Landscapes of Minority Language Learning

Both Wales and Quebec are known for the importance they place on promoting the Welsh and French languages, respectively, and have introduced a variety of policy, cultural, and educational initiatives to this end. They owe these successes partly to their history of collaborating and sharing knowledge to enhance language revitalization and education efforts in both contexts. This project will build on this history of collaboration. It will document adult newcomers’ linguistic integration trajectories through formal learning, such as community language classes, as well as informal learning such as seeking out opportunities to speak the minority language during their daily tasks and joining minority-language social groups. This research will benefit both Canadian and Welsh contexts by providing a more complete view of linguistic integration than is currently available. It will also highlight the agency and resourcefulness of adult language learners and will reveal the barriers that hinder their linguistic integration, opening up new opportunities to better support these learners’ full inclusion and participation in their new communities.

Faculty Supervisor:

Susan Ballinger

Student:

Partner:

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: