This book focuses on James Kelman, a leading Scottish author, and his use of language. It examines how Kelman presents a spoken Glasgow working-class voice in his stories while breaking down the traditional distinction made between speech and writing in literature. Three main themes are explored: the use of Glaswegian/Scots language, the inclusion of working-class discourse features, and an expressive preference for spoken over written forms. Kelman’s writing is approached through an examination of his use of punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, swearing, and body language. Throughout, examples from Kelman’s writing are analysed and statistical comparisons are made between his writing and the Scots Corpus of Texts and Speech. In summary, the reader will find a detailed and systematic analysis of Kelman’s use of language in literature, showing linguistic patterns, identifying key textual strategies and features, and comparing these to the standards that precede him and those that surround his work.

This is a book about Glasgow, but not your everyday history book. Glasgow by the way, but is a contemporary series of essays examining different aspects of Glasgow in a historical and cultural context, revealing a unique, amusing and sometimes critical, perspective of Cairney's beloved city. Those who remember John Cairney's performances and have read his other books will enjoy the insightful anecdotes from Cairney's career.

Distinguished by irony, compassion and the author's own dry wit, these three novels paint a memorable picture of life in the streets, schools and tenements of Glasgow in the 1950s and 60s. With a unique vision of loneliness, old age, sexual longing, hot young blood and youth's casual cruelty, George Friel's books explore a dark comedy of tangled communication, human need and fading community. All these elements come together in the humorous parable of greed, religion and slum youth that is The Boy Who Wanted Peace; in the fate of old and disturbed Miss Partridge who is obsessed with the innocence of young Grace; and in the mental collapse of Mr Alfred, a middle-aged school teacher who is in love with one of his pupils. The humour, realism and moral concern of Friel's work clearly anticipate and stand alongside the novels of Alan Spence, Alasdair Gray, William McIlvanney and James Kelman.

This first full-length biography of Harrison offers a portrait of a man ahead of his time in synthesizing race and class struggles in the U.S. and a leading influence on better known activists from Marcus Garvey to A. Philip Randolph. Harrison emigrated from St. Croix in 1883 and went on to become a foremost organizer for the Socialist Party in New York, the editor of the Negro World, and founder and leader of the World War I-era New Negro movement. Harrison s enormous political and intellectual appetites were channeled into his work as an orator, writer, political activist, and critic. He was an avid bibliophile, reportedly the first regular black book reviewer, who helped to develop the public library in Harlem into an international center for research on black culture. But Harrison was a freelancer so candid in his criticism of the establishment-black and white-that he had few allies or people interested in protecting his legacy. Historian Perry s detailed research brings to life a transformative figure who has been little recognized for his contributions to progressive race and class politics. Copyright Booklist Reviews 2008.

This is a wonderfully colourful and deeply poignant memoir of growing up in a 'single end' - one room in a Glasgow tenement - during and immediately after the Second World War. Although young Robert Douglas's life was blighted by the cruel if sporadic presence of his father, it was equally blessed by the love of his mother, Janet. While the story of their life together is in some ways very sad, it is also filled with humorous and happy memories. "Night Song of The Last Tram" is a superb evocation of childhood and of a Glasgow of trams and tenements that has long since disappeared.

Accents and dialects are constantly undergoing small variations over time, but evidence shows that change may have become increasingly rapid in the past few decades. 'Urban Voices' presents one of the few recent surveys of this phonological variation and change in urban accents across Great Britain and Ireland. Each of the specially commissioned chapters is divided into two parts. The first provides a detailed description of accent features within one or more urban centres, including information on social and stylistic variation and ongoing change. The second discusses a range of current theoretical and methodological issues. Some chapters present wholly new data based on fieldwork carried out specifically for inclusion in 'Urban Voices', while others summarise data from well-known research, up-dated and reanalysed in accordance with new findings. Containing copious illustrative and pedagogic material, this textbook presents a clear pathway to state-of-the-art research for students of sociolinguistics, dialectology, phonetics, and phonology at advanced undergraduate and graduate level. In addition, the detailed descriptive data and the accompanying cassette constitute a valuable resource for students and teachers of English, clinicians and speech therapists, forensic phoneticians, researchers in speech recognition and speech synthesis, and actors. Contributors: Deborah Chirrey, Edge Hill University College / Beverley Collins, Rijks Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands / Gerard J Docherty, University of Newcastle, UK / Paul Foulkes, University of Leeds, UK / Nigel Hewlett, Queen Margaret College / Raymond Hickey, University of Essen, Germany / Paul Kerswill, University of Reading, UK / Anne Grethe Mathisen, University of Oslo, Norway / Kevin McCafferty, Universitetet i Tromso, Norway / Inger Mees, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark / Lesley Milroy , University of Michigan, USA / Mark Newbrook, Monash University, Australia / James M Scobbie, Queen Margaret College, UK / Jana Stoddart, Olomouc, Czech Republic / Jane Stuart-Smith, University of Glasgow, UK / Laura Tollfree, Monash University, Australia / Peter Trudgill, University of Fribourg, Switzerland / Alice Turk, University of Edinburgh, UK / Clive Upton, University of Leeds, UK / Dominic Watt, University of Leeds, UK / J D A Widdowson, University of Sheffield, UK / Ann Williams, University of Reading, UK.