Scoping study for a corpus based grammatical investigation of Orkney and Shetland dialect

The Orkney and Shetland dialect corpus scoping study will prepare for a research study on Orkney and Shetland dialect grammar. The research project would shed light on the grammar of two dialects which are the products of a language contact situation. For four hundred years or more, a dialect of Old Norse was in contact with dialects of Scots in the Northern Isles. During this period (15th - 19th century) Scots gained currency as the language of Orkney and Shetland, while the local dialect of Old Norse gradually went out of use. Sometime during this period, local dialects of Scots formed in Orkney and Shetland, incorporating words and structures from the Old Norse dialect. The research project which the scoping study is preparing for, aims to develop a database (corpus) of naturally occurring dialect texts from Orkney and Shetland, which would be digitally searchable. This corpus would then be available for researchers to use as data material for investigating the linguistic structures of the Orkney and Shetland dialects. Grammatical investigation of the Orkney and Shetland dialects would then hopefully enable us, in the next instance, to shed light on the language contact and shift and answer such questions as: When did the Scots dialects of Orkney and Shetland consolidate - based on the presence of relict forms from older stages of Scots? Can we trace any Old Norse or Middle Norwegian influence on the grammar of the Orkney and Shetland Scots dialects? Can we find grammatical structures in the Orkney and Shetland dialects which have developed independently of Scots and the local Old Norse dialect?

The study will be of benefit to both the public sector and third sectors. Potential beneficiaries will have the opportunity to engage with the research through the discussion, collection and collation process in the first instance. They will also form the network of contacts which will be part of the dissemination process, and will be fully involved in the envisaged larger follow-up study which will form part of the outcomes of the scoping study.

The impact beyond academia of the scoping study itself will consist of at least the following:

1) Contact will be established with Shetland Amenity Trust and Shetland ForWirds, both of which are organisations working to make Shetland's cultural heritage accessible to the local community and beyond. The research will provide an academic context for their work. This will also be the case on Orkney, where contact will be established with Orkney Heritage Society. Orkney does not (yet) have an organisation specifically promoting dialect or linguistic heritage, but the Orkney Heritage Society in 2010 ran a "Year o Orkney Dialect" which involved a number of initiatives and the creation of material which would receive academic validation though this research and lead to a lasting legacy.

2) The UHI Centre for Nordic Studies already uses a range of channels for knowledge exchange within the local communities on Orkney and Shetland and with interested parties nationally and internationally, including the provision of regular research and communication columns in the Orkney newspaper "The Orcadian" and the Shetland Museum newsletter "Unkans", as well as maintaining an online presence on Facebook, the Centre's website and its Posterous blog. The study will enable expansion and enhancement of these activities.

3) The local communities of Orkney and Shetland will benefit from the project in the form of raised awareness of the local dialects. The dissemination of grammatical research into the dialects will contribute to valorising them as linguistic varieties, and help dialect speakers as well as incomers to the islands develop a view that speaking in dialect is not in any way inferior to speaking in Standard English or other British varieties. This will enhance the quality of life for dialect speakers. More insight into the local dialects will also contribute to the study of the islands' culture by increasing our understanding of the interplay between the Norse and Scots tongues. This research project may also inspire production of island culture in the form of dialect poetry or other dialect texts, or to the increased use of written or spoken dialect in the public sphere. The organisations Shetland Amenity Trust, Shetland ForWirds and Orkney Heritage Society will benefit from an added academic context to their dialect work.