Talk:Scottish diaspora

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Scotch vs. Scots and Scottish
This article uses "Scotch" in reference to **Scots** (persons of Scottish heritage). I've heard that this is not considered to be correct usage by at least some folks. For example: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/27860 ("One cynical joke is that Scotch can be used only for things which can be bought, such as whisky, eggs and politicians"). For another is the witticism about how a person is a Scot, while Scotch refers to the contents of his belly.

Additionally the usage sounds off to me, perhaps over-sensitive, ear.

The dictionary definitions suggest that it's not, technically, an error in the usage. But I wonder if this article might be improved by changing such references to respect these sensibilities. While I understand and respect Be_bold, I feel like it would be better to discuss here in Talk: before doing so.

JimD (talk) 19:19, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * "Scotch" in this sense is Victorian-era English and should not be used here except in a direct quotation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:04, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Dr. James Naismith.jpg

People of Scots descent in Scotland
The article itself contained some discussion, jammed into the infobox, that I've moved to the talk page. Actually, after digging up attribution from diffs, they're both from the same person. These were from the "Scotland: 4,446,000 (2011) (Scottish descent only.)" line in the infobox: — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Possibly another 500,000 who identify as British. This still means they are Scottish, ethnically and by heritage. But it’s hard to measure.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coronaverification (talk • contribs) 18:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Although unlike England, many Scots don’t identify as British. But unionists in Scotland tend to. This does not mean they do not have Scottish heritage and are not a member of Scottish people simply for identifying as British. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coronaverification (talk • contribs) 18:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Additional sources
Some stuff to look for:
 * – Differs from the above in focusing more on Scotland's role in the British Empire, and the British diaspora more broadly, so perhaps of less interest/relevance.
 * – Covers Highland and Lowland, and emigration.
 * – Has a chapter on "the peculiar nature of [Scotland's] diaspora".
 * – Entire book will probably be of relevance. This was originally an expensive academic issue, but is now available used for around US$15. Significant parts of the content can be Google-previewed here.
 * – "This volume contains a selection of the best papers from the conference, ﬁve invited chapters, and an introduction, for a total of nearly 149,000 words." Also covers Irish, Welsh, etc.
 * – Seems to be still forthcoming, so maybe late 2023 or 2024.
 * – This is a very expensive academic volume.
 * – 4-vol. set of very expensive textbooks. Contains 152 essays, and I don't know which volume Newton's is in. Best gotten via inter-library loan, or a university campus library.
 * – Is a general history, but does address the diaspora and Scotland's modern relation to it.
 * – Seems to focus on Highland games events in the US South – Publishers Weekly: "A combination of resource compendium, exhaustively detailed anthropological study and astute cultural criticism. Extensive research, clear prose and respect for her subjects will win this authoritative work favor among Scottish American enthusiasts and academics alike."
 * – Has extensive chapters by 7 or 8 authors. Includes Australia in some of Ray's material, but no dedicated chapter about it; the book is mostly about Canada and the US.
 * – This particular chapter sounds valuable: "sketches brief immigration histories of the different Scottish ethnic groups in colonial times and considers how the ethnic divides between Scots, so important in the 18th century, were downplayed through Scottish ethnic organizations in the 19th. The chapter concludes with descriptions of the Scottish-American community and ethnic organization and heritage activities today" (among other material).
 * Other pieces include: Ray, Celete; "Scottish Immigration and Ethnic Organization in the United States". Vance, Michael; "A Brief History of Organized Scottishness in Canada". Bennett, Margaret; "From the QuebecHebrideans to les Écossais-Québécois: Tracing the Evolution of a Scottish Cultural Identity in Canada’s Eastern Townships". Vance, Michael; "Powerful Pathos: The Triumph of Scottishness in Nova Scotia". Dembling, Jonathan; "You Play It as You Would Sing It: Cape Breton, Scottishness, and the Means of Cultural Production". Jarvie, Grant; "The North American Émigré, Highland Games, and Social Capital in International Communities". Hook, Andrew; "Troubling Times in the Scottish-American Relationship". Sheets, John W.; "Finding Colonsay's Emigrants and a 'Heritage of Place'". Basu, Paul; "Pilgrims to the Far Country: North American 'Roots-Tourists' in the Scottish Highlands and Islands". Cowan, Edward J.; "Tartan Day in America". McArthur, Colin; "Transatlantic Scots, Their Interlocutors, and the Scottish Discursive Unconscious".
 * – Seems to focus on Highland games events in the US South.
 * – This book is probably the only one on return migration of the diaspora back to Scotland (though I think there's an article at least partly about this in From Tartan to Tartanry as well), and actually covers the 17th century to 21st. Detailed review in Scottish Affairs.
 * – This was surprisingly elusive given how many sources cited it. NB: There are some other relevant Scottish Government publications (both earlier and later) listed here.
 * CambridgeCore URL (access: subscription).
 * - blurbs don't make it clear what the "four" are, exactly. And British != Scottish, but it probably includes Scotland, or it would have said English.
 * – "Assesses the volume, character, and motivations" for various groups' emigration, including Scottish among many others.
 * – This is an expensive academic volume, and not available through Internet Archive Open Library, so probably an inter-library loan item.
 * – Seems to focus on Highland games events in the US South.
 * – This book is probably the only one on return migration of the diaspora back to Scotland (though I think there's an article at least partly about this in From Tartan to Tartanry as well), and actually covers the 17th century to 21st. Detailed review in Scottish Affairs.
 * – This was surprisingly elusive given how many sources cited it. NB: There are some other relevant Scottish Government publications (both earlier and later) listed here.
 * CambridgeCore URL (access: subscription).
 * - blurbs don't make it clear what the "four" are, exactly. And British != Scottish, but it probably includes Scotland, or it would have said English.
 * – "Assesses the volume, character, and motivations" for various groups' emigration, including Scottish among many others.
 * – This is an expensive academic volume, and not available through Internet Archive Open Library, so probably an inter-library loan item.
 * CambridgeCore URL (access: subscription).
 * - blurbs don't make it clear what the "four" are, exactly. And British != Scottish, but it probably includes Scotland, or it would have said English.
 * – "Assesses the volume, character, and motivations" for various groups' emigration, including Scottish among many others.
 * – This is an expensive academic volume, and not available through Internet Archive Open Library, so probably an inter-library loan item.
 * – This is an expensive academic volume, and not available through Internet Archive Open Library, so probably an inter-library loan item.

See also: Talk:Ulster Scots people, Talk:Scotch-Irish Americans, Talk:Scotch-Irish Canadians, Talk:Plantation of Ulster, Talk:Highland dress, Talk:Highland games/Archives/2023 1, Talk:Highland dance, Talk:Tartan, Talk:Tartan Day

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:36, 22 July 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 12:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Requests for fixes
I have inserted a number of requests for fixes in the article, especially in the part about the United States. The statistics presented in that section are in general ill-defined and seriously flawed. Ehrenkater (talk) 18:13, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You'll need to be more specific. We have to work with the sources we have, and if they are not narrowly definitional, then we cannot be either, per WP:OR. It's just the nature of the beast that ancestry self-identifications in polls and the like are dependent on, well, self-identification, which may be based on very partial ancestry. There isn't anything practical to do about that. Do you have a particular issue to raise about a particular source?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Someone put the following long-form comment into the article itself; I've moved it to the talk page for discussion:
 * — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course you are right that we can't make up data. As there is no reliable data, then we shouldn't imply that there is reliable data. (Presenting data in a table, at ten year intervals, implies that the user can identify trends from this data, which is clearly not the case.) That means deleting most of the stuff, and very carefully explaining the limitations of whatever is left in. As a partly separate issue, the presentation of the table with the ampersands is very unclear, and I don't know what to make of it until it is clarified. There are also inconsistencies between the numbers and the percentages columns, and between the table and the numbers given in the prose.---Ehrenkater (talk) 21:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * "there is no reliable data" is a curious and unevidenced assertion. The data is generally as reliable as any other data based on self-reported ethnicity (e.g. Hispanic population by US state, etc.). That 1980 has produced a problematic numbers is something to explain below the table and perhaps with a footnote directly attached to the implausibly low count that year for "Scots-Irish". That doesn't mean the entire table should be destroyed. May I suggest you do some actual research to find better numbers, instead of just complaining, and proposing destructive courses of action, and inappropriately peppering the article with long-winded questions and annotations? That is not the purpose of the  template. Talk pages exist for a reason. "implies that the user can identify trends from this data" – no, that's your personal inference. The table is simply a summary of the material presented in textual form below it, because some people find such a presentation easier than long blocks of prose. "That means deleting most of the stuff" – no, it doesn't, since it's properly sourced and seems to be the best data we have available; if you think it's not, then go find and cite the better data. "very carefully explaining the limitations of whatever is left" – Yes, feel free to do that, if you can do it without engaging in OR. "the presentation of the table with the ampersands is very unclear, and I don't know what to make of it until it is clarified". It's not unclear at all. It really, really, really clearly refers to the column just before it, with "Scottish & Scots Irish". How is this confusing to you? And why do you knep insisting on injecting you questions and commentary into the article prose instead of using the talk page like everyone else, after your question/comment injections have already been reverted and you've been asked to stop doing that? You're doing violence to the article for no explicable reason. "There are also inconsistencies between the numbers and the percentages columns, and between the table and the numbers given in the prose" – Then feel free to fix them to better agree with the sources cited. Can you specifically identify the inconsistencies?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:55, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The one piece of clearly unreliable data (16,418, 0.007%, of the US popluation being of Scots-Irish background in 1980, versus much larger numbers before and after) is something worth removing, as confusing. So I did. We might want to investigate how that strange number was arrived at, but we'll need additional sources to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Next, you've asked in mid-article "This seems to imply that only descent by the male line is relevant. If so, why?", about the text "the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames" from this passage:
 * What is possibly confusing about this? What sort of change would you make? It does not imply what you infer that it does. It's a simple fact that various Scottish and Scots-Irish/Ulster Scots (and plain Irish for that matter) surnames are the same, and this can make distinguishing between families a challenge, if there is no other information about them. It doesn't have any implications for the table data, which are census and other self-reports of ancestral ethnicity/nationality/whatever you want to call it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Next, your "that's not what the table says" fix-it post was easily resolved by simply reading the cited material and correcting the date (2008, not 2010), and updating the citation URLs in the process. Please do more of the actual fixing instead of drive-by tagging for someone else to fix. This took just a couple of minutes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * What is possibly confusing about this? What sort of change would you make? It does not imply what you infer that it does. It's a simple fact that various Scottish and Scots-Irish/Ulster Scots (and plain Irish for that matter) surnames are the same, and this can make distinguishing between families a challenge, if there is no other information about them. It doesn't have any implications for the table data, which are census and other self-reports of ancestral ethnicity/nationality/whatever you want to call it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Next, your "that's not what the table says" fix-it post was easily resolved by simply reading the cited material and correcting the date (2008, not 2010), and updating the citation URLs in the process. Please do more of the actual fixing instead of drive-by tagging for someone else to fix. This took just a couple of minutes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Need newer and more comparable figures
A lot of the figures for various countries in the infobox table appear to be numbers of direct Scottish immigrants, not the general Scottish-descent diaspora. E.g. for both New Zealand and South Africa, the numbers come out to a small fraction of 1% of the national population, but other estimates are that some 20% of New Zealanders claim Scottish descent. I haven't seen specific figures for South Africa yet, but it has to be higher than ~0.02%! Our article is coming across as rather confused. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:35, 19 September 2023 (UTC)