Fisher Speak: Variation and Change in the Lexis of Scottish Fishing Communities

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By 2050, little will remain of the highly distinctive dialects of the Scottish fishing communities. Although the process will be dramatic, in essence what is happening in these communities is a form of language death. Fisher speak: variation and change in the lexis of Scottish fishing communities will record and preserve as much as possible of this diversity, providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the vocabulary employed in these communities has changed in the past and, most vitally, in the present. It will catalogue the ways in which a dying way of life, heavily embedded in the history and culture of the neighbourhoods studied, affected the local language and the linguistic ways in which its coming absence are already making themselves known. In order to provide a workable sample of coastal communities which is still representative, both major fishing centres and smaller settlements will be surveyed. The lexical use of Eyemouth (Berwickshire), the East Neuk of Fife (in particular, Anstruther), Peterhead (Aberdeenshire), Lossiemouth and Hopeman (Moray) and Wick (Caithness) will be considered in diachronic and synchronic depth.Lasting thirty-six months, Fisher speak will be carried out by the Principal Investigator, Robert McColl Millar, and a Research Assistant (to be appointed). It will involve interaction with the most accomplished speakers over what lexis is being lost in each locale, and recruitment of speakers across the age and gender spectrum for both pilot and main studies. Particular attention will be paid at all age levels to the extent to which present and past employment in the fishing trade affects both passive and active knowledge of particular lexical items. At the same time, both project members will assemble and analyse prior discussions and exemplifications of the dialects in question, whether local, regional or national, whether written or recorded. This will produce a broad and deep historical corpus for the dialects studied.New methodologies for studying lexical variation and change / previously not as fully covered as phonological or syntactic change / will be developed, deriving insights from both the questionnaire-based dialectological tradition, as used by Macafee in her study of traditional dialect lexical attrition in the East End of Glasgow, and the developing Mind-Mapping techniques of the Survey of Regional English (SURE) group. Particular attention will be given to the problems caused by the comparison of change in real time and change in apparent time, to potential differences in rates of change between words and phrases associated with the fishing trade and the seaborne life (including the tabu-avoidance language so common in the North Sea world) and local dialect words and phrases with no such association. Although the questionnaire will inevitably alter from place to place, care will be taken / and 'native experts' will be consulted / to achieve as high a degree of coincidence as possible.The project will result in the production of two books: a scholarly monograph dealing with the nature of lexical variation and change over place and time and the problems associated with the development of methodologies to assess this nature, and a work on the fisher dialects of Scotland and their lexis intended for a wider audience. Both project members will also produce peer-reviewed journal articles for audiences in the UK and overseas.As important, however, will be the community outreach plans for the project. Although elements of the corpus collected will be placed in central archives in Scotland and elsewhere, considerable interaction with the fishing communities, their organisation, museums and cultural centres over collected materials is also planned.