Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Introduction -- Nationalism and the Scots Renaissance now -- REFERENCES -- SCOTS AND LOW GERMAN: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF TWO MINORITY LANGUAGES -- 1 INTRODUCTION -- 2 THE DIFFERENT POSITIONS OF SCOTS AND LOW GERMAN IN THEIR EARLY HISTORIES -- 3 HISTORICAL COMPARISONS OF INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS INCLUDING PRESENT CONDITIONS -- 4 SOCIOLINGUISTIC CAUSES OF THE DECLINE -- 5 LINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SCOTS -- 6 CONCLUSION -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- The rise and fall of the Morningside/Kelvinside accent -- Introduction -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- LINGUISTIC FIELDWORK IN A SCOTTISH NEW TOWN -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- Overt and covert prestige: Evaluative boundaries in the speech community -- Introduction -- A survey of attitudes to Lowland Scots -- The questionnaire -- The sample -- Investigating linguistic attitudes -- Discussion of a lexical item -- Results -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- 'Knappin', 'Proper English', 'Modified Scottish' Some language attitudes in the Shetland Isles -- The Scandinavian heritage -- Social variation in Shetland -- Attitudes to other British accents -- "Shetland" versus "English" -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- The narrative skills of a Scottish coal miner -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- On the variability of Hebridean English syntax: the verbal group -- 1. The background -- 2. Data collection -- 3. Description of the data: some features of the verb phrase -- 4. Be after doing -- 5. Variability of the data: use and non-use of the Present Perfect -- 6. Seen, come, run, been and done -- 7. Concluding remarks on the literary representation of HE -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- Variation in Hebridean English -- Background -- Informants -- Variation in HE -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- The search for a Scots narrative voice -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- Our ain leid? The predicament of a Scots writer.

A Introduction -- B Is Scots English? or is Scotch no juist orra English -- C Our ain leid -- D The Scots language and the press -- E Wir ain aaldlanguage. Writin ida Shetland dialect -- F The makin o a Scots prose -- G Amang the buiks. Our ain leid? The predicament of a Scots writer -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- The debate on Scots orthography -- 1. Scots is a language distinct from English, and therefore merits a distinct orthography -- 2. A systematic spelling for Scots would increase its social and academic respectability -- 3. A standardised spelling would lessen the confusion resulting from the licence currently permitted to Scots writers to spell more or less as they please -- 4. Since there are several distinct dialects of Scots, there could be no 'standard' spelling for the entire country -- 5. The proposed new spellings for Scots are outlandish in appearance -- 6. There is no point in trying to introduce a reformed spelling for Scots, since nobody will use it -- REFERENCES -- THE CHRISTMAS STORY IN SCOTS -- GLOSSARIES -- Poetry in Glasgow dialect -- NOTE -- INDEX -- Authors' addresses -- The series Varieties of English Around the World.