JAMES COSTA Language history as charter myth ?

In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a language, and how discourses surrounding the issue of Scots might seek to contribute to the creation of a new Scottish society. I whish to show how history is used as a legitimating discursive device by the various components of the Scots language revitalisation movement. The question of the very possibility of a history of a language is in itself particularly interesting. History itself, serving as a people’s grand narrative in the context of modern nation states, has been described by anthropologists as ‘simply a modern myth’ (Eagleton, 1991: 188). In fact, according to Woolard, “representations of the history of languages often function as Malinowskian charter myths, projecting from the present to an originary past a legitimation of contemporary power relations and interested positions” (2004: 58) Histories of languages, as socially situated narratives, can thus be seen as a site of ideological production. Woolard thus adds that language histories project “from the past a legitimating selection of one from among contending centres of power in the present” (2004: 58). It might seem somehow provocative to associate myth and history in a paper dealing with the history of the Scots language, since those terms “are often considered to be antithetical modes of explanation” (Heehs, 1994: 1). In this article, I wish to suggest some explanations of the significations the narratives in which the histories of Scots are embedded convey. I also ask such an analysis can be relevant to the study of the language revitalisation movement in Scotland today.