Sociolinguistics in Scotland

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of sociolinguistic research in Scotland and showcases developments in sociolinguistic theory, method and application, highlighting Scotland’s position as a valuable ’sociolinguistic laboratory’. Dealing with all levels of language, each chapter focuses on language use in different regions of Scotland, including Aberdeen, the Borders, Edinburgh, Fife, Glasgow and the Shetland Isles. Topics include the study of variation in towns on the Scottish-English border, the acquisition of variation by non-native speakers, lexical erosion in rural communities, and Gaelic and English code-switching. Other chapters focus on the history of sociolinguistic research in Scotland, the study of syntactic variation using the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech, the influence of the media on language change, and changes in language attitudes in Shetland. Bringing together chapters written by a range of international scholars, this book provides an insight into Scotland’s contemporary sociolinguistic landscape and is a key resource for advanced students and researchers interested in language use in Scotland.