English Dictionary

Pinkerton syndrome

IPA（発音記号）

/ˈpɪŋkət(ə)n ˈsɪndɹəʊm/

固有名詞

スコットランド英語

(literature, Scotland) Having esteem for older Scottish literature but not the modern Scottish tongue.

日本語の意味

（文学、スコットランド）古典的なスコットランド文学を敬愛する一方で、現代のスコットランド語には価値を認めない、という態度を示す状態

As a literary critic, she admitted to suffering from Pinkerton syndrome, preferring the cadences of Burns and Scott while dismissing contemporary Scots.

文学評論家として、彼女は古いスコットランド文学を高く評価する一方で現代のスコットランド語は評価しない傾向があると認め、バーンズやスコットの抒情を好みながら現代のスコット語を退けた。

意味（1）

(literature, Scotland) Having esteem for older Scottish literature but not the modern Scottish tongue.

[page 57] The language of writers who are safely dead, and can be studied without fear of their exerting a subversive influence, bears the respectable label 'old Scots dialect'; the same tongue spoken by the living compatriots of these writers is 'bad grammar'. […] This attitude is of course not new; though perhaps seldom expressed so blatantly. I call it the Pinkerton syndrome, after one of the many memorable figures in out national gallimaufray of scholarly eccentrics. John Pinkerton (1758–1826), poet, critic, historian, dramatist and Celtophobe, in 1786 produced a book, entitled Ancient Scotish Poems, never before in print: […] [H]e wrote: none can more sincerely wish a total extinction of the Scotish colloquial dialect than I do, for there are few modern Scoticisms which are not barbarisms ... Yet, I believe, no man of either kingdom would wish an extinction of the Scotish dialect in poetry. […] [page 58] This is the Pinkerton syndrome: the practice of paying lip-service, and sometimes much more than this, to the Scottish culture of the past while denigrating the Scots language of the present. And it is still prevalent today.