This chapter analyses the variation of the FACE and GOAT vowels (for example in the words 'say' or 'so') in the accents of speakers of Scottish Standard English (SSE) in Edinburgh, looking at social, stylistic and language-internal factors. One focus of the research is the potential diphthongisation of these vowels into variants that more closely resemble their acoustic forms in Southern Standard British English (SSBE) accents. The results show that there is systematic sociolinguistic variation of these vowels, but forces that are at work within the SSE accent seem to play a more important role than external influence from the direction of SSBE.