Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance

Edwards, V. (2015) Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance. In: Kuppers, A., and Bozdag, Ç. (eds.) Doing diversity in education through multilingualism, media and mobility. Istanbul Policy Centre, Istanbul, pp. 18-20, 50–51. ISBN 9786059178013

Abstract/Summary

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity.In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of languages, and the country is officially bilingual. In this paper, we will look at attempts to maintain and grow the number of speakers of the language and at the relevance of this development for speakers of minority languages in other settings.