ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the Voices project in Wales. It assesses the data collected and reflects on their future potential for the analysis of Welsh English. In particular, I compare Voices with the only other national survey of regional spoken English in Wales, the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects (SAWD). The aim here is to gauge the compatibility of the two surveys and to determine how far they can be used in concert to provide a historical perspective on Welsh English from the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first century. The chapter is therefore also concerned with the design and methodology of both Voices and SAWD as the two examples in Wales of a national dialect survey. (The Welsh-language material collected for Voices by Radio Cymru is not examined in the present chapter.)