ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for ethnographic research on language policy, with reference to one particular sociolinguistic and historical context: language revitalization in Wales. Wales is often cited as an example of successful language revitalization, and research across the humanities and social sciences has highlighted the role played by education in this process. Historians have traced the broad shifts in the status and value of the language since the mid-20th century, identifying the key roles played by different social actors and agencies during critical moments of change (e.g., Evans, 2000). Geographers have made productive and extensive use of language data from the ten-yearly census to track the distribution of Welsh speakers across different regions of Wales and to document significant increases, in recent decades, in the reporting of knowledge of Welsh among younger respondents (e.g., Aitchison & Carter, 2004; Colin Williams, 2000). Sociologists working from a critical perspective have analyzed the social, institutional, and ideological conditions for language reproduction in different regions of Wales (e.g., Williams & Morris, 2000). Educationalists and language planners have engaged in detailed analyses of the constraints on language policy implementation and on the development of bilingual and Welsh-medium education in particular local sites, in different sectors of education, and in particular areas of the curriculum (e.g., Baker & Jones, 2000; D. V. Jones, 2000; Lewis, 2008; Roberts & Williams, 2003; Stevens, 1996; Cen Williams, 2000). Social psychologists and sociolinguists have documented shifts in language attitudes and ethnolinguistic vitality and, most recently, have provided illuminating insight into the ways in which new Welsh speakers, who are acquiring Welsh at school, orient to and use the language (e.g., Coupland et al., 2005; Musk, 2006).
