A presentation given by one of the keynote speakers at the 17th Association of University Language Centres Conference on 7th-8th January 2016.

1. Welsh Language Policy
and Multicultural Wales
Professor Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, LPPRU,
School of Welsh, Cardiff University

2. About the School of Welsh
Language, Policy and Planning Research Unit
‘One language for all’ [Welsh L2 at Key Stages 3
& 4 - Professor Sioned Davies]
‘Raising our sights’ [WfA]
Centre for Welsh for Adults [WfA]
Welsh for All

3. Context
Referendum 1997
National Assembly for Wales [NAfW] 1999
‘y Fro Gymraeg’

4. ‘tidal waves of migration’
Seimon Glyn, January 2001 -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1123782.stm
‘We are faced with a situation now where we are
getting tidal waves of migration, inward migration into
our rural areas from England, and these people are
coming here to live to establish themselves here, and
to influence our communities and our culture with
their own. Between 90 and 100% of all homes being
put on the market are sold to outsiders. Once you
have more than 50% of anybody living in a
community that speaks a foreign language, then you
lose your indigenous tongue almost immediately. In
my opinion, it is no use to the community to have
retired people from England coming down here to live
and being a drain on our resources.’

5. ‘human foot-and-mouth
disease’
John Elfed Jones, August 2001 -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1477120.stm
‘From the mouths of these in-migrants comes the
language familiar to everyone in rural Wales but
which is a foreign language. Very quickly,
unintentionally, almost without anyone noticing,
our indigenous language, and community way of
life, has been changed beyond recognition.’

6. ‘politically correct silliness
of multiculturalism’
Harold Carter, October 2001 -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1616417.stm
‘If one wants to experience the whole range of
Welsh culture you have to do it through the
Welsh language and traditions. You need at least
an acquaintance with the language. Otherwise it
would be like someone saying they want to
speak English but never having read
Shakespeare. I know it is an awful thing to imply
that the bulk of the population is not Welsh and
that you can't be Welsh unless you speak Welsh.
But you have to look at what makes a Welshman
different to a Yorkshireman in Wales.’

7. ‘I am thermo-nuclear about
this’
Rhodri Morgan, October 2001 -
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-
news/only-welsh-speakers-truly-welsh-1970979
‘I am thermo-nuclear about this. It is utterly
disgraceful to say that Welsh people can't be
Welsh because they can't speak the language.
This is the sort of language that was spoken in
Germany before the war. There is no place for
those remarks in modern British society. I take
exception to anyone who believes that cultural
fascism should replace multiculturalism in Wales.
This kind of prejudice is damaging.’

8. Mind the gap
‘A bilingual Wales’ – ‘Our language : its future’,
NAfW, Culture Committee & Education and
Lifelong Learning Committee, 2002
but, multiculturalism?
Similarly – ‘Dyfodol dwyieithog : a bilingual
future’, 2002 / ‘Iaith pawb’, NAfW 2003, ‘A living
language: a language for living’, NAfW 2012-
2017.

9. Welsh multiculturalism?
‘Wales unchained’ – Daniel G Williams, April 2015 -
http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9781783162116
‘Pam na fu Cymru’ – Simon Brooks, June 2015 [Yr Hawl i
oroesi, 2009] -
http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9781783162338
‘Imagining a multicultural, autonomous Wales where the
Welsh language takes pride of place entails [for Daniel G
Williams] the same move that Brooks covets, namely the
establishment of English and Welsh as the languages of
our civic identity – and a bilingualism that entails the
ownership of both languages by the many and not the
few.’– Huw Williams, ‘Articulating a Welsh multiculturalism’,
September 2015 -
http://www.weareeffective.co.uk/iwa2/2015/09/03/articulatin
g-a-welsh-multiculturalism/

10. The local and the everyday
Morrow, Higham,Whittaker
in-migrant and ethnic minorities
encounters with the Welsh language
attitudes to the Welsh language

11. official bilingualism and
cultural diversity
policy implications? policy opportunity?
seeing Welsh as a language of inclusion
making the Welsh language accessible