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<h1 class="entry-title">Making language policy relevant to the twenty-first century</h1><div class="entry-excerpt"><p>Huw Lewis and Elin Royles argue that language policy should reflect and take account of the way people live their lives</p>
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<span class="gmail-posted-on"><time class="entry-date gmail-published" datetime="2017-05-17T07:00:24+00:00">May 17, 2017</time></span><span class="gmail-byline"> </span> </div>
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<img src="http://www.iwa.wales/click/wp-content/uploads/Welsh-Cymrae.jpg" class="gmail-attachment-super gmail-size-super gmail-wp-post-image" alt="Welsh-Cymraeg" width="383" height="218"> </div>
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<p>Currently, the Welsh Government is in the process of finalising the
content of its new national Welsh language strategy. This new strategy,
a successor to <em>A living language: A language for living, </em>published
back in 2012, will outline the government’s vision for Welsh for the
next 20 years. Given the Welsh Labour 2016 manifesto commitment of
creating a million Welsh speakers by 2050, the strategy is likely to be
an important document setting a series of key long-term goals. Indeed,
when launching the government’s public consultation process last summer,
the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language, Alun Davies,
emphasised his desire to set ‘deliberately ambitious targets.’</p>
<p>As we await the publication of the final strategy, it is important to
appreciate that there is nothing unique about this effort on the part
of the Welsh Government to use public policy in order to promote the
prospects of Welsh. Rather, efforts by either state or regional
governments to revitalise the prospects of regional or minority
languages are now increasingly common across Western Europe. If we
looked north, for example, we would see that in Scotland <em>Bòrd na Gàidhlig</em>,
the official body tasked by the Scottish Government to promote the
Gaelic language, is in the process of consulting on the contents of its
National Gaelic Language Plan (the third to be published since 2005). If
we looked a little further afield, we would see that over the past
decade similar strategy documents outlining policy initiatives in favour
of regional or minority languages have also appeared in a range of
other European locations, including Catalonia, the Basque Country,
Galicia and Ireland.</p>
<p>Significantly, these language revitalisation strategies have each
been developed against a backdrop of radical social change. The turn
from the twentieth to the twenty-first century is widely regarded as a
period of fundamental social transformation, one perhaps unmatched since
the onset of industrialization. Societies are now increasingly
individualistic, diverse and mobile; their economies increasingly
interconnected; and their governance structures are increasingly
complex. Furthermore, many of the factors traditionally emphasised as
key determinants of a language group’s level of vitality – the family,
the local community, the economy and the level of state support – relate
to areas of life that have been deeply impacted by these patterns of
social change.</p>
<p>Given this, contemporary language revitalisation strategies could
clearly benefit from paying increasing attention to the implications of
current changes in how people live their lives, how they interact with
each other, and, consequently, how they use their language(s). Yet, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/pre-prints/content-pppolicypol161600054r2">recent research conducted by members of the Centre for Welsh Politics and Society at Aberystwyth University</a> suggests
that this has not been the case. To date, bar some limited examples,
there has been little sustained reflection within language
revitalisation policy documents on whether our fast-changing social
context should prompt a rethink with regard to how the task of language
revitalization should be approached.</p>
<p>Consider, for instance, some of the following examples. First,
despite the emphasis traditionally placed on role of the family in
promoting consistent language acquisition, there has been little
reflection on the implications of recent changes in the way that
families organize their day-to-day lives and care for their children.
Second, despite the emphasis traditionally placed on the role of
territorial communities in promoting stable patterns of language use,
there has been little reflection on the implications of recent changes
in the nature of community life and the tendency for patterns of social
interaction to be centred increasingly around specific ‘communities of
interest’, or even to take place online. Third, despite the emphasis
traditionally placed on the need to ensure that minority languages
possess a measure of economic value, there has been little serious
reflection on the implications of economic globalisation and in
particular the advent of skills-based employment.</p>
<p>Examples such as these highlight the type of challenge currently
facing the Welsh Government, alongside many other European regional
governments, if they wish to implement language revitalisation
strategies that respond to life in the early twenty-first century. They
also pose key questions to minority language movements more broadly, by
raising the possibility that long-standing assumptions may need to be
re-examined.</p>
<p>As a contribution to this process, a recently established research
network, coordinated by researchers from Aberystwyth University and the
University of Edinburgh, will bring together an international group of
language policy researchers, along with prominent policy practitioners,
in order to examine the implications of current patterns of social
change for our understanding of how language revitalisation efforts can
be designed and implemented. Over the next two years, the <strong>Revitalise </strong>network
will seek to study this question with reference to a variety of
European examples and will seek to identify lessons to inform the future
work of relevant public officials and civil society actors working in
the field of minority language promotion.</p>
<p>Seeking to maintain and revitalise the prospects of a regional or
minority language is widely acknowledged as an extremely challenging
undertaking. Success, be it in terms of an increase in the number of
language speakers, or in terms of wider social use of the language, can
often be elusive. The contention that underlies the work of the <strong>Revitalise</strong>
network is that such successes are likely to be even more elusive
without those engaged in language revitalisation increasingly basing
their efforts on a sound understanding of how people live their lives
today.</p><p><a href="http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/05/making-language-policy-relevant-twenty-first-century/">http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/05/making-language-policy-relevant-twenty-first-century/</a><br></p><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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