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Book Reviews Culture in Crisis: The Future of the Welsh Language, Clive Betts. The Ffynnon Press, Wirral (1976). £ 3.00 (paperback). In the absence of much scholarly work on contemporary Welsh society this book will justifiably be referenced often as a source text. It is neither original nor theoretical in its treatment of the Welsh culture complex, being essentially a review of existing work drawn mainly from periodical literature. However, its strength is the direct- ness and simplicity of its organising thesis, that, in order to survive, Welsh has to be consolidated within a formally demarcated Heart- land region where it will enjoy primary official language status in all matters of government, commerce and education. After an interesting review of the current literature in Socioling- uistics (an area of study devoid of many geographic contributions) Betts concludes that the future of any minority language depends to a great extent on its territorial dominance and on its ability to become indispensable in an optimum number of speech domains. Hence the relevance of the Heartland concept being operationalised should be acknowledged by government. Yet Betts rightly warns of the danger of assuming that government measures alone can act as a panacea for linguistic decline, and reminds us that legal provisions can never be substituted for the popular will in maintaining the Welsh language. Much of the book is concerned with a reiteration of the contribut- ory factors of Welsh decline with no new evidence or interpretation being presented. Nevertheless, Betts has marshalled the evidence for establishing a tripartite language division in Wales. His scheme would comprise an Heartland Zone, delimited by a contiguous area of more than 70% Welsh-speakers, a Transitional Zone of 50—70% Welsh speech and an Anglo-Welsh Zone of less than 50% Welsh speech. Corresponding to each of these zones Welsh would have a different status, being the primary language in Zone A, of equal status with English in Zone B and a nominal status in Zone C. Whilst recognising the need for legal guarantees of Welsh dominance in the Heartland this reviewer has doubts about the efficacy of establishing an official bilingual zone. The experience of the Canadian Bilingual Districts Advisory Board in New Brunswick for example, suggests that functionally such bilingual areas soon become unilingual unless the imitative and intergrative motive to maintain bilingualism is sufficiently strong. One method of attract- ing second language learners, according to Betts, would be the inter- grative economic inducement of paying higher wages as a recog-