1.
Introduction
1.1. The
Potential of Fishermen's Dialect for a Study in Linguistic Geography
Traditional linguistic geograghy, which is mainly concerned with the
geographical distribution of regional dialect features, has usually relied on
the speech of the rural population, i.e. farmers and coutrymen, for its purposes.
The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (LAS)
and the Survey of English Dialects (SED)
which constitute the main results - and at the same time instruments - of
linguistic geography in Scotland (the former) and England (the latter) both
gathered the information for their surveys from farming communities. The
informants were usually older than sixty, employed in farming and had lived in
the same community all their lives. The questions one confronted them with,
chiefly referred to the world of agriculture, with which they were familiar. The
agricultural implements and processes they were asked about were usually rather
simple and not the most modern, but had been central to farming for a long time.
This was not only a nostalgic approach towards eliciting "the traditional
types of vernacular English",
but it also provided a stable and conservative background in order to gather
comparable material from all parts of the country. If people from cities or from
other occupations had been included, the variables would have increased, and
social as well as occupational differences in speech would have mixed with
regional differences.
A comparison of the material aimed at eliciting regional varieties would have
been quite impossible.
The
study of regional dialects does not necessarily need to be confined to the world
of agriculture. A background which resembles that of farming communities in its
stability can also be provided by fishing communities. Fishing is - like farming
- one of the oldest industries in Britain, in which words or sounds have had
time to develop regionally marked differences.
One of the most obvious reasons why fishermen cannot serve as informants for a
linguistic survey which attempts to cover the whole of the country, however, is
of a geographical nature. For fishermen do not live in the hinterland but only
along the coast. Fishing has also been excluded from dialect surveys because it
was considered to be too technical and not universal enough for a comprehensive
study of regional dialects.
In
Britain, the potential for a study of fishermen's dialect all around the British
coast was primarily discussed by Peter Wright, who developed a short
questionnaire especially designed for fishing communities.
This questionnaire concentrates on the traditional kind of fishing with small
boats. The questions are mainly concerned with vocabulary. The names of parts of
a small rowing-boat, fishing gear and techniques, natural features and phenomena,
and names for different kinds of fish are asked. Questions about new methods in
fishing and recent technical innovations are excluded as far as possible from
the questionnaire. In concentrating on traditional fishing methods, this
questionnaire not only offers the opportunity to gather comparable material from
all around the coasts but also to collect words which have had time to develop
regional differences. If questions about new
things were included, the answers would probably be undifferentiated with no
regional variations other than phonological.
1.2. The Study of Fishermen's Dialect in Britain
The most comprehensive and complete approach to a study of fishermen's
dialect in Britain so far is Willy Elmer's survey of the English and Welsh
coastline.
He used the questionnaire which was designed by Peter Wright with a few
additional questions for his fieldwork. The collected material was then
presented on maps if the distribution of the answers revealed a certain pattern.
Otherwise the answers from each informant were simply listed. Each question was
treated as a unit with comments and notes sometimes following the map or the
list of answers. Some phonological features like the variation of Received
Pronunciation (RP) 
were also discussed, and a few isoglosses were established. The main body of
work was devoted to the presentation of the lexical material, however. A
discussion of the differences in local fishing boats and fishing gear was also
included in the study. The informants were or had at some time all been
fishermen and were mostly older than sixty. All together 111 localities were
investigated, among them five Scottish villages. One informant usually
represented one locality. The chosen villages were distributed evenly all around
the coast with intervals of about ten miles in between.
Elmer's
work offers an insight into the diversity of the sometimes very specialized
vocabulary of fishermen as well as into the technical variations of traditional
inshore fishing boats and fishing apparatus. The investigation into fishermen's
language had still been a somewhat novel enterprise when Elmer conducted his
study. Although it had been suggested before (cf. chapter 1.1), a thorough study
with firsthand material which was collected through personal investigation and a
questionnaire which would yield comparable material had never been carried out
in an area as large as the whole English and Welsh coastline.
A weakness, or rather disadvantage, in
Elmer's study is the exclusion of the Scottish coastline. However, as has been
mentioned in chapter 1.1, the suitability of fishermen's dialect for a study in
linguistic geography has also been recognized in Scotland. Nevertheless,
comprehensive research on fishermen's dialect including the collection of
comparable material all around the Scottish coast similar to Elmer's work is
missing up to now. The work which has been done so far is somewhat fragmentary
and limited. It was ciefly carried out by Mather who contributed three essays to
the study of fishermen's dialect.
The material was collected in the course of his fieldwork on the LAS.
His main intention was to point out the importance of a parallel study of
extralinguistic aspects together with linguistic evidence.
His first two essays were chiefly devoted to the cultural, historical, technical,
and linguistic differences in traditional line fishing among the fishing
communities of the Scottish east coast, and his third essay dealt exclusively
with the terminology for various parts of the drift-net and the extralinguistic
evidence of the traditional herring fishery on the Scottish east coast.
The main result of his first two essays
consists of the establishment of a north-south division along the Scottish east
coast. This was based on the linguistic evidence of the dialect reflex of the
original Old English (OE) vowel o¯
(e.g. the vowel sound in modern English boot)
and extralinguistic evidence, such as various fishing techniques and the
cultural background. Stonehaven marked the division between "south folk"
and "north folk". Mather's third essay about the drift-net fishery
resulted in the formation of the linguistic areas inner Moray Firth, outer Moray
Firth (north and south), East Coast, and Firth of Forth (Fife and Berwickshire)
based on the linguistic data (the terminology for parts of the drift-net) and
reinforced by the extralinguistic data. The classification of the areas in his
third essay - more complex than the rather simple north-south division in the
two former essays - is largely due to the nature of the herring fishery. Whereas
the first two essays were mainly concerned with traditional line fishing which
provided a very conservative and stable background, the herring fishery involved
the progress "away from the locality and from the conservatism which this seems to imply."
Mather
gave a fine example of how non-linguistic data can be related to the linguistic
markers and thus reinforce the establishment of dialect areas. His linguistic
material might have been limited (especially in his first two essays), but this
was made up for by a very detailed study of the non-linguistic aspects involved.
A
further example of the possibility of the treatment of language within a wider
cultural scope has been given by Fenton. In his book about the Orkney and
Shetland Isles,
Fenton attempts to portray the links and interrelationships within the
communities of the Northern Isles:
My approach in writing is to show the details of
the amalgam, how the elements interlock in different ways and degrees. This
involves looking at the functioning of the island communities in relation to the
organisation of the land and the resources of the sea and the shore and the
cliffs, for subsistence, rent and commerce.
In
Fenton's study of the Northern Isles the linguistic dimension is only of
secondary importance. It finds its place within a detailed description of all
the other aspects of life in the island communities.
This
kind of approach would not be a convenient one if a survey of regional dialects
within a larger area were the aim. As this is not intended in Fenton's study,
however, and the emphasis lies rather on a comrehensive description of a very
limited area, his approach is certainly justified and complete in its result.
1.3. Aims
The
primary objective of this investigation is to provide an empirical basis for
conclusions about the linguistic variety of fishermen on the south-east coast of
Scotland, from Burnmouth to Gourdon.
Hence, the major body of work is devoted to the presentation and discussion of
collected linguistic material. Extralinguistic aspects like the historical,
cultural, and economic features of the area focused on, as well as technical
attributes of the boats and fishing gear used along the examined stretch of
coastline, are doubtless of major importance, and the necessary attention is
given to them before the linguistic data is presented.
An attempt at establishing one or more dialect boundaries, based on the data set
out in the course of this investigation, forms the conclusion of this study. The
methodical principles which were applied to the collection of the linguistic
data are discussed in detail below.
