Speakers
Description
A disappointing result was presented in the Census 2021 around the number of Welsh speakers, where the lowest ever overall percentage of people aged three or over able to speak Welsh was recorded. This research aimed to understand how we might be able to promote the use of the heritage, yet minority language within community sport settings. This presentation explores the key influences and behaviours of a young person’s use of the Welsh language within education and community sport settings through using ethos and Bourdieu’s theory of linguistic capital and habitus as frameworks. Through empirical, qualitative data, our research shows that they are key difficulties associated with changing the linguistic ethos of community sport from an ‘English speaking one’ to a ‘Welsh speaking one’. Furthermore, the ‘power’ of teachers, language legitimacy, availability and ability of Welsh speakers, and language courtesy contribute to the social and cultural mechanisms of language use. We found that intended and/or experienced ethos largely depends on individual and collective ethos within the two social settings (school and community), and that habitus, norms and expectations play a critical role in the legitimacy and capital of language. We conclude that Welsh is not considered a legitimate community sport language in the Anglo-dominant case study area of Wales and accentuate that normalising the language is crucial to achieve the Welsh Government’s goal of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
