Jargon and Phonetics

            Reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh is difficult, no doubt about. After struggling through the Scottish dialect’s bizarre spelling, you are then tasked with understanding a jargon that is unique to Edinburgh. Phrases such as ‘she nivir sais nowt tae me, ah whinge, biscuit-ersed’ are bewildering. Over-time, I’ve gotten used to the Scottish vernacular, it is easy to understand the narrator saying ‘she never says nothing to me, I whinged’. However, to understand the term ‘biscuit-ersed’ I had to resort to looking at an urban dictionary (turns out to mean ‘feeble’ or ‘weak’). This relatively confusing phonetic voice is supported by the constant shifts in the narrator’s perception of self.

            Mark, the narrator aka Rent Boy, is a heroine addict and his vice seems to be catching up to already. At various points in the text, Mark refers to himself as ‘us’, suggesting that he has multiple personalities. The ambiguity of his mental condition is evident in the randomness of changes in personal reference. Though the shifts can not occur for pages at a time, it is also possible for it to change within a sentence such as the following; ‘Ay took ma last shot in order tae git us through the horrors ay the shopping trip’. I believe that ‘us’ is primarily used to point out Mark’s inner demons, those who fuel themselves off the smack he injects into his arm. By adding plurality, he assumes his role in his addiction, albeit a less significant one, in company of his inner demons. The ‘us’ is satisfied once its desire for the dream world of heroine is achieved.

            I look forward to reading the remainder of this baffling text.