The Language of Robert Burns: Style, Ideology, and Identity

This monograph offers a radical reconceptualisation of the relationship between the poetics and practice of Robert Burns and revaluates the nature of his role in the history of Scots. By drawing on ideas from twenty-first century sociolinguistic theory, it seeks to transform the debate surrounding Burns’s language. Through a series of readings that explore the way in which Burns used and commented on the styles associated with different places, groups and genres, it demonstrates how languages, places and the identities associated with both are, in Burns’s writing, subject to continual reinvention. In this respect, the study breaks with existing accounts of the subject, insofar as it presents Scots, English and the other languages used by Burns not as fixed, empirically-observable entities, but as ideas that were revised and remade through the poet’s work. Focusing on Burns’s poems, songs, letters, prefaces and glossaries, the book pays special attention to the complex ways in which the author engaged with such issues as phonology, grammar, and the naming of languages.The Burns who emerges from this book is not the marginal figure of traditional accounts- an under-educated poet alienated from the philological mainstream-but rather a well-informed thinker who, more than any other contemporary writer, embodies the creative linguistic spirit of the eighteenth century.

Reviews of The Language of Robert Burns: Style, Ideology, and Identity

In this fascinating study, Broadhead presents a picture of Burns that is far removed from the rustic self-educated Scottish peasant who used the Scottish dialect in his poetry because he was not sufficiently sophisticated in his use of English…Broadhead takes a 21st-century sociolinguistic approach to show that Burns not only had great command of both English and Scots, but also was a master linguist who manipulated different registers and dialects in his poetry. The author presents his argument in his coherent introduction; in the five chapters that follow, he focuses on different aspects of Burns's use of language in his poetry. Writing primarily for those conversant with literary criticism, the author includes easy-to-understand explanations of the linguistic concepts he uses and a wealth of examples from the poetry itself to illustrate his argument effectively. In taking a linguistic approach, Broadhead reveals another intriguing layer of Burns's sociopolitical and cultural impact…A helpful glossary of Scots words is included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty. CHOICE