Ideological directions in Welsh Language policy; SOAS, London, 1 May; an exciting talk by me

[Dave Sayers]

Hello colleagues, friends, onlookers, well-wishers and kind strangers...

My 'Please Someone Employ Me' tour is ploughing on, into the rolling 
swells of a tumultuous job market. I'll get the exposure and publicity I 
need, or die trying! The next date in my auspicious tour is at the 
School of Oriental and African Studies, London, on Tuesday 1st of May, 
3.30pm - 5pm. If the title of the talk looks familiar it's because it's 
the same talk I was plugging last time I advertised my tour, in Cardiff 
last October. But if comedians and theatre troupes can take the same 
material round the country and expect fresh responses, then I can too. I 
might not be as entertaining, but what I lack in style I make up for in 
substance -- or your money back!

The venue is Room 4418 of the Main Building at SOAS, London WC1H 0XG:
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=WC1H0XG

Here's the finely crafted abstract -- a window into the delights that await:

===================================================
The Welsh Government’s plan to ‘create a bilingual Wales’ is ambitious – 
aiming for significant increases in Welsh use across Wales, a country 
with no Welsh monolinguals, and including areas where everyday use of 
Welsh has become negligible. This paper uses a form of discourse 
analysis to examine ideological orientations in three Welsh language 
policy documents. These orientations are categorised using De Schutter’s 
(2007) tripartite framework of language ideologies: ‘instrumental’ 
(language is a means to achieve other non-linguistic human 
capabilities); ‘constitutive’ (language influences identity); and 
‘intrinsic’ (language is valuable irrespective of human interests). The 
findings show that the intrinsic ideology predominates. Action is 
planned not in the interests of human capabilities or identity, but of 
the Welsh language as an independent entity. Furthermore, possible 
discriminatory effects on non-speakers of Welsh are justified as 
acceptable collateral. These ideological orientations make Welsh 
language policy quite unusual compared to other areas of social policy.


-- De Schutter, H. 2007. Language policy and political philosophy: On 
the emerging linguistic justice debate. Language Problems and Language 
Planning 31(1): 1–23.
===================================================

After the talk I've been promised a sojourn in the bar, which you're 
most welcome to tag along for. Consider it a chance to see me talking 
even less coherently and even more enthusiastically than in the 
presentation itself. I'll even do signatures and photos on request.

For those unfortunate enough to be stuck doing something else that day, 
I'll fling the slides up on to my academia.edu page, which is full of 
other wonders (including slides from previous incarnations of this talk) 
that you can enjoy in the meantime:

http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers/Talks

Hopefully see as many of you there as possible.

Cheers,
Dave


--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow
College of Arts & Humanities
and Language Research Centre
Swansea University
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers