The Read-Only and the Speak-Only

Looking at two different groups of Scots language users

One we are familiar with a particular visualisation technique with the Scottish Census 2022 Scots language data, we might note two different classes of people.

Here is a vis showing the entire population, the relative sizes of the different shades of grey represent the different proportions of the population.

In this visualisation the read-only and speak-only groups are approximately the same size.

Indeed, the raw numbers are as follows

All people aged 3 and over
5,294,863

Reads but doesn’t speak or write Scots
193,302 (3.65%)

Speaks but doesn’t read or write Scots
174,242 (3.29%)

Each group is relatively small as a proportion of the population, but still enough to fill Murrayfield Stadium three times.

Geographic!

This property of the two groups being about the same size isn’t consistent when we slice the data up by local council regions:-

In Aberdeenshire 6.86% of people are speak-only Scots users, and 3.47% are read-only Scots users, so about twice as many people are in the speak-only group compared to the read-only group.

Conversely, in the City of Edinburgh 2.03% are speak-only Scots users and 5.65% are read-only Scots users, so almost three times as many people in the read-only group compared to the speak-only group.

Here is a graph showing all the councils and their proportions of read-only and speak-only Scots users.

We can broadly divide all the local councils regions into three groups based on the different sizes of the two groups.

More read-only than speak-only:-
City of Edinburgh, Argyll and Bute, Highland, Stirling, Na h-Eileanan Siar, Perth and Kinross, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, East Lothian

Groups about the same size:-
Orkney Islands, Glasgow City, Dundee City, Midlothian, Shetland Islands, Scottish Borders, South Ayrshire, Angus, Renfrewshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, South Lanarkshire, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, West Lothian, Aberdeen City, Falkirk, Clackmannanshire

More speak-only than read-only:-
North Lanarkshire, East Ayrshire, Moray, Aberdeenshire

I don’t know enough about the culture and society of each individual region to know what this means in terms of day to day life. Is it even possible to have first-hand knowledge of the culture and society of every council region?

It could be that places like the Western Isles, the Highlands, and Argyll aren’t “traditionally” Scots speaking areas, people there have proportionality picked it up from reading books, but places like Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire where Scots is more “traditionally” spoken, people pick up the language from hearing their parents speak it and from the sound on the streets.

Two viewpoints could be “I’ve never heard people speak Scots, but I thought I’d better try reading it” and “Everyone round here speaks it, but I’ve never seen it written down”.

That feels reasonable, except there’s hardly any written Scots in Edinburgh, and the highlands.

Industrial!

We can also slice up the data by employment industrial sector. And here we see similar variance in the proportions of read-only and speak-only Scots users.

In “Agriculture; Forestry; Fishing” there are more speakers than readers, in “Mining and Quarrying” there are about the same proportions, and in “Education, Information and Communication” there are two or three times more readers than speakers.

In a similar manner to the council regions, we can categorise the industrial sectors into three groups, those with more speakers than readers, those with about the same and those with more readers than speakers.

More read-only than speak-only:-
Electricity, Gas, Steam and Air Conditioning Supply, Real Estate Activities, Human Health and Social Work Activities, Other Service Activities, Public Administration and Defence; Compulsory Social Security, Financial and Insurance Activities, Activities of Extra-Territorial Organisations and Bodies, Arts, Entertainment and Recreation, Professional Scientific and Technical Activities, Information and Communication, Education

Those with about the same proportions of read-only and speak-only:-
Water Supply; Sewage; Waste Management and Remediation activities, Transport and Storage, Manufacturing, Administrative and Support Service Activities, Mining and Quarrying, Wholesale and Retail trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles, Accommodation and Food Service Activities

Those with more speak-only than read-only:-
Agriculture; Forestry; Fishing, Activities of Household as Employers; Undifferentiated Goods – and Services – Producing Activities of Households for Own Use, Construction

What is it about these groups that make them so?

We can also compare the Scots language ability in the Agriculture sectors of both Aberdeenshire and City of Edinburgh.

And the Education sectors of both Aberdeenshire and City of Edinburgh.

This shows that the regional nature of the variation is stronger than the industrial nature of the variation.

So what?

Earlier I muttered about how this disparity in proportions of read-only and speak-only Scots language users might be caused by the society and culture of each region.

Perhaps this is looking at the issue backwards, not so much cause and effect, but in terms of power dynamics.

Imagine how different government (or business) policy would be if it was set by people in either of the two groups. If the speak-only fishermen of Fraserburgh were setting policy, compared to if the read-only teachers of Edinburgh were setting policy.

These two extremes would have very different world-views, or views of the linguistic nature of Scotland.

This isn’t a purely theoretical question.

Whilst there are projects to get more Scots language teaching into school classrooms, the majority of the population are older than school age - supporting grown-up Scots-speakers to become Scots-readers or and grown-up Scots-readers to become Scots-readers are two very different types of support.

Increasing the amount of printed / written Scots in newspapers and publishing won’t encourage people to speak Scots if they don’t already.

And similarly increasing the amount of broadcast spoken Scots (on TV, film and radio) won’t encourage more people to read Scots if they don’t already.

We might note that in Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, where 70% of the population speak Scots, the local library has more than 11,000 titles written in English and only 17 titles in written in Scots.