The intention of this thesis is to challenge three fundamental assumptions about the function of the ‘apologetic apostrophe’ – described henceforth as the ‘Scots apostrophe’ – which have, until now, exclusively characterised the scholarly understanding of this linguistic form in Scots literary history:
1. The function of apostrophised spelling forms in Scots is to indicate elision.
2. The use of apostrophised forms undermines perceptions of Scots as a language independent from English and is solely for the benefit of accessibility for an English readership.
3. Scots is intrinsically linked with Scottishness: as an agent of anglicisation, the use of apostrophised forms therefore contributes to the erosion of Scottish cultural identity.
Situated within historical pragmatics – and combining corpus and philological analysis – this study investigates the origin and diffusion of the Scots apostrophe in eighteenth-century Scottish literary verse, with particular attention paid to the influential poetic miscellanies of James Watson, Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott.
First and foremost, this thesis establishes a theoretical framework with which to understand the function of the Scots apostrophe in literary Scots that simultaneously contests unscholarly myth-making with regards to linguistic practices. In broader terms, the research therein demonstrates the value of non-lexical markers, like the apostrophe, as a capacious avenue for future historical pragmatic research
