Karly

Recently, while watching Bridgerton, I found myself pausing over a line that probably wasn’t intended to send me spiralling down a sociolinguistic rabbit hole.

Spoilers ahead for season four.

As Francesca and Michaela mourn John Stirling, Michaela remarks that John was a Scotsman and it immediately caught my attention, partly because one of the most common observations among viewers has been that John, and indeed the Kilmartins more broadly, don’t sound particularly Scottish. Here was the show explicitly foregrounding his Scottish identity at the very moment I found myself wondering how audible that identity actually was.

Part of this post was originally written for my final History of Scots essay, so I apologise if it occasionally sounds as though I’ve wandered back into a university lecture. I just couldn’t get the thought out of my head and, having completed my postgraduate studies in Scotland, I suppose this is the sort of thing my brain now does for fun.

The more I thought about Michaela’s comment, the more I realised that the apparent contradiction at the centre of John Stirling’s character touches on a much older question, one that Scottish speakers have been navigating for centuries. What does it actually mean to sound Scottish, and are Scottish identity and a Scottish accent necessarily the same thing? The answer, historically speaking, is far more complicated than we might expect.

A brief caveat before any Scottish historians appear in my comments section: much of the research informing this post comes from eighteenth-century language attitudes, whereas Bridgerton is set in the early nineteenth century. That said, linguistic ideologies do not simply vanish when a century changes. While Scotland in the Regency period was not the same country it had been in the decades immediately following Culloden, many of the assumptions surrounding prestige, education and linguistic respectability remained remarkably resilient. The pressures towards anglicisation that shaped the eighteenth century did not suddenly disappear in 1801, nor did debates surrounding Scottish identity and language. If anything, the nineteenth century inherited many of these tensions, even as Scottish literature and culture enjoyed increasing popularity throughout Britain.

When discussing the history of Scots, the eighteenth century is often characterised by contradiction. Following the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, political power became increasingly concentrated in London and with it came the growing prestige of English as the language of government, administration, education and social mobility. Scots did not disappear, nor did Scottish people suddenly stop feeling attached to it, but its position became increasingly complicated as speakers found themselves navigating between loyalty to their national identity and the practical advantages associated with linguistic conformity.

As sociolinguist Sophie van Eyndhoven notes, Scottish gentry were often caught between the covert prestige of their mother tongue and the sophistication of what was perceived to be a cosmopolitan standard. In other words, many Scots found themselves balancing two competing pressures: a desire to retain something distinctly Scottish and a desire to participate in institutions where English carried significantly more prestige.

This tension was particularly visible among the upper classes. The Scottish Enlightenment was one of the most intellectually productive periods in European history, producing figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith, yet even as Scotland was exporting some of the most influential thinkers of the era, many educated Scots were becoming increasingly conscious of their language. Prescriptive guides appeared identifying so-called Scotticisms, scholars compiled lists of forms to avoid, and speaking or writing in a manner perceived as too Scottish could become a source of social anxiety.

Perhaps nobody embodies this dilemma better than James Boswell, who spent much of his life attempting to gain access to London’s elite circles while remaining deeply attached to his Scottish identity. Boswell was reportedly aware of his accent and conscious of how it marked him socially, yet he was equally reluctant to abandon that part of himself entirely.

Reading about figures like Boswell, it becomes difficult not to think about John Stirling.

Modern audiences often assume that Scottish identity should be immediately audible and, to be fair, television has conditioned us to expect exactly that. When a character is introduced as Scottish, many viewers expect a recognisable accent to follow, partly because accent has become one of the quickest ways visual media signals identity, belonging and place. Yet history suggests that the relationship between Scottishness and sounding Scottish has never been straightforward, particularly among the aristocracy.

John is not simply a Scottish man. He is an earl, a member of the elite, someone who moves comfortably through London’s highest social circles and participates in the same world as the Bridgertons. If we apply what we know about prestige, accommodation and language attitudes, he belongs precisely to the social group most likely to have experienced pressure towards linguistic anglicisation.

This is where the history becomes particularly interesting. Throughout the eighteenth century, Scots was often celebrated in literature while being discouraged in formal and prestigious settings. Robert Burns could achieve enormous success writing in Scots and become Scotland’s national poet, yet many educated speakers were simultaneously being encouraged to eliminate Scottish features from their everyday speech. The result was a society in which Scottish identity remained deeply important while certain forms of Scottish speech were increasingly associated with informality, locality or lower social status.

Seen through that lens, the Kilmartins begin to look less like a historical inconsistency and more like participants in a centuries-old sociolinguistic tension.

That doesn’t necessarily mean viewers are wrong to wish they sounded more Scottish. In fact, the disappointment many people feel is understandable because accent remains one of the most visible and audible expressions of identity. What fascinates me, however, is that Bridgerton accidentally stumbles into a much older debate, namely whether Scottishness should be understood through language alone or whether it can exist independently of the way a person speaks. This is why Michaela’s comment stayed with me long after the episode ended.

When she says that John was a Scotsman, she isn’t referring to his accent. She is referring to his family, his upbringing, his heritage, his sense of belonging and the cultural framework through which he understood the world. His Scottishness exists regardless of whether the audience can immediately hear it.

In many ways, that is the same tension that runs throughout the history of Scots itself. For centuries, speakers have navigated the uneasy relationship between identity and prestige, between sounding local and sounding educated, between preserving linguistic heritage and adapting to institutions that reward conformity. The notion of a higher standard is one that has haunted Scottish speakers for generations and, despite significant changes in attitudes towards Scots, it remains a point of discussion today.

Two centuries later, audiences are still asking some of the same questions. What does a Scotsman sound like? Can someone remain unmistakably Scottish while participating in institutions that encourage linguistic conformity? And how much of identity should be heard rather than simply understood?

Bridgerton probably wasn’t trying to start a conversation about the history of Scots, but thanks to one throwaway line from Michaela Stirling, here we are.