Scotland's efforts to establish and assert its distinct national identity have a long tradition. National identity has been a central theme throughout the centuries in a country where economic, political, and social issues have tended to be closely bound up with questions of national mentality and emotion. This book examines the part played by Scottish newspapers in constructing identity during a key period of the devolution process, 1997-2011. It uses insights from the fields of cultural and media studies, sociology, cognitive science and narratology into the ways in which culturally defined knowledge and the notions of identity emerging from it have been constructed. The study contributes to the understanding of Scottish identity, and its evaluations are relevant beyond the immediate context of Scotland and the United Kingdom.

Nation and identity are two of the catchwords of cultural politics. Discourses related to these concepts have ever been especially pertinent to Scotland, owing to the nations complex relationship with England. Throughout the intricate political affairs that bound these nations to one another, Scotland has looked for distinctive ways to express itself, resulting in displays of national identity peppered with Scottish images. While their representations vary, their continued use proves them to be vital to the nations imagination. This study examines the concept of national identity in Scottish literature of the twentieth century by focusing on the portrayal of aspects of national relevance and their contribution to the creation of Scottishness in selected novels by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Muriel Spark and Alasdair Gray. The representations of Scottish identity that are explored in the texts are not the images of a common national ideal, nor are they standards to which the images must conform in order to be Scottish. This study rather evaluates various facets which provide the space of the discourses that constitute national identity.