The Welsh Government's Welsh language strategy, Cymraeg: A million Welsh speakers [Welsh Government. 2017a. "Cymraeg 2050: A Million Welsh Speakers." Cardiff: Welsh Government], aims to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers to one million by 2050. The creation of new Welsh speakers and immersion education form an integral part of the…

This paper engages with the negotiation of insider and outsider researcher identities in the context of Welsh-English bilingualism in Wales. It aims to develop a reflexive approach to researching bilingualism, foregrounding the actions and experiences of doing bilingual research in a minority language context. Taking data from education and…

Researchers of minority language media are increasingly interested in the role of internet-based communication in language usage, maintenance, and revitalisation. This study explores the use of hashtags signifying the Welsh/Cymraeg, Frisian/Frysk, and Irish/Gaeilge languages on Twitter. Acknowledging the challenges of interpreting social media…

Educational initiatives in many minority language communities in Europe and beyond are producing 'new speakers' of the languages in question. The status of such speakers is often contested, however, and many people who have been through immersion education in a minority language can find themselves on the fringes of the language community of which…

Immigrant integration in nation states increasingly focuses on the importance of learning the national state language. This is evidenced by increased emphasis on rigorous language testing and tighter citizenship regulations. This paper analyses immigrant integration in two sub-state contexts, Galicia and Wales, where presence of a national…

This paper addresses how different media production teams negotiate the use of their minority languages in their practice. After a brief discussion of the concepts of language and description of a linguistic minority, a short review of similar research in the area of Minority Language Media is presented. Within this area, radio producers from…

This article reports on an ethnographic study carried out in three interrelated sites: two contrasting secondary schools and a Youth-Club (the principal focus of this article), in an area of southwest Wales. This article highlights the incongruence between the language at home and the language of the school and posits that the relationship between…

The emergence of new domains, such as the Internet, can prove challenging for minority languages. Welsh is a minority, regional language and is considered "vulnerable" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Welsh-speaking community appears to have responded positively to the Internet and the…

European higher education institutions are in general highly committed to internationalisation, seeing it as providing ways into the global education market, as an indicator of academic excellence, and for generating income. In multilingual settings, minority languages are not always given adequate consideration in this process and may be a source…

This article aims to develop the concept of ethnolinguistic vitality by adopting a qualitative approach to vitality rather than the statistical approach traditionally used. Ten small-size focus group style interviews were held with members of the Welsh-Argentinean community in the Chubut Province in the south of Argentina in order to explore…

The role of the home and family/caregivers is commonly acknowledged as being central to securing the intergenerational socialisation of minority languages. Research evidence demonstrates that the survival or demise of minority languages crucially depends upon the extent to which the language is passed on from one generation to the next within the…

Describes the use of a small set of linguistic variables in different types of radio programs from Radio Cymru (the Welsh language radio network), to see whether variation does correlate with style as it does in the community. Results show that broadcasters followed community norms for these variables. (SED)

This paper reports the language use of some 400 mothers in North Wales. Factors associated with language use are examined, including cross-language partnerships, past educational medium, and situation. (25 references) (JL)

Adults participating in an Ulpan method Welsh program were surveyed to determine their motivation for learning Welsh and for choosing an intensive course. Integration was found to be the major motivating factor for studying Welsh and the students believed that an immersion setting would result in superior language learning. (JL)

Describes a study using matched-guise technique designed to (1) determine how West Welsh preadolescents would react to Welsh speakers reading a passage of prose in one of three language varieties (Received Pronunciation English, Welsh-Accented English, Welsh) and (2) to examine what effect language of testing might have on children's social…