36.3212, Reviews: Language Policy and the New Speaker Challenge: Colin H. Williams (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3212. Wed Oct 22 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3212, Reviews: Language Policy and the New Speaker Challenge: Colin H. Williams (2025)

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Date: 22-Oct-2025
From: Daniel Strogen [973256 at swansea.ac.uk]
Subject: Colin H. Williams (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-2499

Title: Language Policy and the New Speaker Challenge
Subtitle: Hiding in Plain Sight
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/language-policy-and-new-speaker-challenge-hiding-plain-sight?format=PB&isbn=9781009048392

Author(s): Colin H. Williams

Reviewer: Daniel Strogen

SUMMARY
In Language Policy and the New Speaker, Colin H. Williams draws on
decades of research in minority language policy to offer a grounded
analysis of the ‘new speaker’ concept.
Organised into nine chapters, the book moves coherently from
definitional debates to comparative case studies and, finally, to a
synthesis of findings and policy recommendations. Chapter 1 introduces
the emergence of the ‘new speaker’ concept and situates it within
broader debates on multilingualism, minoritised language
revitalisation, and language policy. Williams defines new speakers as
individuals who acquire and use a language through formal education or
adult learning (O’Rourke et al. 2015; O’Rourke and Walsh 2020), in
what is necessarily a broad framing of the term. This breadth reflects
the term’s contested status across, and sometimes even within, speech
communities, as Williams seeks to accommodate a range of contexts and
perspectives. Some critics dismiss the concept as an unnecessary
‘repackaging’ of categories such as advanced or L2 speakers. Williams
counters that it captures the sociopolitical and policy challenges
particular to minoritised-language contexts. Building on this
argument, he emphasises the need for proactive and sustained language
planning, noting that the emergence of new speakers alone does not
ensure the maintenance of minority languages. To explore these issues,
the chapter concludes by outlining Williams’s research design, which
combines interviews with politicians, civil servants, academics, and
activists alongside research from the COST (European Cooperation in
Science and Technology) New Speakers Network to examine official
language strategies across seven minoritised-language settings.
Chapter 2, adapted from Williams’s 2017 plenary address to the COST
New Speakers Network, develops the theoretical foundations of the new
speaker concept by exploring its policy implications and its
relationship to questions of language ownership, legitimacy, and
transmission. Building on this theoretical framing, the chapter
outlines the key questions guiding the subsequent case studies: how
new speakers are positioned within different contexts and what kinds
of support they need to sustain their use of minoritised languages.
Chapters 3 to 7 present case studies from Wales, Scotland, Ireland,
the Basque Country, Navarre, Catalonia, and Galicia, examining how the
‘new speaker’ concept is understood, implemented, and contested across
these settings. Drawing on interviews with scholars and practitioners,
Williams analyses perceptions of language policy development and
implementation within each community. While acknowledging that these
communities constitute a necessarily limited sample, he argues that
their experiences yield insights of wider relevance to
minoritised-language contexts.
Across the seven case studies, Williams identifies recurring themes
but remains attentive to the specific sociolinguistic conditions of
each context. In the Catalan case, he discusses the concept of muda
(plural mudes), developed by Pujolar and Gonzalez (2013), which refers
to moments of linguistic transition in speakers’ lives, such as
starting university or forming a family (Pujolar 2019). By contrast,
in the Welsh context, he examines how the ‘new speaker’ label has been
applied to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers learning Welsh, and
considers its role within the new national curriculum (Higham 2025).
Chapters 8 and 9 synthesise the main findings of the case studies and
reflect on their broader implications for language policy and
planning. Williams highlights persistent tensions between the
privileging of ‘native’ speakers and the uncertain recognition of new
speakers within revitalisation efforts, and examines how variation in
local leadership—including differences in political will,
administrative capacity, and commitment to language promotion—can
shape policy implementation. He further identifies a reluctance among
some institutions to pursue targeted interventions, such as providing
support for new speakers in schools, community programmes, or
workplaces; these limitations, he argues, can significantly weaken
revitalisation efforts, particularly where structural barriers already
exist. Taken together, these analyses support his central claim that
greater attention must be paid to how decision-makers in government
and civil society understand and engage with the ‘new speaker’
concept.
Williams notes that, although a range of interventions is being
implemented across the case-study communities, there is little
agreement on the role of new speakers within these efforts. He asks
whether this divergence reflects the relative novelty of the term or a
deeper scepticism among policymakers about its usefulness. Notably, he
does not shy away from controversy, engaging directly with
perspectives that dismiss the new speaker concept as inadequate or
unnecessary. In response to these debates, Chapter 8 concludes with a
series of targeted recommendations for policymakers in each
minoritised-language context. While Williams stops short of proposing
definitive solutions to all the questions he raises, he offers
grounded reflections and practical proposals that invite further
discussion.
EVALUATION
Williams states explicitly that his aim is to explore how policymakers
and stakeholders conceptualise and respond to the new speaker category
in minority-language contexts. He uses interviews and case studies to
reveal how tensions and contradictions in stakeholders’ understandings
shape current debates. Although the seven case studies are confined to
Europe, the selection adequately serves the book’s comparative aims.
Williams notes this limitation and suggests that his findings hold
wider relevance. Nevertheless, Williams achieves his aim of
foregrounding a policymaker perspective often overshadowed in
sociolinguistic accounts of learners and communities, and he offers
thoughtful reflections on the theoretical robustness of the new
speaker category.
Framed as an academic monograph, the book nevertheless achieves an
accessible style without sacrificing precision or detail. Scholars of
minoritised-language contexts, particularly those examining the new
speaker phenomenon, will find Williams’s analysis especially valuable.
Students, researchers, and policymakers will each find much to engage
with across the chapters, though the former may be drawn especially to
the comparative case studies and the latter to the practical
recommendations. Overall, the book’s blend of theoretical authority
and accessibility ensures its relevance to both scholarly and
practitioner audiences.
Williams’s treatment of the new speaker concept is situated within,
and responsive to, existing scholarship in sociolinguistics and
language policy. While earlier studies have tended to focus on
speakers’ identity negotiations and community acceptance, Williams
redirects attention to how institutions and policymakers
operationalise the category in practice. In this respect, Williams
complements and extends existing scholarship by shifting the
analytical lens from grassroots language practices and ideologies to
the institutional and strategic dimensions of policymaking. The result
is a monograph that both consolidates and diversifies the field,
ensuring its relevance across subfields of language-policy research.
Each chapter contributes directly to the overarching aim of examining
the role of new speakers in minority-language policy. The progression
from conceptual framing (Chapters 1–2) to empirical case studies
(Chapters 3–7) and finally to synthesis and recommendations (Chapters
8–9) follows a logical trajectory. Recurrent themes such as
native-speaker privilege, institutional resistance to innovation, and
ambiguities surrounding the new speaker label lend coherence across
contexts and prevent the case studies from reading as isolated
examples.
Williams’s most substantial contribution lies in the research
directions his analysis opens. By foregrounding policymakers’
perspectives, he highlights a crucial yet underexamined dimension of
language revitalisation that concerns how political actors interpret
and operationalise contested categories such as the new speaker. This
focus invites further investigation into how policy perspectives shape
decisions, funding priorities, and educational planning across
contexts. The book also prompts theoretical reflection on the adequacy
of the new speaker concept itself, questioning whether it functions as
a productive analytic lens or obscures more than it reveals. Building
on Williams’s comparative approach, future studies could examine how
policy framings of new speakers align or diverge from community-level
discourses and extend analysis beyond Europe to contexts including
those of Indigenous languages in the Americas, Māori in New Zealand,
Aboriginal languages in Australia, and revitalisation efforts
elsewhere. In this sense, the monograph serves less as a conclusion
than as a foundation for geographically and theoretically broader
inquiry.
Language Policy and the New Speaker contributes substantially to
debates on minority-language revitalisation by foregrounding
policymakers’ perspectives, a constituency often neglected in
sociolinguistic research. Williams succeeds in examining how the new
speaker category is understood and acted upon across contexts. The
prose is both accessible and detailed, making the book suitable not
only for scholars but also for graduate students and practitioners
involved in minoritised-language policy. Situated within existing
scholarship yet extending its analytical scope to new interlocutors,
the monograph demonstrates both coherence and originality. Most
importantly, it provokes further questions about the conceptual,
empirical, and policy dimensions of new speakerism, serving not as a
definitive statement but as a springboard for continued inquiry.
REFERENCES
Higham, G. (2025). International migration and the Welsh language:
Exploring an interdisciplinary framework for linguistic integration.
In R. D. Jones, C. W. Edwards, & L. Shobiye (Eds.), A welcoming
nation? Intersectional approaches to migration and diversity in Wales
(pp. 31–56). University of Wales Press.
McLeod, W., Dunbar, R., Jones, K., & Walsh, J. (Eds.). (2022).
Language, policy and territory: A festschrift for Colin H. Williams.
Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94346-2
O’Rourke, B., & Walsh, J. (2020). New speakers of Irish in the global
context: New revival? Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315277325
O’Rourke, B., Pujolar, J., & Ramallo, F. (2015). New speakers of
minority languages: The challenging opportunity. International Journal
of the Sociology of Language, 231, 1–20.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2014-0029
Pujolar, J. (2019). Linguistic mudes: An exploration over the
linguistic constitution of subjects. International Journal of the
Sociology of Language, 2019(257), 165-189.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2019-2024
Pujolar, J., & González, I. (2013). Linguistic “mudes”: How to become
a new speaker in Catalonia. International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism, 16(2), 133–152.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.645515
Williams, C. H. (2017). Plenary address at the COST New Speakers
Network Conference, [Location], as cited in Language Policy and the
New Speaker (Williams, 2025).
Williams, C. H. (2022). Language policy and the new speaker policy.
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009047326
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Daniel Strogen is a PhD candidate at Swansea University, specialising
in Welsh language revitalisation. His research focuses on patterns of
language decline among young new Welsh speakers, employing mixed
methods approaches informed by sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.
He holds qualifications in English Language, Primary Education, and
Social Research Methods, and has published short fiction alongside his
academic work. His broader interests include dialectology, language
attitudes, and language policy and planning.



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