conscious choice.

Theory

1. Individual bilingual speakers will transfer aspects from their one language into the other.

2. If a large percentage of a community that speaks a particular language also speaks a particular second language, features of the second language will become a common part of the community's native speech.

3. The overwhelming majority of Ulster Scots speakers are fluent in English as well.

4. Therefore a lot of aspects of English have found their way into Scots.

5. Writing down a mostly oral language creates a reference point for correct use of the language and causes or facilitates standardisation. 

6. When spoken language is written down, changes that have occured in the language will be locked in.

7. Revival authors write down a language that is mostly oral and under threat, often in an attempt to save it from going extinct.

8. Through revival literature the influence of the English language on Ulster Scots becomes standardised.

Proposed research project

Semi-structured interviews with second generation immigrants in their teens and twenties about language innovations and language-related social standing.

Rules of interaction with Mocros: do not imitate them because they will laugh at you. Source: Partyflock.

Why this group?

As second generation immigrants will normally be fairly balanced bilinguals, they are likely to be primary agents of language innovation within their own community and beyond. This makes them an excellent group to test and elaborate on theories of contact-induced language change with, concerning borrowing and interference and the spread of these features throughout the community. Particular types of language innovations are known to be mostly done by teenagers, but an extension of the research could include contrastive interviews with adult members of the same community.

An example of such a group would be children of Morrocan immigrants in the Netherlands. At one hand their use of the Dutch language shows imposition (interference) of their first language, e.g. the application of determiners “deze” and “die” differs significantly from that of non-bilingual Dutch speakers (*wat is deze v. wat is dit; *die meisje vs dat meisje.) At the other hand it can be expected that their use of their first language would include borrowed items from Dutch. The social evaluation of such language innovations may add to or decrease the social standing of those who use them frequently: among second generation Moroccan immigrants a language variety dubbed Mocro has emerged, which has spread to Dutch natives of the same age. Its spread beyond the community indicates that it is seen as "prestigious": whoever speaks it is fairly cool.

Topics to discuss would include:

• To what extent are the interviewees conscious of their own language behaviour?
• Can they give examples of their L1 influencing their L2 and vice versa? How would they explain these language choices?
• Do bilingual speakers within the immigrant community have a better social standing? (This tests a theory posed by Gregory R. Guy (1990:4) that linguistic innovation in language contact situations usually takes place in the “upper stratum of the borrowing group” e.g. the L1 speakers with the highest social standing.)
• How are community members seen that do not make any of the imposition-related language “mistakes”, i.e. who speak the host language fluently? (Following the theory by William Labov that certain language changes are motivated by a sense of solidarity or local prestige, community members who speak the host language fluently can be expected to be regarded
  by other community members as lacking solidarity or as making an attempt to disassociate themselves from the community.)

Choosing a qualitative method rather than a quantitative one will allow for insight into the “why” and “how” of language change rather than just the “if”; through interviews the researcher can explore the deeper motivations of language choices in detail, which would not be possible or at least much harder through questionnaires with Likert-scale questions. The interviewees will benefit from the interviews in that their awareness of their own language behaviour and their own attitudes about social status will increase.

Using poetry as a resource for historical linguistics.

The inconvenient thing about the past is that it is impossible to set up an experiment, for instance to evoke exactly the type of utterances that are needed for a language study. Instead one has to make do with whatever source material is available. Although (self-conscious) Ulster Scots was not used for official written purposes, a good number of Ulster Scots poems from the 18th Century survive and they can be compared to Lallans and Doric poetry from around the same time as well as to modern Ulster Scots poetry and writing. But some things need to be taken into account when using poetry as a linguistic resource. The language used in poetry does not per se reflect "naturalistic" speech of the time that it was written; it is just another register with words used because they are deemed to sound poetic, or abbreviated to make the sentence run better. However, even if it is written and not recorded, poetry is a surprisingly good source for figuring out how speech would have sounded around the time of writing. 


The study of Old English has learnt a lot from studying the poetry of Chaucer (1343-1400); about the vocabulary and grammar of the language but also about the way it was pronounced.  The latter can be found out by comparing words that would be expected to rhyme - if Chaucer rhymes melody and eye this shows that his pronunciation of either one or the other must have differed from that today. For this reason poetry is even "likely the best source" for how historical speech sounded, says Linde Lunney (2006: 51). She notes that it is especially important to analyse Ulster Scots poetry or "the poetry written in what purports to be a written version of the Ulster-Scots spoken dialect", because "in this sub-genre the poet's awareness of the sounds of speech, and his efforts to recreate them in written form, are as important to the 'message' as they are to the 'medium'." Ulster-scots poetry usually contains nonstandard spellings that are intended to reflect how the word would actually be pronounced by Ulster-Scots speakers.

It should be noted that identifying the vocabulary from the poem is not as easy as it may seem at first glance. Words used in poetry do not always (or: often don't) reflect the "normal" vocabulary at that time as authors may choose words that sound more learned or beautiful instead of words people would usually have used. There are some periods in which it was common for poets to be very innovative with their language use. An obvious example is Shakespeare, who is credited with significantly expanding the language by using existing verbs as nouns and adjectives and vice versa, and coining a great deal of words too, for instance compulsive. (see OED: "compulsive"). Andrew Zurcher notes about studying an innovative poet such as Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) that

"it becomes very difficult to register exactly which parts of his verse qualify as innovative. What looks convincingly like archaism to us today might not, to an Elizabethan, have seemed strange at all. By contrast, words that we now accept as standard, or quasi-standard, might have seemed unfamiliarly archaic to Elizabethan readers." (Zurcher 2005)

This problem is very much true for Ulster Scots poetry as well. Out of such motivations as protectivism of the language, the poets would often have sought to use as "pure" Ulster Scots as possible with the most un-english words they could find, no matter whether these would have sounded unusual to the casual speaker. A recent example, William Forbes Marshall (1888-1959) is described as "an aficionado of Ulster Scots and an avid collector of words and phrases." (**: 361)