Professor Robert McColl Millar

Biography

Robert McColl Millar is Professor in Linguistics and Scottish Language.  He has published widely on the interface between Gaelic and Scots in Northern Scots, lexical attrition in Modern Scots, rapid language change and its connection with attitudes in modern Scotland, language policy towards Scots, the connection between language standardisation and the development of the nation state and the sociology of language. His books include 

System Collapse, System Rebirth: The Demonstrative Systems of English 900-1350 and the Birth of the Definite Article (2000)

Language, Nation and Power (2005) 

Northern and Insular Scots, (2007) 

Authority and Identity: a Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age  (2010)

English Historical Sociolinguistics (2012)

Variation and Attrition in the Scottish Fishing Communities, with William Barras and Lisa Marie Bonnici (2014)

Contact: The Interaction of Closely Related Linguistic Varieties and the History of English (2016)

Modern Scots: an analytical survey (2018) 

A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland (2020)

Trask's Historical Linguistics (2007, 2015, 2023)

A History of the Scots Language (2023)

Linguistic Contact and Language Change (2024)

He is Editor of Scottish Language, a member of the editorial board of English World-Wide and the Review of Scottish Studies and a Trustee of Scots Language Dictionaries. Along with Michelle Macleod, he is series editor of Edinburgh Studies in the Language of Scotland; he is also series editor for a refereed online series, Publications of the Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster. If you would like to propose a volume, please get in touch with him at the e-mail address above. He was Chair of the Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster from 2009 to 2017.

Over the last fifteen years, Professor Millar has supervised over 25 successful doctoral theses, ranging from language teaching, through language contact to the use of language in eighteenth century Scotland. 

Research Overview

Robert McColl Millar is an historical linguist, dialectologist and socioliogist of language, working both on Scotland and beyond.

Current Research

Professor Millar  has a long-standing interest in the ways in which the languages of Europe have gained full literate expression. He is also continuing work on close-relative contact, reassessing his discussion of the development of Shetland Scots.

From 2008-11 he was principal investigator for a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for aproject to investigate lexical change in the dialects of the Scottish fishing communities. The first book related to this project, Variation and Attrition in the Scottish Fishing Communities, was published in May 2014.

He has also been working on the language of letters to and from convicts transported to New South Wales in the first half of the nineteenth century. The corpus is comprised of letters to and from Thomas Holden and from Richard Taylor.

In 2007 he was asked to write an introduction to a new printing of Hugh Marwick's Orkney Norn. This publication now appears to have been abandoned, so the introduction is available here.

In late May 2018 he gave a lecture entitled Scots as a Sociolinguistic Entity at the University of Giessen. The attached represents some suggested references and readings.

In this document can be found a full transcription and translation of 'Donald's letter', as discussed in A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland.

At present he is completing a book on language contact and language change for Cambridge University Press and writing (with Dawn Leslie) a volume on the Dialects of Scots for Edinburgh University Press.

Teaching Responsibilities

I will be teaching on the following courses in Half Session 1 of 2025-2026:

LN1008 English Past and Present

LN4012 Dissertation in Language and Linguistics 

I am regularly available on campus (normally at least three days in the week). Probably the best way to find out my availability at a particular time is to consult

https://mccollmillar.youcanbook.me

You should sign up for a time on this site: this guarantees you will be expected and that you won't have to wait. If you would like to have an online consultation, let me know.

If you can't make any of these times, get in touch and we'll work something out.

Since my arrival in Aberdeen, I have taught on the following courses:

Scottish Level 1

English Past and Present (2018-)

English Structure and Use (2010-)

Essentials of Language (2002-9)

Writing Scotland Now (2002-7)

Reading Writing (2007-9)

Communication and Language in the Contemporary World (2008-9; 2016)

The Social Construction of Gender (1997-2007)

Language in Literature (1997-2000)

History of the English Language (1996)

Scottish Level 2

Language in Society (2016)

Words and Meanings: Lexis and Semantics (2009-14)

Constructing Words and Meaning: Morphology (2012-14)

History of Language in the British Isles (1998-2013)

Sounds of English (2007-2012)

Language and Linguistics: Applications (2002-9)

Introduction to Language and Linguistics (1998-2001)

Scottish Level 3

Historical (Socio)Linguistics (2024-)

Language Change: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches (2020-3)

Unwinding Words (2019-2021)

Language: Variation and Change (2000-2019)

Language and Language Use in Europe in the Twentieth Century (2004)

A Social and Cultural History of the English Language (1998-1999)

Introduction to Sociolinguistics (1996-1998)

Scottish Level 4

Language Contact (2023-)

Adopt a dialect: methods and projects in dialectology (2018-22)

Sociology of Language (2015-17)

Language contact and change in language (2008-22)

Language—Power—People—Nation (2002-14)

Language Development and Linguistic Change 1750-1950 (2002-2010)

Languages and Histories, People and Land: Scotland and Ireland (2003)

Society and Language (2001-2002)

Language Change: Case Studies from the Histories of English and Scots (2001-2002)

Language and Identity in Scotland and Ireland (2000-2002)

Scottish Level 5 (Masters)

A Social and Textual History of the English Language (2021-; element of MLitt in English Language and Literature)

Varieties of English: the TESOL perspective (2017; element of MSc in TESOL)

TESOL Research Methods II (2017; element of MSc in TESOL)

TESOL Focussed Teaching portfolio and dissertation (2015-; core element of MSc in TESOL)

History of English (2009-12; element of MLitt in Sociolinguistics and English Linguistics for Advanced Teachers of English)

Describing and Teaching the Morphology and Syntax of English (2006-12; element of the MLitt in English Linguistics for Advanced Teachers of English)

Research Methods II (2009-12; element of MLitt in Sociolinguistics)

Models of Language in Society (2007-10; element of MLitt in Minority Language Planning and Policy)

Research Methods 2 (2002-7; element of MLitt in English Sociolinguistics)

Research Tutorial (2003-7; element of MLitt in English Sociolinguistics)

Dialects of English: Historical (2002-6; element of MLitt in English Sociolinguistics)

The Sociolinguistics of Scotland and Ireland (2000; element of MLitt in Irish and Scottish Studies)