Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 578
Part of Session 127: Language outside of the city (Other abstracts in this session)
Peripheral multilingualism in “Britain’s smallest city”
Authors: Selleck, Charlotte Louise Rachel; Coupland, Nikolas
Submitted by: Selleck, Charlotte Louise Rachel (Cardiff University, United Kingdom)
In common conception St Davids/ Tyddewi, on the south-western extremity of Wales (itself part of the ‘Celtic fringe’), is a markedly peripheral place. But historically its importance was as a staging post for transnational mobility, not least a meeting point for pilgrims and as a religious centre. Tyddewi (“David’s House”) is the site of St David’s Cathedral, which has credentialised it not only as a “city” but as an ecclesiastical “Welsh capital”. Tyddewi sits on the Landsker Line/ Y Ffin, a putative isogloss dividing “Welsh” (more bilingual, northern) and “English” (mainly monolingual, southern) zones of south-west Wales. In geographical, political, cultural and linguistic dimensions, Tyddewi therefore lends itself almost uniquely to an analysis of changing and multiply contextualised centre/ periphery relations.
The particular centre/periphery dynamic that we analyse here relates to the role of Welsh and bilingualism in the (selective) economic revitalisation of west Wales. In changing economic and cultural markets, Tyddewi and other parts of the west Wales hinterland are increasingly able to market their peripherality, particularly as a high-end tourist destination. Coastal walking and more energetic leisure pursuits are building capacity for hotels/ guest-houses, restaurants and for more metaculturally focussed enterprises such as visitor centres, tours and commercial outlets for Welsh-themed services and produce, at least seasonally.
The Welsh language and semiotic Welshness are key commercial resources in these enterprises, at least ‘ceremonially’ - for example in product branding, establishment names and in metacultural displays and events of diverse sorts, including some associated with the cathedral. Tyddewi and its associated material and cultural resources tend to be marketed for their smallness, simplicity, remoteness, naturalness and cultural authenticity, in a process that can be called a “centring of the periphery”. By implication, Welsh is iconised as a valued resource in these same dimensions, in contrast to its earlier profile as an endangered minority language of the periphery. Indeed the very peripherality of Welsh, and the “curiosity” of the region’s historic sociolinguistic partition via the Lansker Line, are reconstituted as marketable and consumable commodities.