The Intersection of Class and Language in Kelman’s How Late It Was How Late and Welsh’s Trainspotting

The Intersection of Class and Language in Kelman’s How Late It Was How Late and Welsh’s Trainspotting

In How Late It Was How Late and Trainspotting, written by James Kelman and Irvine Welsh respectively, we are presented with two novels which consistently use the Scottish vernacular throughout. The placement and way in which the vernacular language is used in these novels is very much juxtaposed against that of institutional authority, and therefore presents us with a conflict between said authority and class. Therefore, in many ways, the way in which the vernacular language is used represents a stark difference in class throughout both How Late It Was How Late and Trainspotting; it is arguably impossible to look at the way in which diglossia and vernacular language is used within these novels without also discussing class, and the way in which these literary techniques are used to represent the class system in Scotland.

Both novels immediately plunge us into the world of the Scottish vernacular, with How Late It Was How Late beginning with “Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye”[1] and Trainspotting opening with “The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.”[2] These opening sentences immediately force us as the reader to be thrown head first into the troubled world which these characters reside in – but, equally importantly, it also immediately makes us aware of the way in which vernacular language will be a running theme throughout. As Robert A. Morace writes (with regards to the opening of Trainspotting), “Here is a world that offers no introduction and no apology, a world that simply presents itself on its own terms, in its own words.”[3] When it comes to Trainspotting, only four of the forty chapters of the novel are written in standard English; the other thirty-six remain written by Welsh in the vernacular language which the characters themselves speak in. Meanwhile, in How Late It Was How Late, Kelman continuously switches between the vernacular and standard English; there is not a single page in the whole novel which is written entirely in one of these forms. Both of these stylistic choices by Welsh and Kelman have a similar result – the creating of a world which actually reflects the one around us, where both standard English and the Scottish vernacular is spoken.

Something to point out which further builds upon this decision is the fact that in both Trainspotting and How Late It Was How Late, there is no glossary in the novels for the reader to look up definitions of the words (except for, with Trainspotting, the US edition). This was very much a conscious decision of fully immersing the reader within the reality that Kelman and Welsh knew from their lived experiences. For Kelman, “I need to break down narrative structure here, I need to be involved in oratory devices as well as literary devices […] Most of my stories were written from within my own culture, so you use the language as people use it. If you’re writing a story about a man in a pub, why can’t you use the language he speaks?”[4] Meanwhile, for Welsh, the importance of the vernacular representing an actual group of individuals as opposed to being seen as simply a stylistic ideal is clear: “The last thing I want is all these fuckers up in Charlotte Square putting on the vernacular as a stage managed thing. It’s nothing to do with them.”[5] The key point to take from these quotations from both authors is that, for them, in writing How Late It Was How Late and Trainspotting, they were not writing for show, or for some high level of literary praise; it was specifically about representing a group of people they felt were not represented within English literature, and to do that it was important to show said people in the way they actually speak. There is certainly a level of resentment for both authors in the way these individuals are treated and looked down upon, with Kelman saying how “someone will say, ‘Well, what are you doing here? You can’t use the word fuck.’ So I can’t write about that character? That area of male working-class community cannot exist within literature? […] I think that is an essential working-class experience […] Intimidation, provocation, sarcasm, contempt, disgust and so on.”[6] The way in which the vernacular is used within these novels is unquestionably tied to that of class, as it comes from a place of the authors feeling that specific group of society are direly unrepresented within the literary canon.

Using the Scottish vernacular within writing is not unique to Kelman and Welsh, and they are certainly not the firs