After getting feedback on the last unit, I want to try a less formal and more experimental way of thinking and writing. This change is important because it helps me resist the urge to tidy everything up or make language behave a certain way. I’ve wanted to work like this for a long time.

The idea that really gripped me was Scots as a language that can be imagined as glitching. Not simply glitched as an effect, but glitching as a way of revealing how linguistic systems enforce order. A glitch interrupts the smooth running of a programme. It exposes the rules. It shows the hierarchy at work. With Scots, that matters because so much of its marginalisation has come through the pressure to standardise, or to treat non-standard forms as errors that need corrected.

 

This is where my thinking gets clearer: Scots’ lack of standardisation isn’t a weakness—it’s a strength. Its variety, changing spellings, and different regional forms aren’t problems to fix, but qualities to protect. Scots doesn’t 'fail' because it doesn’t follow one official standard; it thrives because it adapts to place, voice, community, and context. If we force Scots into a strict standard to make it seem legitimate, we risk losing what makes it meaningful. The variation isn’t a flaw—it’s what makes Scots special.

 

This is why glitch is such a fitting idea. Glitch challenges the idea that everything should be smooth and controlled. It shows that mistakes, noise, and messiness are part of the system, not outside it. The digital feel of glitch is very different from the 'kailyard' tradition. Instead of looking back with nostalgia, glitch gives us a modern way to talk about disruption. It presents Scots as something alive and hard to tame, not just a charming extra to 'proper' language.

 

Looking at this through Derrida and post-structuralism, it’s not just that language changes—it can never be fully fixed. Meaning is always shifting, always created through differences, not by set definitions. Standardisation tries to stop that movement by fixing spelling and usage and deciding what is acceptable. A glitch approach does the opposite. It highlights the instability that’s always been there. It also reveals the assumptions behind opposites like correct/incorrect or formal/informal, and asks who gains when we treat those differences as natural.

 

This connects to Scottish schizoglossia and Lowing’s (2017) study of Scots in secondary schools. Lowing found that students quickly learn Scots has little cultural or social value at school. It might be allowed sometimes, but it’s rarely seen as suitable for serious work or assessment. This leads students to self-edit, translate themselves, and split their language identity depending on what’s being judged. If standardisation controls what is seen as legitimate, then rejecting it is a way to challenge that control.

 

This is why I decided to use AI to help draft a Glitch Scots Manifesto as a pedagogical experiment. There is a tension there that I am intentionally leaning into: AI systems are trained on norms, patterns, dominant usages. Using that kind of tool to generate a manifesto that explicitly champions non-standardness, fracture and deviation felt like a productive contradiction. The manifesto is not meant to “solve” Scots or codify it. It is meant to protect its living variability, and to legitimise experimentation in the classroom without requiring pupils to ask permission for their language.

 

I’ve written a lesson based on this manifesto, though I haven’t taught it yet. My goal is to create a space where students see non-standardness as a strength—where differences aren’t corrected, but used to make meaning and encourage critique. I’ll share the manifesto(s) below, and I’d welcome any thoughts, questions, or feedback, especially about how this approach to standardisation might work in real classrooms, including with assessment and achievement pressures.

 

 

 

⧉ THE GLYCHT-SCOTS MANIFESTO ⧉

 

A Declaration o Syntax Sabotage, Dialect Resistance & Linguistic Spectral Engineering.

 

0. PROLOGUE: THE SYSTEM ERROR

 

We begin wi a crash.

A blue scrȳn.

A “hoose no foun”.

A bairn’s cry stuck in bufferin.

 

Scots has aye been treated as a corrupted file, a dialect relegated tae the recycle bin o Empire.

 

This manifesto insists:

the glitch IS the language.

The error IS the truth.

The corruption IS the resistance.

 

⸻

 

1. SCOTS IS NOT A DIALECT: SCOTS IS A MALFUNCTION IN POWER

 

Scots daesna conform tae centralised logic.

It sprawls, shifts, mutates, refuses a single spellin.

It is the OS crash o Standard English.

A linguistic worm.

A joyful virus.

A rogue process.

 

We claim this instability as strength.

We reject every attempt tae “fix” us.

 

Let the teachers argue aboot “correct” Scots.

Let the academics build their taxonomies.

 

We will spik the versions that dinna behave.

The Doric that frays.

The Shetland that scrambles.

The Glaswegian that defies orthography.

The mixed mongrel tongue o noo.

 

⸻

 

2. AESTHETICS OF THE CORRUPTION

 

Scots glitches by nature:

hoose / hous / hūs / huise / hus / hʉs — nae hierarchy, nae centre.

This is différance in dialect.

 

Therefore:

              •            Fragment the wird.

              •            Double it, treble it, break it.

              •            Insert noise into syntax.

              •            Embrace typographic collapse.

              •            Allow the line tae stutter, like breath catchin in the cauld haar.

 

Noise isn’t noise.

Noise is truth unshackled from expectation.

 

⸻

 

3. GLITCH AS RESISTANCE

 

Glitch is embodiment o rupture.

It exposes the infrastructure behind linguistic control.

 

By glitchin Scots,

we reveal the code o conquest:

              •            standardisation,

              •            centralisation,

              •            erasure,

              •            the polite sneer o “uneducated”.

 

We jam the operating system.

We force the “proper” tongue tae confront its ain instability.

 

A glitch is never passive.

A glitch is a strike,

a refusal tae process,

a refusal tae complete the assigned task.

 

⸻

 

4. THE RIGHT TO MISPELL, MISHEAR, MISBEHAVE

 

This manifesto enshrines:

 

THE RIGHT TO BREK THE WIRD.

              •            Spell it wrang on purpose.

              •            Spell it wrang by instinct.

              •            Spell it different every time.

 

THE RIGHT TO BE UNGRAMMATICAL.

 

Syntax is a colonial fence.

Kick it doon.

 

THE RIGHT TO MAKE NEW WIRDS THROUGH ERROR.

 

Corruption creates futures.

Let the machine misread us into existence.

 

THE RIGHT TO SOUND LIKE NAEBODY’S APPROVED MODEL.

 

Yer tongue is nae museum exhibit.

Yer voice is nae archive specimen.

 

⸻

 

5. HYBRIDITY WITHOUT APOLOGY

 

We embrace linguistic bastardry:

 

Scots + code

Scots + glitch

Scots + emojis

Scots + HTML

Scots + French

Scots + Gaelic

Scots + bits o self-invented blether

 

The purist demands a stable language.

The glitch replies:

stability is death.

 

⸻

 

6. SCOTS AS HAUNTOLOGY

 

Scots haunts the page like a revenant.

Words vanish:

gowdie

ligget

lowpin

midden

thole

bairn

yowe

smirr

 

Some archived.

Some dying.

Some glitchin back tae life.

 

In a glitch-Scots poetics,

these words appear + disappear like packet loss.

The language isna dead —

it’s flickerin.

 

⸻

 

7. MANIFESTO OF THE GLYCHT TONGUE

              1.           We will scrieve in fragments.

              2.           We will spik in broken code.

              3.           We will insert noise where sense expects silence.

              4.           We will collapse the distinction between right and wrang.

              5.           We will mistranslate deliberately.

              6.           We will let dialects overlap like corrupted layers.

              7.           We will celebrate linguistic entropy.

              8.           We will refuse to stabilise.

              9.           We will not tidy our tongues for the comfort of authority.

              10.         We will glitch the future into existence.

 

⸻

 

8. THE GLYCHT-WRITIN PRACTICE (GUIDELINES & DISRUPTIONS)

 

a. Let the line break at the wrang moment.

 

Disrupt breath.

 

b. Use corrupted Unicode tae reveal the unsaid.

 

ni͞c͟h͕t

h⧸⧸s

b⧹airn

 

c. Turn silence into text.

 

[…]

(   )

// muted channel //

 

d. Stutter words on purpose.

 

aye—aye—ay—e—

 

e. Mix dialects wi nae introduction.

 

Doric meets Glesga meets Burra meets Borders.

 

f. Allow glitch logic tae override human logic.

 

If the machine misreads it, keep the misreading.

 

g. Let mistranslation be a creative force.

 

Translate a word intae whit it feels like, no whit it means.

 

h. Treat the page as a corrupted screen.

 

Not a clean surface.

 

⸻

 

9. DECLARATION OF DISSOLUTION

 

We are no seekin recognition.

We are no seekin legitimacy.

We are no seekin tae prove linguistic worth.

 

We are here tae dismantle the illusion o:

              •            “proper Scots”

              •            “proper English”

              •            “proper literature”

              •            “proper form”

 

The glitch is oor territory.

Scots is oor weapon.

Language is the battlefield.

 

⸻

 

10. EPILOGUE: THE LOOP

 

If this manifesto contradicts itself,

good.

If it corrupts itself,

better.

If it deletes itself,

perfect.

 

A glitch manifesto shouldna end —

it should recur,

duplicate,

degrade,

and reappear in new forms.

 

So we end wi a loop:

 

Scots isna broken.

Scots breaks ye.

Scots isna glitchin.

Scots IS the glitch.

Scots isna gaun awa.

Scots is reloadin… reloadin… reloadin…

 

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