Gillespie is generally sympathetic to Scots but here he expresses a widely held belief that the Scots element of Scottish vernacular has eroded as to be possibly unsalvageable. While this type of ‘discourse of death’ has been around for a century at least, it is true that the baseline knowledge of Scots is now weak in many areas of the country. However experience has demonstrated with a relatively light touch intervention, ‘ingrained’ negative attitudes may be changed, linguistic awareness heightened, and abilities strengthened.