I think it's a bit grandiose to call it a war, but the axis of dissent
concerned 'authentic' representations of the voice on the one hand, as an
internationalized politics of the oppressed (usually though not exclusively
an urban formation), and a politicisation of language on the other hand
which, in Scotland, meant the alignment of rural Scots with overt
nationalism. A consequence (or corollary) of the latter was a move to codify
Scots as a language similar to, but distinct from, English. Once codified,
the codifiers were inclined (as, for instance in editorial policy at Lallans
magazine) to reject work the former category.
I can't tell you the bitter and futile arguments I've seen, heard, and
participated in over such trivialities as whether or not to use an
apostrophe in place of the 'd' in 'and' or not, an stuff like that.
Naming no names...
P
Bloody, by the way, I thought was connected to crucifixion wounds.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to
> poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Robin Hamilton
> Sent: 17 March 2005 01:57
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: The Glasgow Language Wars -- was: Re: Euphemisms ...
>
> > For the uninitiated, do you think you could tell about the
> Language Wars?
> >
> > Mark
>
> Do you know, Mark, I thought this would be easy to answer?
>
> ... but it's not.
>
> The quick&easy (and pretentious) answer would be that it was
> to do with the use of urban speech in literature.
>
> But that begs at least five separate questions.
>
> (Like, why didn't they break-out earlier, why at the start it
> was specifically *Glasgow* +poetry+ that we fought over, was
> "The Coming of the Wee Malkies" written before "Six Glasgow
> Poems", and at the worst, the Serious Question of the nature
> of Dundee speech in The Broons ...
>
> ... oh god, ask Carlos, he's there, I'm not.
>
> And that's even before we get to to issues of censorship and
> how the major nexus of new wave cyberpunk SF managed to
> locate itself in Glasgow (ask Doug
> Barbour) and the howls of outrage over the refusal of the
> School of Scottish Studies to index urban speech.
>
> But the quick&dirty answer was Tom Leonard read "The Good
> Thief" on the third story of a tenement in Hillhead Street in
> 1966, and after that, it was history.
>
> R.
>
> {This was Way Back When, and the terms "liminal" and barrio
> poetry hadn't then been coined, otherwise we'd have used them.}
>
> Look, Mark, we'd have used bloody *anything* to win.
>
> And we did.
>
> What did it get us? "Trainspotting" and Ian Rankin and
> sodding Edinburgh noir detective novels.
>
> Angels weep.
>
> Robin
>
>
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