The debate on Scots orthography

On the origin of linguistic norms: Orthography, ideology and the first constitutional challenge to the 1996 reform of German

“…Similar uses of orthography as a means of styling both Self and Other in debates over ethnic, regional, and0or national identities have been explored in the context of Scots English (McClure 1985), Indonesian and Malaysian (Vikør 1988), English Creole in Trinidad and Tobago (Winer 1990), Louisiana French (Brown 1993), Haitian Creole (Schieffelin & Doucet 1994), Manx (Sebba 1998b), Norfolk dialect (Trudgill 1999), and Corsican (Jaffe 1999). And whereas Clark & Ivanic (1997:195-211) critically explore the use of spelling and punctuation as a means of disciplining language users at school and beyond whereas Kress 2000 focuses on the emergent writing practices of young children as these attempt to marry the desire to use orthography as an expression of personal creativity, on the one hand, with the pressure to conform to mainstream practices, on the other (see also Kataoka 1997).…”

Can Schools Dispense with Standard Language? Some Unintended Consequences of Introducing Scots in a Scottish Primary School

“…Defining Scots has long been a preoccupation in Scotland not least among Scots language advocates. The Scots language movement emerged in the form of a literary Renaissance in the 1920s (Lyall ), propelled by writers such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir, and has gone through phases where standardization featured high among the priorities of its proponents (McClure , , ; Purves ). The current dominant position among language advocates however, including the promoters of the Scots language education program under examination in this article, is that Scots represents a continuum that encompasses the linguistic practices of most of the population of Scotland, from accented SSE to urban and rural dialectal practices .…”