The discursive construction of the Scots language : education, politics and everyday life / Johann Wolfgang Unger, Lancaster University.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

This monograph is about how the Scots language is discursively constructed, both from 'above' (through texts such as educational policies, debates in parliament and official websites) and from 'below' (in focus group discussions among Scottish people). It uses the interdisciplinary discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis to examine what discursive strategies are used in different texts, and also to investigate salient features of context. This allows a broader discussion of the role of this language in Scotland, and how different ways of constructing a language can percola.

The Discursive Construction of the Scots Language; Editorial page ; Title page ; LCC data ; Epigraph ; Acknowledgements; Table of contents; List of figures; List of tables; List of abbreviations; Transcription conventions; 1. Introduction; 1.1 Overview ; 1.2 Why research the Scots language ; 1.3 Research design ; 1.4 Terminology ; 2. The Scots language in context; 2.1 What is Scots? ; 2.2 The historical development of Scots ; 2.2.1 Origins -- 1707 ; 2.2.2 1707 -- Present ; 2.2.3 Timeline of the main events in the development of Scots ; 2.3 Scholarly research on Scots.

2.3.1 Linguistic approaches 2.3.2 The problem of writing and register ; 2.3.3 Moving towards language policy research ; 2.3.4 Critical and discursive approaches to Scots ; 3. Studying language policy from a discursive perspective; 3.1 Theoretical and methodological influences ; 3.2 Different levels of theory ; 3.3 Critical discourse analysis (CDA) ; 3.3.1 Principal theoretical assumptions of CDA ; 3.3.2 The discourse-historical approach ; 3.3.3 'Doing' CDA ; 3.4 Pierre Bourdieu's 'symbolic capital' and the 'linguistic market' ; 3.4.1 The nature of the linguistic market.

3.4.2 The linguistic habitus 3.5 Bakhtin's notions of 'heteroglossia' and 'dialogicality' ; 3.6 Critical approaches to language policy (CALP) ; 3.7 From theoretical concepts to objects of investigation ; 3.7.1 Context ; 3.7.2 Fields ; 3.7.3 Genre ; 3.7.4 Discourse ; 3.7.5 Text ; 3.7.6 Strategy ; 3.7.7 Linguistic theories ; 3.7.8 Intertextuality, interdiscursivity, recontextualisation ; 3.7.9 Operationalising concepts and questions ; 3.8 Selection of written texts ; 3.9 Focus groups ; 3.9.1 Why focus groups? ; 3.9.2 How focus groups? ; 3.9.2.1 Variety and 'representativeness'

3.9.2.2 Locations 3.9.2.3 Participants ; 3.9.2.4 Moderation, questions and prompts ; 3.9.2.5 Recording and transcription ; 3.9.2.6 Topic identification ; 3.9.2.7 Analysis ; 3.10 Summary: from eclectic theories to cohesive framework ; 4. 'Top-down' discourse on Scots at the start of the Twenty-first Century; 4.1 Four salient texts ; 4.2 Fields: the socio-political context ; 4.3 Genres: what kinds of texts? ; 4.3.1 National curricula ; 4.3.1.1 Are the 5-14 Guidelines a hegemonic text? ; 4.3.2 Educational website ; 4.3.3 Record of parliamentary debate ; 4.3.4 Languages Strategy.

4.4 Contents: what do the texts say? 4.4.1 The 5-14 guidelines ; 4.4.2 Census debate ; 4.4.3 Special focus website ; 4.4.4 Languages Strategy ; 4.5 Discursive strategies and their linguistic realisations ; 4.5.1 Scots as (a) dialect, (a) language, (an) accent ; 4.5.2 Scots as the language children bring to school ; 4.5.3 Scots as part of Scottish culture and heritage ; 4.5.4 Revisiting the macro-strategies ; 4.6 Summary: intertextual and interdiscursive links ; 5. Voices 'from below': Strategic ambivalence; 5.1 Analysis of focus groups ; 5.2 Design and composition of the focus groups.

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