In his novel Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh combines standard and non-standard dialects in his various narrative voices. This paper examines the use of Scots in his narrative and the function of non-standard dialect in the characterisation and plot of Trainspotting. It will be argued that Welsh's use of non-standard dialect functions to illustrate the traditional moral assumptions associated with non-standard varieties within the novel, while undermining these selfsame assumptions in the mind of the reader, thus causing her to sympathise with characters she normally would not.
1.1 Irvine Welsh's attitude towards dialect in fiction
1.2 Where does the character stop being an extension of the
writer?
1.4 Expressions used in this paper
2.1 The narrative structure of Trainspotting
3 Dialect and
characterisation
3.1 General comments on dialectal features in the narration
On March 30 this year, one could read the
following in Charles Osborne's article "Welsh accuses the middle classes
of cultural bias" in the Herald:
Welsh says... working-class people are allowed to speak, but not think, in middle class fiction: 'The classic assumption of such fiction holds true: working-class people speak funny so are in fiction only for the purposes of humour. They do not have an internal life, therefore you traditionally do not have a Renton or a Begbie or a Spud expressing themselves in the narrative of a book.'... He says that the book and film provide an accurate portrayal of working-class life without the patronising accompaniment of a middle-class voice. Can we thus conclude that Welsh's choice of a dialectal narration is a means of making the reader sympathise more with the characters? How does one sympathise with a junkie?
In this paper, I will attempt to answer these questions, in addition to comparing the dialectal differences between five of the narrative voices (i.e. idiolects) in Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting (reference is to the 1996 Minerva edition).
In my opinion, there are two relevant ways of looking at dialect in this novel, and both of them have to do with attitudes towards language usage: On the one hand, one can look at Welsh's own attitudes towards non-standard varieties and how they should be used in a narration; alternatively, one can look at Welsh's characters and see what their attitudes are towards the language they speak (as opposed to their attitudes towards the language of the higher social classes in Great Britain). Needless to say, these two perspectives have a tendency to overlap — after all, Welsh created his characters, and therefore they have a tendency to reflect his attitudes. However, if each and every character was a clone of Irvine Welsh, we wouldn't really have characterisation, we would have narcissism. Instead, Welsh has created a group of characters who are to various extents unaware of how their respective ways of speaking place them on the social ladder. Welsh does not have them hold long monologues on the role of language varieties in society – it its rather the way in which he, almost defensively, portrays his characters and their language varieties that calls attention to Welsh's own attitudes. Thus, I believe that we can safely say that there is a difference between the characters' attitudes and Welsh's, and I believe that we can agree with Osborne that the writer's challenge is to make the reader sympathise with the characters in such a way that the reader ultimately agrees with Welsh's attitudes. In Trainspotting this means that we (the readers) are not meant to think of Spud, for example, as a bad or morally inferior person because he cannot communicate in standard dialect.
Indeed, I would like to profess that the characters' respective linguistic choices not only reflect their attitudes towards the society they live in, but also towards each other. For example, we can clearly see the attitudinal difference between a character who refers to his only friends as 'cunts' and a character who refers to his friends as 'cats'. This paper is based on the presumption that Welsh not only has integrated his attitudes towards language in his characters' language variants, but that he also has integrated these attitudes in the very plot of the book: language not only reflects the social status of certain characters, but also affects it. So let us try to keep one eye on dialect and one eye on Welsh's narration, so that we can continually ask ourselves what dialect says about fiction, as well as what fiction has to say about dialect.
Before we go on, allow me to clarify a few of the terms that I will be using frequently. I will be making the same type of distinction between ‘dialect’ and ‘standard language’ as Liam Rodger does in his paper Tense, Aspect, and the Busconductor Hines — The Literary Function of Non-Standard Language in the Fiction of James Kelman (1992:122), namely:
The quotes indicate a rejection of the common (non-technical) usage which opposes "dialect(s)" to "standard language". In what follows, the distinction is to be understood as between "non-standard dialect" (here chiefly varieties of Scots/Scottish English) and "standard dialect" (the standard written variety of English used in unmarked narrative and descriptive writing).
I believe that this terminology is valid when speaking of Welsh's deviance from the literary norm. Because of the number of different narrative voices in Trainspotting, however, we must also make a distinction between the language varieties of the characters that already deviate from the norm. Their collective deviation has been identified by journalist Leslie Downer(1996) as "the Edinburgh slang, recorded with phonetic precision." However, the characters differ in their individual use of standard and non-standard varieties and thus I shall refer to this personal deviation as idiolects.
I have quoted Miller (1991) in various instances in this paper and it is important to point out that, in his study, entitled The Grammar of Scottish English, he does not make any distinction between Scottish English and Scots. Simply by calling his study The Grammar of Scottish English, Miller seems to overlook Wells’ distinction, which I will be applying here, namely that Scottish is "Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent" while Scots is "the traditional dialect"(Wells 1982: 395) that contains grammatical and lexical features which Scottish English does not. In this paper we will mainly be dealing with Scots, as Welsh’s narrative contains more than the phonolgical features of this language variant.
Finally I will be using the term 'code-switching', which is defined by Caroline Macafee (1983:18) as "the name given to the manipulation of a single speaker of different languages or different dialects". A speaker 'switches codes' in order to "create and manipulate social relationships"(1983:20), something that certain of Welsh's characters do often, as will be seen.
The novel is narrated through the voices of various Scottish characters; mainly that of the main character, Mark Renton, but also of an invisible third-person narrator and of Spud, Begbie, Sickboy and others. They all (aside from the invisible narrator) narrate and speak in non-standard dialect, but some are able to speak standard dialect when the need arises.
Each chapter can stand on its own as a short story, something Welsh achieves by beginning each chapter in medias res, by not connecting a chapter to the one preceding it, nor making any information in a chapter dependent on the events of a previous chapter. The last chapter, for example, can stand on its own because all the characters that appear in it are described according to their characteristics as soon as they appear, and - as in all the other chapters - it centres on one event, in this case the sale of a bag of heroin. With small hints, the third person narrator illustrates the characters' attitudes towards each other without it being imperative to know exactly how their friendship has gradually deteriorated throughout the book. What makes this a novel and not a collection of short stories, however, is the fact that the same characters reoccur throughout the book and all of the events are portrayed more or less chronologically. The recurring themes in the book are friendship, escapism through drugs, and the dreary alternative to drugs: life.
Twenty of the 44 chapters are narrated by Mark Renton, two by Sickboy, three by Spud, two by Begbie and eight by the third person narrator. One chapter, entitled Speedy Recruitment, is narrated alternately by Renton, Spud, and the third person narrator.
Trainspotting is about a group of friends, living in the slummy neighbourhood of Muirhouse in Edinburgh, who are drifting apart from each other. They abuse heroin and/or alcohol, are unemployed, and long for a better life. The novel follows the deterioration of the friendship between Renton, Spud, Begbie and Sickboy, ultimately resulting in Mark Renton stealing his friends' shares in a lucrative drug deal and fleeing the British Isles with the intention of beginning a new life abroad. There are a number of other characters and narrators in the novel, but as they are less essential to the thread of the story and to this analysis of language, I have chosen to concentrate on Renton, Sickboy, Spud and Begbie.
For someone who has not read Trainspotting, but followed the controversy surrounding the book and film in the media, it would appear as though the book is mainly about drug addiction as an alternative to 'normal' life. I must disagree with many members of the press on this point — Trainspotting is so much more than a junkie novel: aside from portrayal of the previously mentioned deterioration of friendship and life's general lack of meaning, it is a criticism of the standard middle class way of life, as well as of the middle class attitude towards non-standard varieties and its resulting moral distinction between individuals which is based on these individuals' language varieties. It seems to me that Welsh is discreetly trying to tell us that one does not have to speak or even in write in 'the Queen's English' in order to be a good person.
In this section, I will describe the general non-standard dialectal features of the characters' narrations and then look at each character's language more closely, in order to describe each character's variant in detail and determine the function of non-standard dialect in the individual character's narration.
We can agree with Chapman (1984:59) and others that "the literary realisation of dialect is achieved through distinctive features of lexis, syntax, and phonology." Welsh's characters frequently use words that deviate from a Standard English vocabulary, such as ken (to know), bairn (child), fitba (football), etc. We can safely say that the lexical content of the characters' narrations is overwhelmingly Scottish. However, I will return to lexis in the discussion of the individual characters' languages, as it is most relevant in that context.
Syntactically, Scots tends to differ from Standard English in many ways. The varieties of speech that appear in Trainspotting include several grammatical features of Scots, which, interestingly, vary in the same way as we will later see that vocabulary does between the characters. For example, although all of the characters generally avoid relative clauses beginning with so-called "'wh' words"(Miller 1991:11), they solve this problem in different ways. (See fig. 3.11) In text narrated by the invisible narrator, however, use of which, who and that is perfectly normal, except, perhaps, for a slightly lower frequency of relative clauses introduced by which than one would find in books written completely in standard dialect. This is most likely a reflection of Welsh's own language (he is from Edinburgh, himself, and in all likelihood bi-dialectal).
fig. 3.11 Ways of introducing relative clauses
| Character | Use of "who" | Use of "which" | Use of "that" |
| Begbie | omitted or replaced by "whae"(p.154) | completely avoided | completely avoided |
| Renton | replaced by "whae"(p.17) | normal except where avoided by use of passive past tense verb[1] | non-existent |
| Spud | replaced by "whae"(p.155), but generally avoided. | non-existent | replaced by "whae" instead, in one case(p.283) |
| Sickboy | replaced by "whae"(p.180) | more frequent than any other character's | non-existent |
| Invisible Narrator | Completely normal | Normal, although not common | normal |
In figure 3.11 we can see that the characters all say whae instead of who. I was prepared to accept whae as a phonological spelling of who until I came across it in a case where it replaced that. Generally speaking, however, who constructions are rare and the personal pronoun is often ellipted. But we cannot eliminate the possibility of an occasional phonological explanation for its presence.
The most common way in which these characters avoid subordinate relative clauses beginning with 'wh words' is by simply avoiding subordinate relative clauses, or, as mentioned before, by ellipting personal pronouns. It is difficult to calculate the number of cases where a character could have used a subordinate clause – this type of foregrounding must be seen as qualitative rather than quantative[2]. For similiar reasons, I found that a calculation of the invisible narrator’s use of subordinate relative clauses in relation to less foregrounded narrations to be beyond the scope of this study – one would need to have Trainspotting, as well as a compatible novel, on CD ROM in order to attain an accuarate result.
The conclusion we can draw from the figure 3.11 is that the relative absence of which and that clauses in the narrations of Begbie and Spud cannot be seen as coincidental, but rather seems to further foreground their deviation from the standard norm[3] while simultaneously illustrating their inarticulateness – for there can be no denying that narrative voice in itself is foregrounded in Trainspotting: The number of narrative voices used and their qualitatave deviance from the standard norm catch the eye of the ‘ordinary’ reader as well as the linguist.
Another common grammatical feature of Scots represented in Trainspotting is the occurrence of the singular form of be together with a plural subject noun. In Spud's narration on page 66 we can read The O Grades wis bullshit, ken?.
I was surprised to find that certain grammatical features which Miller claims to be common in Scots are completely missing in Trainspotting. I could not find any cases of shadow pronouns (Miller 1991:11), and the negation rule - that nae only occurs when an auxiliary verb cannot become attached to the preceding noun or pronoun(Miller 1991:14) does not apply in all cases. Compare the following sentences/clauses:
A. Ah couldnae mention the Barrowland gig tae Lizzie.(p.71)
B. ...there's nae way under the sun...(p.190.)
C. there isnae any/a way under the sun...
The first example follows the negation rules of Scots, while B does not and should rather have been expressed as in C:
Perhaps the most common grammatical features of Scottish English that appear in Trainspotting are the grammaticalised words like and ken. Like, or likesay, as Spud most often says, "typically promotes an item that explains a preceding piece of discourse or that leads to an explanation." (Miller1991:31) Ken is used most often in the novel to introduce a new topic which explains a preceding statement. Thus, Spud says to the board of interviewers in Speedy Recruitment :
Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know? Ah git good vibes aboot this interview the day though man, ken?
(p.67)
Spud's constant use of ken has the unfortunate effect of confusing his listeners and the reader, however, and should perhaps be regarded as a sort of verbal hiccup. In this excerpt we can also see an example of the use of a definite article together with a noun denoting a period of time. Another character in Trainspotting, named Second Prize, also does this in the expression the morn(p.62).
An additional feature of Scot grammar represented in Trainspotting is the use of the plural second person pronoun, yis, which is mainly used by the character Begbie (see the quote in section 3.4 for an example). According to Miller (1991:8), yis is "very frequent and assidiously avoided by educated speakers even in informal situations." Welsh's use of yis can perhaps be seen as a way of marking Begbie's complete lack of higher education and lower social status.
I will end my discussion of grammatical features of Scottish English in Trainspotting here, having identified a few of them, and being able to state that they are widely used in the text. The relative absence of non-standard grammar in the third person narratives in the book shows that Welsh consciously incorporates non-standard grammar into the narrations of his characters, thus using grammar as a tool to contrast standard and non-standard varieties of English.
When it comes to phonology in Trainspotting, it is hard to determine which words are spelled in Standard Scots (with reference here to the Scots Dialect Dictionary) and which are spelled by the author in a manner that merely implies non-standard pronunciation, as few words in the sections narrated in dialect are spelled according to standard-dialect norms. I have isolated a number of cases where Welsh has applied his own spelling, however, simply by checking if some of his more unfamiliar spellings exist in the Scots Dialect Dictionary, a book which is mainly a guide to literary Scots.
In fig. 3.12 we can see how Welsh has represented the vowel sounds of Scotttish English in words such as got and for with his own spelling of the phonemes /o / and /З/ . The use of the latter of these two phonemes before /r/ is especially characteristic of the Edinburgh dialect (see Wells1982:407). It should also be mentioned that Welsh's use of oa is traditional in Scots literary orthography, although not lexicalised. (see Macafee1983:40). Interestingly, in the majority of cases, Welsh's characters drop the /f/ in myself.
Some of Welsh's spelling innovations are easier for the 'ordinary' reader to interpret than others. This illustrates one of the most common problems in transcribing dialect in literature, namely that, on one hand, an accurate transcription of a dialect will be very hard for someone not familiar with that dialect to interpret, while on the other hand, if the dialect is transcribed sparingly, but sufficiently enough "to trigger the illusion of reality, ... readers with a limited knowledge of a given language will accept its representation (but) readers with a sound knowledge will not"(Fanning1994:160). Thus, the realistic feel to Welsh's orthography is bought at the price of readers unfamiliar with non-standard variants not always being able to understand what kind of pronunciation Welsh is trying to imply.
fig. 3.12 Welsh's orthography
| Lexical item: | Standard pronounciation | Welsh's spelling: | Welsh's implied pronounciation (transcribed here with the help of a native-speaker of Scots) | Word class: |
| I | /aI/ | Ah/ah | approx. /æ / | personal pronoun |
| was |
/w z/
|
wis | /wЗz/ | verb, past tense |
| for |
/fr
/
|
fir | /fЗr/ | preposition |
| have |
/hv/
|
huv | /hΛv/ | verb, infinite form |
| got | /ga:t/ | goat | approx. /got/ | verb, past tense and participle |
| on | /on/ | oan | approx. /on/ | preposition |
| him | /hIm/ | um | /Λm/ | personal pronoun |
| myself | /maI self/ | masel | /mæ sel/ | personal pronoun |
If we look at the different characters' ways of speaking we find that Renton and Sickboy are bi-dialectal — they can switch to Standard English, should they find themselves in a social situation that requires their doing so. Sickboy mainly uses his language skills in order to make contact with female tourists whom he then proceeds to seduce and rob.
Sickboy has a somewhat strange hobby that involves shooting skinheads' dogs, causing them to attack their owners. In the following scene, Sickboy proceeds to offer a skinhead his assistance, strangling the boy's Pit Bull with a baseball bat, and thus striking a blow "fir aw the bairns (it has) slaughtered, faces (it has) disfigured and shite (it has) deposited in our streets."(p.178) He narrates:
— HELP US! HELP US! The skinhead squeals. He's younger than ah thought.
— S awright mate. Stay cool, ah tell um. Have no fear, Simone's here.
(p.179)
When the police appear on the scene and question Sickboy's possession of a baseball bat, he narrates (as usual speaking of himself in the third person):
... ah tell him it's for home security, as there have been a lot of break-ins in the area. Not that Simone, I explain, would ever dream of taking the law into his own hands, but, well, it gives one a certain peace of mind.
(p.180)
Here we see how Sickboy switches dialects, so as to gain the trust of whoever he is speaking to at the moment. This shows the advantage of code-switching for an individual (and a somewhat sadistic one, at that) in everyday life. The police officer tells Sickboy (or Simon, which is his real name) that he will recommend him for a commendation. Sickboy's vanity is such that he finds this perfectly natural and just. He ends this narration by saying: "It has been a fucking beautiful day."(p.181)
Sickboy feels superior to the rest of his world and this is reflected in his rarely referring to Mark Renton without adding the epitaph "doss bastard" (p.29), "radge" or "cunt"(p.28)[4], although "Rents" is presumably one of his few friends. The only time Sickboy actually calls his friends 'mates' is when he says: "Mates are a waste of fucking time. They are always ready to drag you down tae their level of social, sexual and intellectual mediocrity."
It is presumably Sickboy's preoccupation with his superiority (as reflected in his language) rather than an intellectual inferiority on his part, that allows Renton to beat him to stealing the drug-money at the end of the novel. Or as the narrator puts it: "Sickboy would understand, even have a grudging admiration for his actions. His main anger would be directed at himself for not having the bottle to do it first."(p.342)
It is easiest to speak of Spud's (or Daniel, as he seldom is called) language by comparing it to that of Mark Renton. Welsh constantly puts these two characters in scenes where their abilities (or lack thereof) to code-switch are clearly contrasted. One chapter, entitled Speedy Recruitment, is narrated alternately by Renton, Spud, and the third person narrator. I will summarise it here in order to illustrate the previously-mentioned contrasts, while simultaneously showing the contrasts between how Renton and Spud think and how they speak, in addition to the differences between what they think and what they say.
Comically, Renton and Spud are called to an interview for a job that neither of them want. They talk to each other beforehand and Renton gives Spud tips on how to avoid getting the job while not making it too obvious that he doesn't want it — if the two young men don't make the appearance of trying to become employed, they won't be eligible for unemployment benefits. They both write on their application forms that they have attended George Hariots, a posher school than the one they really attended, as Renton believes that a person with a good education won't be given a job as a hotel doorman. Renton replies to the trainee manager's questions in standard dialect while Spud speaks in the same non-standard dialect that he narrates in. In reply to the manager's first comment, "I see from your application form that you attended George Hariots", Spud and Renton make completely different replies:
Renton: "Right... ah, those halcyon school days. It seems like a long time ago now."
Spud: "Actually man, ah've goat tae come clean here. Ah went tae Augie's, St. Augestine, likesay, then Craigy, eh Craigroyston, ken. Ah jist pit doon Heriots because ah thoat it wid likes, help us git the joab."
(pp.64-65)
Renton impresses the board of interviewers, but eventually avoids getting the job by explaining the gaps in his employments as follows: "I've had a long-standing problem with heroin addiction. I've been trying to combat this, but it has curtailed my employment activities. I feel it is important to be honest and mention this to you, as my future employer." In his mind, he adds: "They cannae say ah didnae try..."(p.65) Spud, on the other hand, thinks he might be offered the job after the interview, while in reality he has made quite an eccentric impression on the board of interviewers by revealing the lies in his application form (and nearly every thought that goes through his mind), and perhaps also frightened them with his manner of speaking. Interestingly, Spud is slightly aware of his non-standard variety of language. At one point he reflects: "Ah'll huv tae stoap sayin' 'ken' sae much. These dudes might think ah'm a sortay pleb."(p.67)
This chapter shows us that Spud would like to use a variety closer to the norm, but can't, while Renton can switch codes at will, is much more manipulative, and would therefore be able to get a job and attain a higher social status than Spud, if he had a mind to. The occasional presence of the third person narrator's voice gives the reader an idea of how much Renton and Spud deviate from the norm, while also confusing the reader in regard to who is really thinking what — one can't be 100% sure whether a sentence refers to the narrator's, Renton's, or Spud's thoughts or opinions. And, thus, the invisible narrator functions within this chapter in very much the same way as he does in the rest of the book. However, we will return to a discussion of this narrator later.
Spud is not what one could call an honest person in the sense that he does not always want to tell the truth. However, as seen above, he often ends up telling the truth, or part of it, anyway. Perhaps the speakers of standard dialect intimidate him to the point of confusing him into telling the truth. Spud doesn't get the job as doorman because the board doesn't want him, whereas Renton doesn't get the job because he doesn't want it. The results are more disastrous in "Courting Disaster" - Spud gets a ten month prison sentence while Renton's prison sentence is suspended, for reasons that the following excerpt, narrated by Renton, explains:
- You stole the books from Waterstone's bookshop, with the intent of selling them, he (the judge) states. Sell fuckin books. Ma fuckin erse.
- No, ah sais.
- Aye, Spud sais, at the same time. We turn around n look at each other. Aw the time it took gittin oor story straight n it takes the doss cunt two minutes tae blow it...
- Mr Renton, you did not intend to sell the books?
- Naw. Eh, no, your honour. They were for reading.
- So you read Kierkegaard. Tell us about him, Mr Renton, the patronising cunt sais.
- I'm interested in his concepts of subjectivity and truth, and particularly his ideas concerning choice; the notion that genuine choice is made out of doubt and uncertainty, and without recourse to the experience or advise of others...
The magistrate snorts derisively...
- And you, Mr Murphy, you intended to sell the books, like you sell everything else that you steal, in order to finance your heroin habit?
- That's spot on man...eh...ye goat it likesay, Spud nodded, his thoughtful expression sliding into confusion.
(pp.165-166)
While Renton is able to impress the judge with a long harangue about Kierkegaard's theories and how terrible he feels about the crimes he has committed, Spud barely understands what is going on, and his dialect seems to make him seem even more lost. I would like to argue that Spud's feeling of being out of place is due both to who he is and how he speaks. Welsh is clearly aware of the social implications of not being able to speak standard dialect and wants us to sympathise with the disadvantaged Spud when he confusedly receives the court's verdict with the words: "Thanks . . . eh, ah mean . . . nae hassle, likesay . . ."
Compared to the other characters, Spud seems to have the highest respect for his friends, often calling them by their first names (or things resembling their first names) rather than their nicknames: "Mark", instead of "Renton" and "Franco", instead of "Begbie" or "the Beggar". He also refers to them as "cats", "okay gadges", or "no bad punters", seeing the young men's' good sides as well as their weaknesses.
But Welsh is not implying that speaking non-standard dialect automatically makes a character morally superior. This is especially obvious in the case of Frank Begbie.
In the case of Begbie, his narration is rather unusual, in that it is the narration of a person who would rather express himself through physical violence than through language. As with Spud, Begbie's personality in itself reflects his social immobility. But his language too is contrasted with Renton's, further illustrating his social inferiority. The following excerpt is narrated by Begbie, when he and Renton are sitting beside two tourists on a train:
- Whair's it yis come fae then?
- Sorry, I can't really understand you . . . These foreign cunts've goat trouble wi the Queen's fuckin English, ken. Ye huv tae speak louder, slower, n likesay mair posh, fir the cunts tae understand ye.
- WHERE . . . DO . . . YOU . . . COME . . . FROM?
That dis the fuckin trick. These nosey cunts in front ay us look roond. Ah stares back at the cunts. Some fucker's oan a burst mooth before the end ay this fuckin journey, ah kin see that now.
- Ehm . . . we're from Toronto, Canada.
- Tirawnto. That wis the Lone Ranger's mate, wis it no? ah sais. The birds jist look it us. Some punters dinnae fuckin understand the Scottish sense ay humour.
- Where are you from? the other burd sais...
- Edinburgh, Rents goes, tryin tae sound aw fuckin posh, ken. Fuckin smarmy rid-heided cunt. He's aw ready tae steam in now, aw Joe-fuckin-Cool, once Franco breks the fuckin ice.
(p.115)
Renton can easily communicate with the tourists, which makes Begbie feel hostile towards him. Begbie is vain enough to think that his dialect is understandable, or, actually, he seems quite unaware of the sound of his dialect, and so it is the Canadians, rather than Begbie himself, who cannot speak "the Queen's English". He interprets Renton's code switch as a social one, thus revealing his attitude towards Standard English as an upper class dialect - a dialect that Begbie can only imitate, not converse in. We also see in this excerpt how Begbie is always looking for a fight. His immediate reaction to unwanted attention (from the two people in the seats in front of him and Renton) or a feeling of inferiority (to Renton), is violent anger. This makes Begbie as socially immobile as his dialect does. Together with the large amount of profanity Begbie uses, non-standard dialect and a violent nature seem to be Welsh’s way of implying that we are not expected to sympathise with Begbie. Certainly, one can create a disagreable character without using non-standard dialect, but it is rather Begbie’s attitude towards others as reflected in his choice of words, (and based on something so trivial as their dialects) his idiolect, than his dialect that makes us disapprove of him.
Mark Renton is identifiable as the main character and the person we are expected to sympathise with the most, judging by the amount of chapters narrated by him, his intelligence, his attitudes towards others, and the ways in which his language reflects his attitudes and intellect.
As has been seen in the previous examples, Renton has a greater ability to evade punishment and lie convincingly than his friends. He achieves this by code-switching, the mark of his superiority over Spud and Begbie. The main difference between Renton and Sickboy can be said to be their attitudes towards the rest of the world, as reflected in their respective use of language. Like Spud, Renton uses his friends' real names occasionally, but above all, his lack of vanity is illustrated by his consciousness of his own social status. In the court scene, he cuts himself short in the middle of his lecture on subjectivity and truth, thinking to himself: "They hate a smart cunt. It's easy to talk yourself into a bigger fine, or fuck sake, a higher sentence. Think deference, Renton, think deference."(p.166)
Interestingly, Renton does not reflect upon his own bi-dialectalism at any point in the book. It is a tool to him, but seemingly one that he, like Sickboy, uses completely unconsciously. Nor does Renton seem to reflect on exactly what it is about Spud that makes him appear so stupid, aside from his being so scatterbrained, or what makes Begbie unable to communicate with the Canadian tourists.
It is possible that the very comprehensibility of a narration makes us sympathise with or relate to the narrator. Therefore, as Rodger argues, we are led to relate to the narrative voice that is closest to standard dialect the most[5]. In his essay, Rodger quotes part of an interview with the Scottish writer, James Kelman, where he replied to the comment: "You've stated that you are trying to obliterate the narrator, to get rid of the narrative voice." (uttered by K. MacNeill). with the following:
Not every narrative voice, just the third party one, the one that most people don't think of as a 'voice' at all - except maybe the voice of God - and they take for granted that it is unbiased and objective. But it's no such thing.
(Rodger1992:118)
By making Renton, a drug addict, the main narrator of Trainspotting, perhaps Welsh is trying to bring attention to the fact that, not only does a narrator not have to use standard dialect, but the narrator does not have to represent an unbiased opinion either. As can be seen in fig. 3.5, Renton's and Sickboy's narratives contain the highest frequency of standard (read: comprehensible) words among the characters:
fig. 3.5 Amount of
Standard English words used by each character in a block of 100 words,
containing no quotes of speech, from each characters narration.
| Character: | Number of Standard English Variants (out of 100 possible) | example taken from: |
| Renton | 74 | ln30-35, p.15 - ln.4, p.16 |
| Sickboy | 75 | lns.11-20, p.179 |
| Begbie | 53 | lns.25-33, p.115 |
| Spud | 50 | lns.15-23, p.126 |
| Invisible narrator | 99 | lns.1-10, p.325 |
| average: | 70.2 |
|
Out of these 100 lexical items, some standard variants
may appear in the text in an unaltered state, as concerns spelling and form,
simply because there is no Scottish or slang equivalent and the Scottish
pronunciation of the word may be identical to the standard pronunciation. I
have not counted deviational use of words like <us>, meaning <I> or
<me> as standard. I have also counted profanity and Spud's repeated
interjection <likesay> as deviational. Many of the standard variants in
the characters' respective vocabularies are determiners and pronouns, such as
<the>, <in>, <up>, and <a>. There also cases where
Spud, Begbie and Second Prize adapt words to their way of speaking, such as:
<n> or <an> (for <and>), whereas Sickboy and Renton choose
the standard pronunciation and spelling, which exemplifies the difference
between their language and that of Renton and Sickboy. Sickboy and Renton also
use very few interjections and less profanity than the others.
For reasons already stated, we sympathise more with Renton than with Sickboy. But are we meant to sympathise with Renton more than with, say, Begbie because of the space and the language Renton is given to express himself? And what then is the role of the invisible narrator in Trainspotting?
I would like to immediately point out that the gender of the narrator is unclear. I refer to the narrator as 'he', but I have no concrete proof that the narrator has a particular gender and I am acting only on my own intuitive, subjective opinion that 'he' might be Welsh himself.
The closer one looks at the third person narrator, the more confused one becomes about his objectivity. Although the narrator uses standard dialect, his narration is intermingled with free direct thought presentation in such a way that one must constantly question whose attitude and language is presented. As Leech and Short point out:
(The) negative side of speech and thought presentation, that it is often difficult to tell which mode is being used, is something that can be positively exploited in the manipulation point of view. It allows an author to slip from narrative statement to interior portrayal without the reader noticing what has occurred, and the reader has little choice but to take on trust views of the narrator, when character and narrator are merged in this way he tends to take over the view of the character too.
(1992: 340)
In the following excerpt, for example, it is unclear whether the narrator would call Stevie's girlfriend a 'slag' in a context clearly set apart from Stevie's thoughts, or if the slang expression is merely used in order to reinforce the non-standard elements of Stevie's interior monologue:
Stevie had gone back to Edinburgh and left the field clear for Keith Milliard. The bastard would take full advantage. They'd be together right now, just as they were last night. Milliard was a slag. So was Stevie. So was Stella. It was a bad combination. Stella was also the most wonderful person in the world, in Stevie's eyes. That fact made her less of a slag; in fact, not a slag at all.
(p.41)
It seems to be the constant switch between narration and thought-representation that makes paragraphs like these ambiguous. Less ambiguous are the following sentences:
A. Stevie bought a bottle of Bell's whisky at the station and arshed the lot by the time the train rolled into Waverly.
(p.44)
B. It is a foul and dreich night. (p.325)
These are two of the rare instances when we can be sure that it is the narrator speaking. He uses a non-standard variants, arshed and dreich, instead of standard lexical items, such as drank , in A, (which would perhaps pre modified by hastily or recklessly) or dreary, in B. The ambiguity of nearly every utterance made by the invisible narrator makes it extremely difficult to count the exact number of non-standard utterances he makes. Thus, our remaining question is: why bring a non-standard expression into an otherwise seemingly objective narration?
I believe that Welsh means for us to be uncertain about the attitudes of the narrator, making us question his objectiveness. This sort of narrative style is discussed in Rodger's paper, but there Rodger refers to another Scottish writer, James Kelman. By not making it clear whom certain utterances refer to and by not indenting, and thereby signalling, direct speech, (in order to distinguish speech from interior monologue) Kelman, like Welsh, induces the reader to question the authority of the narrative voice. Rodger's conclusion about Kelman is that:
In Kelman's fiction there is a constant undermining of conventional assumptions about the language and narrative voices of the texts. He works within the linguistic forms made available by both standard and non-standard dialect, and across to other dialects and texts... Kelman's fiction is written neither in standard nor non-standard dialect. We should rather say that it is written out of both.
(Rodger 1992:122)
What we can gather from this is that Welsh belongs to a new school of Scottish writers that question the authority of the narrative voice in literature by linguistic means. When Welsh's invisible narrator uses words such as arsh, pish, slag, and so on, the lack of quotation marks around them makes us wonder if the narrator is ironically mimicking the characters' thoughts or if the narrator uses these non-standard words in his own vocabulary. In either case, the narrator is not the objective middle class voice we would expect him to be. Perhaps the narrator is Irvine Welsh, reminding the reader that he does not solely speak a standard dialect and that he is biased towards his own story and characters. Or the narrator could be someone else who Welsh would like for us, the readers, to question and be suspicious towards for not revealing himself completely, although he does not refrain from sticking a few of his own attitudes into the narration through his choice of words. I believe that Welsh and Kelman want to constantly remind us that a narrator is never completely objective, it is only his or her language that makes us think he or she is.
We can say that dialect helps reveal the reader's attitudes towards the narrator and characters in Trainspotting, as well as functioning as a tool used to enhance the realistic quality of the narration. It also reveals the different characters social mobility when they code-switch and the characters' attitudes towards each other.
From a different perspective, we can see that Welsh has represented his characters' language varieties in an orthographic manner that is true to Scots grammar and phonology, in addition to the way in which Scots is blended with the standard dialect by its speakers. Welsh especially undermines the moral assumptions associated with non-standard varieties by inducing the reader to sympathise with characters in spite of their non-standard language variants and by awakening questions in regard to the source of narrative voice.
It will be interesting to see how this narrative technique develops in the future, as well as how Scottish writers continue their attempts to legitimise their non-standard dialect for a larger, standard-speaking, reading audience. Indeed, the more attention writers bring to the fact that non-standard speakers are discriminated in literature, the more the negative attitudes towards non-standard varieties in the ‘real world’ can be changed and children be allowed to develop their dialects without seeming "sortay pleb" to their standard-speaking peers.
Not much work has been done on the subject of Scots in fiction, although its occurrence is growing by the day, thanks to writers like Welsh and Kelman, to name a few. Indeed, the only serious paper I was able to find on Scots narratives was Rodger's, and yet he only covers one aspect of narrative voice. A more extensive study than this paper's could compare different Scottish writers, explore the history of Scots narratives, or delve more deeply into the realm of the portrayal of individual dialect-speaking characters' attitudes towards language within different Scottish novels.
I would like to end this paper by once again stating that the media has projected a completely unfair interpretation of Welsh's novel – had his characters been used-car salesmen, the author's representation of their language varieties would still have been admirable. Perhaps Welsh would like us to see that drug addicts are human beings too, but in the process, he teaches the reader a lot about our own prejudices based on language.
Primary
Sources:
Welsh, Irvine. 1996. Trainspotting. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Minerva.
Secondary
Sources:
Chapman, Raymond. 1984. The Treatment of Sounds in Language and Literature. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited.
Downer, Leslie. March 31, 1996. 'The beats of Edinburgh.' New York: New York Times Magazine Desk.
Fanning, Hiltgunt. 1994. "The Value of Investigations of the Use of Dialects in Fiction" W. Viereck (ed.). Proceedings of the International Congress of Dialectologists, Bamberg 1990. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 9-16.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1996. , “Linguistic function and and the literary style: An inquiry into the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors” Jean Jacques Weber (ed.). The Stylistics Reader. Great Britain: Arnold, pp 56-86.
Leech, Geoffrey N. and Short, Michael H. 1992. Style in fiction. London/New York: Longman, 138 & 340.
Macafee, Caroline. 1983. Glasgow. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin's Publishing Company, 18-41.
Miller, James. 1991. "The Grammar of Scottish English". James and Leslie Milroy (eds.) Regional Variations in British English Syntax, preliminary version for the ESRC.
Osborne, Charles. March 30, 1996. 'Welsh accuses the middle classes of cultural bias'. Great Britain: the Sunday Telegraph.
Rodger, Liam. 1992. 'Tense, Aspect and the busconductor Hines - the literary function of non-standard language in the fiction of James Kelman.'. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 3, 116-123.
Wells, J.C. 1982. Accents of English .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 394-407.
Warrack, Alexander. 1911. The Scots Dialect Dictionary. Dorset: New Orchard Editions Ltd, 1988.
[1]on p.15, for example Renton writes
"...ma last shot, taken in ma left airm..." instead of, for example:
"my last shot, which I took in my left arm".
[2] See Leech and Short 1992:138 for further information on foregrounding. Halliday’s article, “Linguistic function and and the literary style: An inquiry into the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors”, can also be of use.
[3] See sections 3.3 and 3.4.
[4]radge and doss are fairly new expressions and do not exist in any dictionary I could find. According to a native speaker of Scots, however, radge can be used as a noun or adjective, generally meaning "a pain in the ass", while doss is used as an adjective and means "lazy".
[5] "There are a number of contrasting ways in which non-standard dialect might make its appearance in a fictional text. Perhaps the commonest is 'dialect as special guest'. The use of non-standard forms occurs only in dialogue, so that the utterances of the non-standard dialect speaker are in sharp contrast with the surrounding narrative text... Whether the dialect-speaker is introduced to provide colour or comic relief, or an uplifting blast of old-time peasant virtue, the socio-linguistic point remains: s/he is not 'one of us' — the class of people who read and write novels." (Rodger p.116)