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This chapter presents a preliminary examination of the twentieth-century Scottish migrant experience within England by investigating notions of national identity as articulated by individual migrants. It also shows that the analysis of interviews with Scottish immigrants in England reveal ‘predominantly favourable accounts of life in England’ and indicate that ‘Scots did not receive a hostile reception’. The six interviews used here for the exploration of Scottish identity were sourced from the National Sound Archive at the British Library. For the purposes of this discussion, expressions of identity are confined to Scottish-born migrants. In exploring what Scottish identities meant to these migrants, the chapter is mainly concerned with personal manifestations of Scottishness. The internal character of Scottishness briefly outlined in this chapter can misleadingly suggest that Scots were integrated into the societies they settled in. Moreover, the testimonies indicate that interpretations of Scottish identity have for too long been reliant on domestic conditions in Scotland.

This chapter seeks an understanding of the sense of Scottish identity held by various individuals within the Scottish political elite ranks. Analysing individual responses on the issue of national identity, it seeks an understanding of their perception of the Scottish nation. To achieve this conversational style, interviews were undertaken with over sixty MSPs and Scots MPs, from all Scottish political parties with representation at these levels, in the period between 2003 and 2009. Each interviewee was given a list of possible questions, asking them to consider the nature of national identity in Scotland from their own personal perspective, as well as from a wider social and political one.

Richard Finlay examines the role the empire played in shaping Scottish national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He argues that Unionism was reinvented in the 1880s and that this enabled the Scots to highlight a distinctive Scottish contribution to the development of the British Empire.

This chapter deals with the question of identity, and in particular with notions of Scottish national identity. What are the components of such an identity, and how is it constructed and/or maintained? Is it a static phenomenon, or is it a dynamic, constantly evolving entity, open to modification and reformulation? Many linguists have argued that there is a link between language and identity, and the chapter investigates the symbolic functions of language and asks what part it might play in an ongoing construction and/or maintenance of Scottishness and Scottish national identity.

This final chapter considers the possible external explanations for the differences noted in the pre- and post-devolution corpora and so it begins by examining whether devolution has had tangible effects on Scottish identity. It then assesses the evidence for post-devolution changes in the use of Scots language, and asks whether prevailing linguistic hegemonic and appropriacy norms are being challenged, before looking to the future for Scots. Finally, it investigates post-devolution changes in the press. It considers the shifting Scottish newspaper market, drawing comparisons between indigenous and non-indigenous newspapers fighting for readers. It also examines the growth of the so-called ‘tartan’ editions, before questioning the impact of the digital era, the growth in free dailies and devolution itself on the press. The chapter concludes by considering what the future holds for newspapers in Scotland and asking whether this study into the use of Scots lexis suggests that a salutary lesson could be learned by newspapers competing in the Scottish market.

This chapter discusses discourses of national identity, examining the process at work in its formation and distinguishing different types of expression of national identity. It observes that explicit references to writers themselves as Scottish, use of Scotland or Scottish experience to make analogies, and comparisons or claims relating to Scottish tradition or character were perhaps the most obvious forms of expression of Scottish identity. It notes however, that identity was also referred to in more implicit ways, for example through a focus on dimensions of missionary work seen as consonant with Scottish values, such as literacy and education, the form of church organisation and so on. It also observes that at the same time, a varying terminology of ‘Scottish’, ‘English’, and ‘British’ was deployed in different contexts, raising the question of the nature of these terms and their inter-relationships.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Scottish involvement in the British Empire. It then considers whether there was a distinct Scottish identity which was maintained, promoted or even developed at the so-called periphery of empire, and argues that, for good or ill, Scots contributed more powerfully than their numbers would suggest to the processes of westernisation and modernisation in southern Africa. Through their linguistic and ethnographic activities, particularly in the context of the frontier missions, they had a considerable influence upon attitudes to African peoples, to the classic nineteenth-century activity, derived from the Enlightenment, of creating taxonomies and stereotypes for humans as much as for the phenomena of the natural world. Such activities led to strong, though inevitably diverse, ideas about the frontier, African administration, labour policy and much else.

This chapter considers some of the underlying forces that could have helped undermine support for the Union. Perhaps, the creation of the Scottish Parliament has influenced people's sense of national identity. It examines whether the Scottish people now are less likely to feel British and more likely to feel distinctively Scottish. It also examines whether the devolution has resulted in debates about policy in Scotland being conducted entirely separately from the equivalent debates in England, with the result that people in Scotland increasingly have different policy preferences from their counterparts south of the border.

This chapter begins by outlining the situation as regards Scottish newspapers and their readers. It then examines the nature of the relationship that exists between newspapers and their readers more closely and queries how a sense of shared community consciousness between newspaper and reader is created. It introduces the concept of the ‘ideal reader’, before going on to consider how newspapers seek to align themselves with their readerships, and the various strategies open to newspapers seeking to align themselves with a Scottish readership. How do these newspapers foster their Scottish identity and what effects might this have on the language they use? The chapter concludes by examining the role of the press as gatekeepers and assessing the impact of appropriacy constraints on the language that they use.

The discussion in Chapter 2 suggested that historicity and heritage were important facets in national identities, and stressed the vertical (historical) as well as horizontal (contemporaneous) axis. This chapter investigates the extent to which this vertical axis can be identified in the newspapers' use of formulaic features. Formulaic language and Scottish stereotypes offer familiar and reliable ways of invoking a sense of Scottishness and so the chapter also deals with the quotations, allusions, proverbs and sayings, idioms, and other fixed expressions and recurring collocations that were noted in the newspaper texts. It considers the potential sources for these and asks what their significance is in the newspapers' construction and maintenance of a Scottish identity. The chapter also considers whether particular Scots words and phrases trigger associations with the three well-known Scottish stereotypes — Tartanry, Kailyard, and Clydesidism — and investigates whether the appeal to these stereotypes varies between newspapers.

This chapter emphasises that civil society organisations afforded ‘possibilities of concerted action and social self-organisation’, and that, as such, they might be indicative of the active commitment of particular groups of Scots to particular visions of empire. It aims to provide an account of the ways in which, through the medium of civil society organisations, Scots' experience of empire was transmitted to people in Scotland, and how such representations of empire in turn affected conceptions of Scottish identity. It identifies civil society organisations in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scotland which had an explicit engagement with empire or imperialism. It focuses on the activity of civil society organisations in Edinburgh and concentrates on other forms of civil society engagement with empire which fall into two broad categories: philanthropic activities motivated by religious and moral concerns; and secular organisations which were either inspired by enthusiasm for imperialism or manifested an interest in it.

This chapter argues that Burns's poetic self-fashioning was a successful attempt to achieve sentimental and cultural credit in the face of the practical financial difficulties that he faces as an Ayrshire farmer. Like others of his class, he was inculcated with the ideology of improvement but found it impossible to make practical headway due to undercapitalization and high rentals. Burns's alternative vocation as a poet is discussed in relation to his Commonplace Book, the Verse Epistles in the Kilmarnock Volume, and his most ambitious poem, ‘The Vision’. The chapter also analyses his relationship to patronage and his creation of a virtual community of upper class Ayrshire patrons, with reference to the social geography and the 18th-century cartography of Ayrshire.

This chapter examines the various ways in which Scots declared their identity in the second half of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries. Caledonian Societies emerged throughout southern Africa. The totemic days of the Scottish calendar were widely celebrated. Highland games were instituted as major sporting and cultural events, matching their counterparts in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

A considerable amount of Livingstone scholarship has been devoted to his Scottish identity and his position within the nation’s social and intellectual history. In keeping with this critical trajectory, the fifth chapter takes up Livingstone’s Scottish legacy. The aim, however, is not to discuss the formative influence of his cultural background or the Scottish bent of his ideas. Rather, the purpose is to ask both how his Scottishness has been represented, and more specifically, how he has been represented by Scots. The chapter begins by considering those biographies that were not particularly interested in his Alban roots at all. To them, Livingstone embodied an ‘English’ national character and decidedly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ qualities. Yet despite such anglocentric representations, the explorer’s national identity has functioned in a variety of contexts and been of vital importance for his Northern biographers. For some, under the Celtic Revival, Livingstone provided a way to increase the prestige of the Gàidhealtachd, while for others he symbolised the union of Highland and Lowland. For most, however, Livingstone served an even broader purpose: to assert Scottish national consciousness within the parameters of the Union and empire.

This chapter examines the Scotch comic and its projection of Scottish identity alongside other ‘national’ stage representations popular in Scottish music halls at the time, which would also have contributed to creating ‘an inclusive model of the national culture as the sum of all current cultural activity’. It explores the tension between music hall as popular culture and commercial entertainment genre. It considers the proposition that there was much more to the Scotch comic than Lauder's iconic tartanised, version; that the figure was originally a product of urban industrial society, adapted to meet the demands of a market-driven commercial format — music hall — but that, post-Lauder, it reconnected with earlier strands of this working-class performing tradition in ways in which make it clear that the figure remained an expression of Scottish urban working-class culture. It examines the different impact of the Scotch comic tradition on the Glasgow Jewish comedian Ike Freedman.