Welsh Journals

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Sociological Bases of a Language Planning Programme for Wales GLYN WILLIAMS Lecturer, Department of Social Theory & Institutions, U.C.N.W. Bangor Introduction Planners are renowned for their naivety with reference to the rele- vance of social structure to their interests. Since the more recent work on language focuses upon aspects of social structure it is therefore not surprising that issues of language planning have been developed by sociologists and linguists. Yet studies of the Welsh language have been undertaken primarily by geographers whose preoccupation with spatial analysis, while familiar to planners, tends to obscure social structural issues. These disciplinary variations also tend to generate differences of explanation with the result that the Welsh language has rarely been discussed from the conflict perspective of political economy. In the space available I would like to consider the erosion of the Welsh language from the standpoint of social structure and to suggest what needs to be undertaken to reverse the recent erosive trends. A recent paper by Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (1978) has summariz- ed the work undertaken by socio-linguists on what they refer to as ethno-linguistic vitality. They maintain that this vitality depends upon three primary variables: demography, status and institutions. These variables can in turn be further sub-divided as is clear from the following schema: VITALITY STATUS DEMOGRAPHY INSTITÚTIONAL Economic Territorial Social Distribution Concentration Socio-historical Proportion massmedia education absolute FormaI/ government in-migration religion cut-migration culture