Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface Liverpool: language, culture and history
- 1 The sea, slavery and strangers: observations on the making of early modern Liverpool and its culture
- 2 Language in Liverpool: the received history and an alternative thesis
- 3 Language and a sense of place: the beginnings of ‘Scouse’
- 4 Frank Shaw and the founding of the ‘Scouse industry’
- 5 What is ‘Scouse’? Historical and theoretical issues
- 6 Liverpools: places, histories, differences
- Appendix. Stories of words: naming the place, naming the people
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Liverpools: places, histories, differences
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface Liverpool: language, culture and history
- 1 The sea, slavery and strangers: observations on the making of early modern Liverpool and its culture
- 2 Language in Liverpool: the received history and an alternative thesis
- 3 Language and a sense of place: the beginnings of ‘Scouse’
- 4 Frank Shaw and the founding of the ‘Scouse industry’
- 5 What is ‘Scouse’? Historical and theoretical issues
- 6 Liverpools: places, histories, differences
- Appendix. Stories of words: naming the place, naming the people
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I didn't choose you, nor did you choose me.
I was born into a version called Accent,
I haven't lost it, nor could it lose me –
I own it; it owns me, with my consent.
(Douglas Dunn, ‘English. A Scottish Essay’, 2008)In this final chapter I want to present a personal account of how I came to reflect on many of the issues addressed in this book: the dominant historical and theoretical narrative concerning language in Liverpool; possible alternatives to the prevailing story; interest in ‘local’ language; the creation and forging of Scouse; the ways in which Scouse has been used within popular culture; and the creation of a cultural identity around Scouse. There are two dangers in this approach. The first is that my own experience will be presented or taken as typical, and the second is that of nostalgia. In the first regard, I hope it will be clear that my account is designed simply to present a journey to a number of questions that I think are of more than personal significance. People move, but they do so in space and history; if that were not the case, then much of the following chapter would be neither more nor less interesting than a snippet of memoir, but I think that the personal presentation helps to explain how a number of the issues that I consider in the book arose.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- ScouseA Social and Cultural History, pp. 115 - 142Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012