Language policy and governmentality in businesses in Wales: a continuum of empowerment and regulation

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how language policy acts as a means of both empowering the Welsh language and the minority language worker and as a means of exerting power over them. For this purpose, the study focuses on a particular site: private sector businesses in Wales. Therein, I trace two major discursive processes: first, the Welsh Government's national language policy documents that promote corporate bilingualism and bilingual employees as value-added resources; second, the practice and discourse of company managers who sustain or appropriate such promotional discourses for creating and promoting their own organisational values. By drawing on concepts from governmentality, critical language policy and discourse studies, I show that promoting bilingualism in business is characterised by local and global governmentalities. These not only bring about critical shifts in valuing language as symbolic entities attached to ethnonational concerns or as promotional objects that bring material gain. Language governmentalities also appear to shape new forms of 'languaging' the minority language worker as selfgoverning, and yet, governed subjects who are ultimately made responsible for 'owning' Welsh.

The community as a language planning crossroads: macro and micro language planning in communities in Wales

“…This paper contains examples of the implementation of macro level policies by the WG on a micro community level which are undertaken by individual actors. This could highlight the process of languaging as noted by Barakos (2016) as community organisations were seen to implement language policy at grass roots level. Further complexity is added as the community bridges other language use spheres and is therefore dependent upon a wide range of external factors (Baker & Prys-Jones, 1998.…”

“…Along with the need to focus more greatly on local language planning context, the role of power and agency of social actors is an important consideration. Barakos (2016) discusses the integral role of actors and their agency in shaping and re-shaping the implementation of language policy. Moreover, Haarmann (1990) suggested a clear need to recognise the work of a range of key language planning players by emphasising three agentive groupsgovernment agencies, pressure groups and individuals.…”

In the name of security: Governmentality apparatus in a multilingual mine in Arctic Finland

“…Neoliberal governmentality is constructed, strengthened, and disseminated via discourse by means of daily institutional practices (Martín Rojo & Del Percio, 2019: 2). Hence, previous sociolinguistic research adopting a governmentality framework has primarily focused on analyzing how language has been used as a medium for neoliberal governmentality in the management, guidance, and training of individuals, such as language learners (Flubacher & Del Percio, 2017; Martín Rojo, 2019), workers (Barakos, 2016; Dlaske, 2016), and unemployed immigrants (Allan, 2013; Del Percio, 2018). These studies have shown how individuals are governed through ‘technologies of the self’, by making them internalize neoliberal requirements such as responsibility, flexibility, and employability, and, seemingly voluntarily, regulate their behavior accordingly.…”

Commercialising thecúpla focal: New speakers, language ownership, and the promotion of Irish as a business resource

“…As we discuss below in relation to the two sites studied here, it is these ideological constructions of minority languages as marketable resources that have increasingly come to be mobilised in the contemporary discourses and strategies of minority-language advocates across (and beyond) Europe, with the use of minority languages in business being framed in terms of such notions as enhanced customer service, niche market generation, unique selling points, or brand differentiation (e.g. Barakos 2016; Brennan & Costa Wilson 2016; Woolard 2016).…”