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Welsh‐language prestige in adolescents: attitudes in the heartlands
Author(s) -
Price Abigail Ruth,
Tamburelli Marco
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12274
Subject(s) - welsh , prestige , covert , psychology , attractiveness , linguistics , philosophy , psychoanalysis
We investigate covert attitudes towards Welsh and English as a medium of informal communication among L1 Welsh‐English bilingual adolescents. We collected quantitative data using an adaptation of the Matched‐Guise technique, testing measures of social attractiveness within youth culture via an indirect method. A total of thirty‐five adolescents took part in this study. We perform a 2 (language: Welsh /English) × 2 (register: high/low) × 2 (participant gender: male/female) mixed‐design ANOVA, with participant gender as the between‐subjects variable. Results show English rated more favourably than Welsh overall, with female participants rating Welsh guises significantly more highly than males. This lends empirical support to the perception of Welsh as a language of school and officialdom while English fulfils the language of leisure.