Claire's Story

“I’d just like to understand a little bit more about why me speaking Doric is different from me speaking French.”

Claire is learning to speak Doric, a variety of Scots that comes from the North East of Scotland. But when she speaks it, it makes her husband, who grew up with Doric, feel uncomfortable. In this episode, she tries to understand why this might be.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

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Over the past year, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been working with a group of people from all over the world, teaching them to podcast and helping them to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. Everyone who took part was brand new to podcasting, and most of the episodes were made without any professional equipment, using mobile phones and free editing software. The results of this course are seven episodes: each one about a very different migration experience, and each person bringing their own style and personality. We hope you love them as much as we do.

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Claire Needler is an Ethnology PhD student in the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen. Her research interests include contemporary uses of Scots, especially among young people; how to promote positive attitudinal change towards the Scots language; and whether teaching the Scots Language Award in schools boosts pupil self-esteem and wider achievement. She is interested in the intersection between language, culture and identity, and how these combine to create a feeling of community belonging.

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Thanks to Dawn Leslie and Hamish Garland for being part of this podcast, and to Professor Jennifer Smith for the permission to use the clip from the Scots Syntax Atlas.

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