Language in context seminar

Speaker: Karin Bosshard (Translation Studies, University of Edinburgh)

Title: A Stornoway cove and a Broch quine – thoughts on regional voices, identity and attitudes to language in Ian Stephen’s novel A Book of Death and Fish

Abstract: Ian Stephen’s unusual novel A Book of Death and Fish (Saraband, 2014) is an homage to the Isle of Lewis, in particular to the town of Stornoway and its people and voices. The narrator, a sea-obsessed Lewisman and raconteur extraordinaire Peter MacAulay, combines colloquial Scottish English, Hebridean dialect, Stornoway vernacular and Gaelic terms in an idiosyncratic blend. In contrast to the voice of the Lewis narrator stand the Scots-speaking characters, mainly from the town of Fraserburgh on the Scottish east coast, but also from the Central Belt and from Shetland.

This presentation will address the diversity of regional voices in this piece of contemporary Scottish fiction and relate them to questions of (regional) identity and belonging. First, the different varieties, their literary representations and narrative function will be investigated through the prism of sociolinguistics and stylistics, based on textual examples. The discussion will then turn to the theme of linguistic diversity in the text more broadly. By looking at metalinguistic features of the narrator’s discourse, attitudes to language and issues of regional identity – key themes in the novel – will be highlighted. Thoughts on the implications of this linguistic diversity on the translation of A Book of Death and Fish into German will conclude the presentation.

Further information

Following the online seminar questions and further discussion will be possible.