SCOTTISH STANDARD ENGLISH IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract This paper attempts to draw attention to the rich tradition of grammar and dictionary writing which flourished in Scotland in the late eighteenth century. While the work of Elphinston and Buchanan is relatively well known, there is little on record concerning the large number of works written in Scotland in the period which set out not only to record the ‘deficiencies’ of Scottish English pronunciation (and syntax) but also to provide exemplification of a standard for emulation. That this endeavour was instigated and organized by the Select Society of Edinburgh gives Scotland a claim to have gone some way to actually setting up an equivalent to the proposed English Academy. However, it has not been generally recognized that in many instances writers of Scottish grammars and pronouncing dictionaries were not holding up for emulation some version of London society English, but rather a Scottish standard of the type spoken by members of the clergy, the universities and the legal profession, probably based on upper class usage in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The phonological characteristics of this Scottish Standard, as they are evidenced in Alexander Scot's The Contrast , are the main subject of this paper.