Welsh Journals

2. NEW DOMAINS OF THE WELSH LANGUAGE: EDUCATION, PLANNING AND THE LAW Colin H. Williams INTRODUCTION In common with many other west European minority cultures, the Welsh-speaking population of the United Kingdom is undergoing profound change. Such change, it should be emphasized at the outset, represents both an opportunity and a threat to Welsh cultural reproduction. This dualism stems from the delicate balance of forces represented by external factors which impinge upon sociocultural development, and the structural capacity of the minority to interpret, channel and control the impact of such forces. In previous decades in Wales the minority's strategy was to ameliorate such forces in piecemeal fashions; by today it has come to recognize the need for a far more holistic framework for language promotion. In consequence, new agencies and domains are being constructed which together will provide a greater opportunity for the formal employment of the Welsh language in contemporary society. This chapter seeks to analyse this structural change and will focus upon education, planning and the law as the principal agencies for the extension of Welsh into hitherto under-developed domains. Because we are still in the process of constructing the legitimacy of such domains, these three areas are significant indices of the political determination to institutionalize the language. They thus provide a useful example of the manner in which language planning can be employed to direct and prioritize resources, personnel and government services so as to facilitate the full realization of a bilingual society. The central question I want to examine is to what extent a formal national language-planning framework will meet the needs of Welsh