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Welsh Language Policy: A Long Twentieth Century

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Abstract

It may seem somewhat self-evident to assert that language policy should be vitally indexed to the democratic, political, and administrative fabric of institutional relations of any given polity. As we know, this nexus of relations is becoming ever more complex as governance continues to yield multi-level and discrete locations of power. In the case of the Welsh language however, for the vast majority of the twentieth century, language policy developed away from a ‘Wales-facing’ democratic mandate, being provided for politically, legislatively, and institutionally at the UK level of government. It is with the onset and deepening of asymmetrical devolution within the United Kingdom in the past fifteen years that language policy has been more fully appropriated and ‘brought in from the cold’ by an emerging sub-state political, legislative, and administrative system in Wales. This has resulted in the role of the Welsh language within a bilingual civil society being more deeply legitimated by the National Assembly for Wales (NAfW) as a public good worthy of policy and legislative scrutiny by the Welsh Executive and Legislature. Assessing the degree to which democratic and political values have underpinned language policy in Wales through the incremental growth of “Welsh-facing” institutions lies at the heart of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Italics in original.

  2. 2.

    For the demolinguistic vitality of the Welsh language, see Jones (2012).

  3. 3.

    Understood here as referring to the tier of local government directly below both central and all-Wales elected government

  4. 4.

    Although the Welsh Language Act 1967 acknowledged the use of the Welsh language in public life (Roddick 2007: p. 273), with formal provision being for the Welsh language in certain legal proceedings and in statutory forms and signage in Wales, the legislation made no provision for other aspects of language policy.

  5. 5.

    For a wider comparative view of local government engagement with language policy both in Wales and further afield, see Carlin (2013).

  6. 6.

    By 2011–2011, there were 557 operational language schemes (Welsh Language Board 2011).

  7. 7.

    This subject forms the basis of a current major 3-year study by the School of Welsh at Cardiff University and financed by the UK Economic and Social Research Council entitled ‘The Office of Language Commissioner in Wales, Ireland and Canada’ (ES/J003093/1).

  8. 8.

    Italics inserted by author.

  9. 9.

    Sections 44 and 150 of WLM 2011 hint at the territorialisation and sectorialisation of language regimes within Wales.

  10. 10.

    See, for example, Welsh Assembly Government (2003, 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Welsh, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK

    Patrick Carlin

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  1. Patrick Carlin
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Correspondence to Patrick Carlin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law and Letters, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan

    Masahide Ishihara

  2. Faculty of Law and Letters, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan

    Eiichi Hoshino

  3. International Institute for Okinawan Studies, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan

    Yoko Fujita

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Carlin, P. (2016). Welsh Language Policy: A Long Twentieth Century. In: Ishihara, M., Hoshino, E., Fujita, Y. (eds) Self-determinable Development of Small Islands. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0132-1_16

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