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Robert Sim.
As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I find myself from time to time pondering on the relationship between a language and the culture of its native speakers. In my opinion, we can see particularly clearly how language and culture are interlinked when we read the works of creative writers who are writing in their native language – both in ‘high art’ and popular writing.
I thought about this the other day when I was listening to what is in my opinion one of the greatest popular songs ever written and certainly one of the greatest Scottish songs. The song is entitled ”Dignity” and it was written and performed by the Scottish group Deacon Blue. Its relevance to this article is that the words contain some interesting lyrics that tell us a lot about Scottish life (at least in 1987, when the song was released); and especially what I see as Scottish values.
To understand the points I want to make, it’s easiest if I quote the first half of the song. (You can find the song on YouTube and all the usual music sites):
VERSE
There’s a man I meet, works up our street
He’s a worker for the council
Has been twenty years
And he takes no lip off nobody
And litter off the gutter
Puts it in a bag
And never thinks to mutter
And he packs his lunch in a Sunblest bag
The children call him Bogie
He never lets on
But I know ’cause he once told me
He let me know a secret about the money in his kitty
He’s gonna buy a dinghy
Gonna call her Dignity
CHORUS
And I’ll sail her up the west coast
Through villages and towns
I’ll be on my holidays
They’ll be doing their rounds
They’ll ask me how I got her I’ll say, “I saved my money”
They’ll say, “Isn’t she pretty? That ship called Dignity”.
The first verse describes a very ordinary man whose job it is to pick up garbage (“litter”) from the street. He isn’t friendly, as we know from the line “And he takes no lip off nobody”. ‘To give someone some lip’ means to speak to someone in a way which is rude and disrespectful; and ‘to take no lip’ means that you will in turn react aggressively to someone who speaks rudely to you.
The interesting thing about the way this expression is used in the song is that it is part of a double negative (“no… nobody”). In Standard English, a double negative is grammatically incorrect (in contrast to both Russian and Kazakh) and this extends to educated Scots speakers of English; but for those Scots who are not so well-educated a double negative is both acceptable and normal. In this one line, therefore, we are given an insight into the speech pattern of the man described in the song and of a whole social class in Scotland.
We are provided with another glimpse into this aspect of Scottish culture in the lines:
And he packs his lunch in a Sunblest bag
The children call him Bogie
‘Sunblest’ is a brand of UK-made bread that peaked in popularity in the 1970s. It was rather unhealthy white bread that was however cheap and would have been bought by those who were not well-off. In addition, “Bogie” was a rather demeaning nickname common among working-class Scots and shows that the man is a figure of fun to the children. These cultural references add authenticity to the song.
The man however has a secret, which is that he is saving his money (in his “kitty” or small savings account) to buy a small boat (a “dinghy”) which he will use to escape to the beautiful, wild and remote Scottish west coast and thus also escape his demeaning life. In so doing, he will achieve dignity, which is also the name he wants to give his boat. The Cambridge dictionary defines “dignity” as “the quality of a person that makes him or her deserving of respect”. The fact that the word “dignity” operates on two different levels, as the name of the boat and the abstract quality, makes it resonate powerfully and movingly in the song.
Bogie is not treated with respect; but the chorus makes us see things differently. In the chorus, we hear Bogie’s voice for the first time and because the words are in Standard English they suggest that inside this figure of fun is an intelligent human being determined to fulfil his dream: a man of dignity, in other words. He speaks confidently, as the repeated use of the contracted form of “will”, eg “I’ll”, shows us:
And I’ll sail her up the west coast
Through villages and towns
The idea that working-class people have inherent worth and dignity is a very Scottish one. Our national poet, Robert Burns, in his celebrated song ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’, summed up this idea memorably:
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
[The honest man, though ever so poor
Is king of men for all that].
Burns and Deacon Blue are thus linked across the centuries in expressing the very Scottish value of egalitarianism.
The author is Robert Douglas Sim, an independent education consultant from Dunfermline, the U.K., who has established strong connections with Kazakh students through his dedicated teaching and consulting.
