It has been suggested that older adults from minority linguistic and ethnic communities face higher risks of being socially excluded. The aim of this review was, therefore, to explore and review ...social exclusion studies conducted among official language minority older adults in three countries, namely Canada, Finland and Wales. A rapid review approach was used to review scientific literature in line with six social exclusion domains. The literature searches were made in Finnish, Swedish, English, French and Welsh and were restricted to research published within the timeline of 2001 – September 2019 and yielded 42 articles. The included studies were categorized into three different domains: socioeconomic influences, social participation and societal conditions. Converging and diverging patterns of social exclusion in old age were identified between the linguistic minorities. Linguistic barriers regarding access to health care and receiving health information were common across the three linguistic contexts, whereas exclusion from social participation was noticed amongst the linguistic minorities in Canada and Wales. Some connections between belonging to a linguistic minority and being exposed to a lower socioeconomic status and higher poverty risk were made, however, these findings were not robust across all three countries. The findings indicated that experiences of exclusion could be considered fairly common among linguistic minority older adults. We conclude that the research evidence presented in the review sheds light on issues of social inequality in old age between linguistic majorities and minorities, thus identifying important aspects of social exclusion to guide future research as well as policy and practice.
Increasingly, it is recognised that the opportunity to engage with one's own culture and language is beneficial for an individual's well-being. Research among indigenous communities in North America, ...Australia, Scandinavia, and New Zealand, have illustrated the importance of culturo-linguistic congruity. In Wales, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 has come to define the political and legal pursuance of well-being. A unique piece of legislation, this legally mandates all Welsh public bodies to demonstrate they are working to achieve all seven well-being goals established by the Act. Echoing the conclusions of existing research, one identified well-being objective is the promotion of Welsh culture and the Welsh language. Taking account of the current nature of Welsh language provision within the Welsh National Health Service (NHS), the purpose of this paper is to briefly assess the extent to which the Welsh NHS is in a position to facilitate the well-being objective of ensuring service users have an opportunity to utilise the Welsh language. Despite the ambitions of the legislation, it will be argued that the Welsh language is largely absent from the well-being objectives outlined by local health boards.
This paper teases out the meeting points between macro and micro language planning in Wales, and how these influence community language use in real terms. The paper draws upon data gathered from an ...evaluation of the Welsh Government's strategy towards the maintenance and promotion of the Welsh language on a community level in Wales. Conducting this research provides an insight into how the community acts as a language planning crossroads where a plethora of factors contributes to language use within this sphere.
Key findings report that many opportunities exist to use the Welsh language at macro and micro language planning levels within the communities, including opportunities provided via Welsh Government programmes. However, gaps in community provision exist and linguistic community interaction often occurred within daily, micro activities such as shopping and accessing services rather than within formally organised community activities at a macro level. Furthermore, evidence of existing complex language attitudes, ideologies and norms play a part in the daily negotiation and re-negotiation of language use on a micro level within these communities. This paper will argue that the WG participate in micro language planning in Wales by supplementing local activities via local actors within the communities studied.
Social networking sites feature significantly in the lives of many young people. Where these young people are bilingual, social networking sites may have an important role to play in terms of ...minority language use and in shaping perceptions of that language. Through a quantitative and qualitative study, this paper investigates the use of language in social networking sites by young Welsh speakers, focussing particularly on Facebook. Language choice and behaviour, factors influencing that behaviour, and attitudes towards use of the Welsh language in Information Technology are explored. The data suggests that there are a number of different factors at play, and that it is necessary to consider language behaviour in social networking sites in the context of offline language behaviour.
This paper seeks to explain the migration decisions of minority language speakers by investigating motivating factors. Viewed through a language planning lens, the study pushes the parameters of some ...of the discipline's more recent agency concepts within the context of migration. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 Welsh speakers aged 18-40 who have stayed, left, or returned to the Welsh language 'heartlands' to create a typology representing the diversity in speakers' priorities when deliberating migration decisions. The data shows that the Welsh language is a significant consideration in the migration decisions of some typology groups, however most groups prioritised other factors. It was found that, in some cases, employment was a means of sustaining speakers within the linguistic community or attracting them back, offering much-needed evidence to support key tenets of the Welsh Government's current language strategy. Furthermore, given the likelihood of minority language speakers' decision to stay, leave or return to a language 'stronghold' to increase or limit opportunities to use the language, we argue that migration is an important context for probing the use of agency by minority language speakers at a micro level. Consequently, we contend that migration should receive greater attention from language planning scholars.
This paper presents a detailed analysis of how Welsh language training in the public sector workplace in north Wales is planned and delivered. Specific attention is given to the effectiveness of ...strategic management on both the macro level (Welsh Government, Welsh Language Board/Welsh Language Commissioner) and the micro level (individual public sector organisations) of language planning respectively. In doing so, key aspects of language training preparation, implementation and management are evaluated. This includes both qualitative and quantitative data collected from the language learners themselves. This data provides a unique picture - never seen before in Wales - of Welsh language training on an operational and strategic level in three different organisations in terms of size, sector, and geographical location. At a time when a new national body has been established by the Welsh Government to offer strategic guidance and management of Welsh language training for adults the findings throw new, and timely, light on the strategic planning and implementation of Welsh language training. Clear weaknesses are identified both within workplaces in the way in which language training is planned at a micro level, but also at a macro level in terms of how legislation and national policy is implemented and monitored.
This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English ...simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were Welsh-dominant, balanced, or English-dominant, with only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English at home. Card sorting, Simon, and a metalinguistic judgment task (650, 557, and 354 participants, respectively) reveal little support for a bilingual advantage, either in relation to control or globally. Primarily there is no difference in performance across groups, but there is occasionally better performance by monolinguals or persons dominant in the language being tested, and in one case-in one condition and in one age group-lower performance by the monolinguals. The lack of evidence for a bilingual advantage in these simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals suggests the need for much closer scrutiny of what type of bilingual might demonstrate the reported effects, under what conditions, and why.
In light of changing digital communication, this book addresses issues including a shift from a focus on oral to written practices; the rise of new communities of practice and communicative domains; ...and the need for resulting shifts in language policy and teaching methods when applied to minority (or autochthonous) heritage languages.
This paper outlines the results of a project carried out in Wales in 2010 looking at how extensively young Welsh speakers used the language within their social networks. A study of 200 young people ...aged 13-18 years was conducted in four Welsh medium secondary schools, two in south-east Wales and two in north-west Wales. An on-line questionnaire was used to gather information about the young people's family and educational background, the language of their home, their self-perceived language ability, their use of Welsh and English in different social contexts, and their use of Welsh and English in emails, texting and social networking sites. Then a series of focus groups discussed these issues in more depth. We found that almost 90 per cent of the young people interviewed used Social Networking Sites regularly, and the language they used on these sites reflected to a large extent the language they used with contacts in the real world. There was some evidence that Social Networking Sites afforded young people in the more Anglicised areas of Wales the opportunity to use Welsh on a daily basis, and thus the use of Social Networking Sites can be useful in maintaining a minority language. However, it is necessary to consider innovative ways of encouraging young people to use it within their favoured social media. Adapted from the source document.
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