The role of language attitudes and ideologies in minority language learning motivation

1 Introduction

The ever-increasing mobility of contemporary societies requires skills not only in English, a global lingua franca, in order to communicate internationally and find employment, but also in other languages. These may be other major world languages, such as Russian, Chinese, Spanish or French. In addition, in many linguistically diverse or historically multilingual regions, local minority languages are important for their economic values, increasing one’s own social and cultural capital, and social cohesion. For many years, L2 motivation research focused predominantly on learning English in a foreign language classroom, including the seminal study by Dörnyei et al (2006), which led to the development of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) theoretical model. Recently, language learning motivation research has started to shift its focus from English as a foreign language to the learning of languages other than English (cf. MacIntyre et al 2017, Dörnyei and Al-Hoorie 2017, Thompson & Vásquez 2015, Flynn 2020). As noted by Ushioda (2017: 471), “the globalisation of English has a significant impact on socio-political ideologies and educational agendas at local, national, and transnational levels, and these ideologies and agendas in turn have inescapable repercussions for language learning motivation at the individual level”. These ideologies and agendas concern not only the motivation to learn English, but also other languages, including “major” state language and “small” minority ones spoken across the world. Hence, it is important to study what role language attitudes and ideologies play in language learning motivation.

The present study contributes to the growing literature on the motivation to learn languages other than English (LOTE) in general, and specifically on the motivation to learn minority, endangered languages. By analysing data from a qualitative study into language ideologies and attitudes to the Welsh language and motivations to learn Welsh by Polish adult migrants in Wales, this paper aims to address the following questions: (1) what motivates Poles living in Wales to learn the Welsh language; (2) to what extent the L2MSS framework, the concept of integrative orientation and integrativeness employed in the studies on motivation to learn ‘major’ languages explain motivation to learn minority languages; and (3) which language ideologies are at work in adult minority language learning context. It is argued that the decision to take up minority language learning as an adult is influenced by a wide array of sociolinguistic factors such as language ideologies, and the status of minority languages on the linguistic market (Bourdieu 1991). Motivation to learn minority languages is also strongly linked to identity and desire to belong to a cultural community.

2 L2 Motivational Self System and Integrativeness

The importance of global English in the contemporary world makes learning it almost inseparably connected to such notions as necessity, usefulness, social and economic advancement, cosmopolitanism, and most certainly mobility and migration (Ushioda 2017: 471). It comes as no surprise then, that most of the motivation research in SLA has concentrated on the motivation to learn English in a foreign language classroom context. One of the most influential models of studying language learning motivation proposed recently is the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei et al 2006, 2009). This approach to studying motivation in language learning is based on the theories of ‘self’ developed in psychology by Markus and Nurius (1986) and the Self-Discrepancy Theory proposed by Higgins (1987). The approach has also been heavily influenced by future self-guides and self-discrepancy theory (cf. Higgins 1987) as well as the notion of mental imagery as discussed by Greg and Hall (2006), among others. It includes three components:

1. The Ideal L2 Self – based on Higgins’s (1987) idea of self and self-discrepancy theory, this element represents/denotes the attributes (i. e., language skills) that one would ideally like to have. It is the strongest motivator for learning languages. According to Dörnyei (2009: 29), this element encompasses the traditional integrative motivation (together with integrativeness and integrative orientation) and internalised instrumental motives (cf. Gardner & Lambert 1972, Dörnyei 1994).

2. The Ought-to L2 Self – based on Higgins’s (1987) idea of ‘ought self’. This component represents the attributes that one believes they ought to possess in order to meet expectations (for example of parents, friends, teachers) or to avoid negative consequences (for example bad grades at school, parents’ dissatisfaction etc.).

3. L2 Learning experience – this component has not been derived from the ‘self’ theories, but from the observations that some students are motivated by success in the actual learning process and learning environment.

This new approach grew out of dissatisfaction with the traditional socio-educational model developed by Lambert and Gardner (Gardner & Lambert 1972; Gardner 1985), and the distinction between instrumental and integrative motivation. In that model, integrative motivation – which includes integrativeness and integrative orientation (cf. Dörnyei 1994: 517) – reflected “a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by the other group” (Gardner & Lambert 1972: 132). More recently, Gardner (2001: 5) explains that

Integrativeness reflects a genuine interest in learning the second language in order to come closer to the other language community. At one level, this implies an openness to, and respect for other cultural groups and ways of life. In the extreme, this might involve complete identification with the community (and possibly even withdrawal from one’s original group), but more commonly it might well involve integration within both communities.

The main criticism of integrativeness, coming from Dörnyei (2009) and others, pertains to the fact that in the case of global English and its many varieties there is no specific ethnolinguistic community to identify with.

As skills in English have become highly desirable on the international linguistic market (Bourdieu 1991), mainstream models of language learning motivation have concentrated predominantly on teenagers’ and young adults’ acquisition of English in formal educational settings. The L2 Motivational Self System has grown to be the dominant theoretical model in recent years, and numerous studies employing it have been conducted in several countries including Hungary (Csizér and Kormos 2009), Indonesia (Lamb 2012), Japan (Ryan 2009; Yashima 2009), Iran (Papi 2010), Saudi Arabia (Moskovsky et al 2016), Sweden (Henry 2010), Turkey (Oz 2015) and China (Taguchi et al 2009). The findings from these studies suggest that the L2MSS successfully explains motivation in the context of learning English where learners have limited contact with native speakers. However, one major drawback and criticism arising from these studies is that they all share the same context: they studied motivation among teenagers and young adults studying English in a foreign language classroom context (cf. Thompson & Vásquez 2015: 160, Oakes & Howard 2019: 4). In fact, foreign language classes, in particular English, are part of the educational systems of many countries around the world, and students do not have a choice whether to learn a language or not; the decision to do so is taken for them. Yet, this is only one context in which people learn languages. Indeed, Dörnyei and Al-Hoorie concur that although the L2 Motivational Self System may explain the motivation to learn English as a foreign language in homogenous educational settings, there are “some more subtle aspects of the construct that may not do full justice to the understanding of the motivation underlying LOTE’s” (Dörnyei & Al-Hoorie 2017: 457). Hence, more research into motivation to learn LOTEs is needed.

L2MSS has been contested by several scholars, in recent years. The rather limited context in which research into L2MSS was conducted is not the only criticism of this model. The incorporation of integrative motivation into the Ideal L2 Self has also been criticised. Claro (2020: 247) points out that integrativeness and the ideal L2 Self do not share the locus of identification. The former has an external referent (the L2 speech community), whereas the identification of the latter is internal. Hence, integrativeness cannot be re-labelled as the ideal L2 Self, as proposed by Dörnyei (2005). According to Nakamura (2019), when applied to the study of motivation to learn LOTE, L2MSS displays three major weaknesses. Firstly, it is not sensitive enough to the learners’ connection to a given L2 community. He argues that such a connection may enhance positive attitudes towards the speakers of the L2 on the part of the learner and result in greater motivation to improve skills and fluency in the L2. Secondly, learners do have very personalised reasons to learn a given language, which L2MSS does not consider. Finally, the model is based on a monolingual premise and does not reflect the fact that in situations when more than one language is being learned a learner may develop different language-specific ideal L2 selves, which are activated at different times. The monolingual bias is also criticised by Henry (2017), who argues for a higher-level multilingual motivational self-system that would be more suitable for researching motivation in multilingual contexts. As such, it would be in line with the multilingual turn in SLA research (cf. May 2014). In their qualitative study on motivation to learn LOTEs, Thompson & Vásquez (2015) argue for the inclusion of the concept of psychological reactance to L2MSS as a form of anti-ought-to self. Thompson & Vásquez (2015: 161) define it as “the urge to perform an action specifically because someone gave advice to the contrary” and, “the determination to succeed despite societal norms pushing in the opposite direction” (2015: 171). In general, therefore, it seems that more studies on L2MSS and its application to LOTEs is needed.

3 Motivation to learn minority languages – literature overview

Research into language learning motivation focuses predominantly on teenagers’ and young adults’ acquisition of English in formal educational settings. However, in times of globalisation, mobility and migration, as adults many people come into contact not only with English, but also with other ‘major’, national languages and ‘small’ minority ones. It is welcome, then, that applied linguists mostly working with English have started to recognise the importance of applying models developed for English in analysing motivations to learn languages other than the global lingua franca. As stated by Duff (2017: 598):

The status enjoyed by English in our otherwise richly multilingual world raises compelling theoretical, methodological, and practical questions for research: For example, how and why do learners take up (or not take up) the study of languages other than (or in addition to) this linguistic behemoth (English), and to what effect? Indeed, the increasing stature and ‘market share’ held by English in additional-language curricula and as a medium of education worldwide have perceived – and also real – consequences for the vitality and standing of many other languages, and for interest in learning those languages, whether ‘big’ or ‘small’ (i. e., less commonly spoken or taught), indigenous, heritage, or ‘foreign’.

Although mostly not looking at motivation explicitly and studying it with one of the frameworks developed for English, a large body of sociolinguistic research into the world’s minority languages does address the question of ‘how’ and ‘why’ people decide to learn them. Three broad contexts of these studies can be distinguished: (1) learning autochtonous minority languages in their own communities (this includes heritage learners and migrants); (2) learners of minority languages as heritage languages outside the indigenous communities; (3) learners of minority languages as foreign languages. Within the first context, for example, Dołowy-Rybińska (2020) discusses types of immersion and bilingual programmes in Brittany and Lusatia, as well as factors that influence students’ choice of a particular type of schools, which inherently indicates types and degrees of motivation to learn the respective minority language. Similarly, motivation to study Basque in the Basque country by adults between the ages of 17 and 72 was part of research conducted by Perales and Cenoz (2002). They found that adult learners of Basque display both instrumental and integrative motivations, albeit the latter is slightly stronger (Perales & Cenoz 2002: 8). Walsh and Ní Dhúda (2015), who discuss motivations to learn Irish in the United States, exemplify the second context mentioned above. The study was conducted among participants identifying as Irish-American in five locations along the East and West coasts of the US. While raised in English, the participants had Irish-speaking family members who used Irish in their presence, including during their early childhood. Therefore, they can be classified as heritage language learners. Finally, the study by Rosiak & Hornsby (2016) is one of the very few examples of research into motivation to study a minority language as a foreign language (Context 3).

An interesting study into the motivation to learn Galician by so-called edutourists, (Yarymowich 2005), i. e., people who travel to the country or region where a particular language is spoken with the view of learning it on a summer language course and experiencing the ‘authentic’ language, was conducted by O’Rourke and DePalma (2017). As Galician is a minoritized (or marginalized) language spoken by 58 % of the population of Galicia and is not requisite for everyday communication, it is perhaps not surprising that “none of the participants reported purely instrumental goals, as one might expect from a more globalised language such as English or Spanish; interest in learning the language was always rooted in its relation to the local culture, and this ranged from the desire to continue future touristic visits, to maintaining personal and familial ties to the region, to eventually settling and finding work” (O’Rourke & DePalma 2017: 337). O’Rourke and DePalma (2017: 333) point out that learners of a minority language are generally “less likely to be motivated by the instrumental and/or economic value of knowing and speaking the language than is the case of its contact language” (O’Rourke & DePalma 2017: 333).

Several studies on minority language acquisition have used mainstream models for measuring language learning motivation. Using the L2 Motivational Self Model, Petit (2016) analyses motivations to learn Irish by Trinity College Dublin students and members of the Gaelic society An Cumann Gaelach. Nance et al (2016) use the integrationist model (e. g., Gardner & Lambert 1972, Ushioda & Dörnyei 2009) of motivation to explain that when it comes to pronunciation, some fluent new speakers^[1] of Scottish Gaelic may aim for a native-like accent, whereas for others the ideal self might be as a bilingual, bicultural individual. In contrast, Rosiak and Hornsby (2016) discuss the motivation to learn Welsh as a foreign language in Poland by university students who have no personal connection to it. This study employed Dörnyei’s et al (2006) seven component model of motivation in foreign language learning as its theoretical framework. Flynn and Harris (2016) studied the motivation to learn Irish among adult learners in Dublin, some of whom were born and schooled outside of Ireland. Having analysed their data obtained through individual and focus group interviews, they distinguished five types of learner motivations: (1) integratively motivated learners; (2) instrumentally motivated learners; (3) intrinsically motivated learners; (4) extrinsically motivated learners; and (5) socioculturally motivated learners. Although their study does not use Dörnyei’s Motivational Self System per se, they consider it to be “particularly useful in identifying motivational factors in those contexts where traditional social-psychological research approaches have proved to be too broad or do not have enough explanatory power with regard to learners’ behaviour” (Flynn and Harris 2016: 373). Although the researchers underline that this classification is a provisional one and is relevant to adult learners of Irish, similar themes were found in the study of adult learners of Welsh discussed later in this article. In his study of adult learners of Irish, Flynn (2020: 192) has found that “the Irish language is an important part of learners’ self-concept and that a type of integrative orientation to the language and its speakers is present”, which would suggest that both Gardner’s social psychological approach and Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System partly explain motivation to learn this minority language.

These studies provide important insights into the motivational factors in learning minority languages by adults and indicate that the desire to blend in with the minority population features prominently among them. In addition, as minority and minoritized languages usually possess a lower status on the linguistic market (Bourdieu 1991), as argued here, the motivation to learn them or not will be strongly linked to identity and will be influenced by language attitudes and ideologies (Woolard 1998, Dołowy-Rybińska & Hornsby 2021), in particular dominant language ideologies, the ideology of authenticity, and the ideology of utility discussed below. This, therefore, has implications for developing models to study language learning motivation across the life span.

4 Language attitudes and ideologies

There is no denying the fact that our experiences as young school-age (language) learners influence our decisions to take up learning a language as adults. However, apart from being a social practice, as Cavanaugh (2020: 51) observes, language “is also and always infused with and caught up in the political economic, national, (post)colonial, and political circumstances that shape its use and its role as an object of study, political manipulation, and cultural value.” Hence, the motivation to learn languages, and in particular LOTEs and minority languages across the lifespan, should be studied in a wider socio-political context, as it has an insurmountable impact on individual identities, decision-making processes and language choices. Which language we choose to learn as adults is strongly influenced by its position on the linguistic market (Bourdieu 1991) on the one hand, and our own language attitudes and ideologies on the other.

The term ‘ideology’, coined by French philosopher Destutt de Tracy at the end of the 18th century to denote a science of ideas, has evolved over time and acquired a multitude of new meanings and connotations (Woolard 1998: 5–9; Silverstein 1998: 123). In linguistics, the concept of language ideologies was first discussed by Silverstein, who defined them as “any sets of beliefs about language articulated by the users as rationalisation or justification of perceived language structure and use” (Silverstein 1979:193). With growing body of research and knowledge in this area, the definition of the term evolved (cf. Irvine 1989; Gal & Woolard 1995, Heller 2007). The present study will use the definition offered by Boudreau and Dubois (2007: 104), who define language ideologies as

a set of beliefs on language or a particular language shared by members of a community [...] These beliefs come to be so well established that their origin is often forgotten by speakers and are therefore socially reproduced and end up being ‘naturalised’, or perceived as natural or as common sense, thereby masking the social construction process at work.

According to King (2000: 168), it is of utmost importance to distinguish language ideologies from language attitudes. Language ideologies are expressed not only by the users of a particular language but also by other, often neighbouring communities. They are shared, enacted, and reproduced in everyday life, through opinions expressed about the aesthetics of a given language, its utility in day-to-day activities and various domains of life, or how and when this language should be used (Duchêne 2008). Notably, language ideologies are strongly linked to stereotypes about the social, economic, and educational attributes of a speaker connected with their use of particular accents, dialects or vocabulary (Dołowy-Rybińska & Hornsby 2021: 105). Ideologies, therefore, influence linguistic choices people make, including which language to use in daily interactions, the content of utterances and which languages to learn (Piller 2015). In contrast, language attitudes are “the explicit evaluations of particular languages and language varieties, expressed by people as opinions and beliefs and, more negatively, as prejudices. They influence people’s thought processes and their specific language choices” (Dołowy-Rybińska & Hornsby 2021: 106). Whereas language ideologies are covert beliefs about a given language, language attitudes are overt, explicit statements about selected aspects of that language (King 2000: 168).

Numerous studies on ideologies and sociolinguistic aspects of minority languages exist, in particular in reference to language revitalisation (cf. Costa 2015, 2019; Smith-Christmas et al 2018). There is also a growing literature on language ideologies and migration into multilingual societies. McCubbin (2010: 458) points out that much of it tends to discuss migrant languages as minority languages in relation to the dominant ones. Working within the framework of new speakers, several recent studies discuss minority language learning by migrants settling in indigenous minority language communities. For example, Bermingham and Higham (2018) discuss linguistic integration of migrants in Wales and Galicia. Augustyniak (2021) discusses the underlying language ideologies of migrant new speakers of Basque. A number of studies investigated the language ideologies of immigrant students in minority language communities (cf. Bermingham 2018; Pérez-Izaguirre and Cenoz 2020). Rosiak & Zydorowicz (2021) have shown how language ideologies influenced the perceptions of the sound and spelling system of Welsh held by the Polish adult migrants in Aberystwyth. Thus far, few studies investigate the role of language ideologies in language learning motivation. However, in the present study language ideologies were found to have a potentially significant influence on motivations to study Welsh held by adult Polish migrants. Hence, ideologies influencing decisions to take up a minority language and the ones at work while learning a minority language are discussed in the sections below.

5 The local context: Polish migrants in Wales

The influx of Polish economic migrants to Wales began after Poland’s accession to the European Union in May 2004 (Drinkwater & Garapich 2013). Prior to 2004, the largest number of Polish immigrants had settled in the UK during and shortly after the Second World War. As these were refugees and political rather than economic migrants, their reasons for settling in the UK, including Wales, were mostly political (Zubrzycki 1956). According to official estimates, over 18,000 Poles currently live in Wales, and are the most numerous non-British-born ethnic group living in the country (Migration Observatory 2014). The biggest Polish communities can be found in Llanelli, Wrexham, and Cardiff. However, significant numbers of Poles also reside in Aberystwyth, Merthyr Tydfil, and other rural and urban locations in Wales. Many came to Wales with little or no knowledge about the linguistic situation of the country and their language skills were in many cases limited to little or even no knowledge of English.

Wales is an officially bilingual country with Welsh and English as its official languages. According to the 2011 National Census, Welsh is a minority language spoken by around 19 % of the population (i. e., 583,000 people). In 2017–18, the National Survey for Wales found that 29 % of people aged 3 and over reported knowledge and skills in the Welsh language. The Survey showed that the biggest percentage of Welsh speakers live in the west and north-west (Gwynedd 76.1 %, Anglesey 70.4 %, Carmarthenshire 63.6 %) (Welsh Government 2018). Hence, after moving to Wales, migrants come across two languages and two cultures. In terms of institutional support, the Welsh language falls within the remit of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language. In addition, the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 created the position of the Welsh Language Commissioner, an independent body responsible for promoting and facilitating the use of Welsh.

In 2017 the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) published Cymraeg 2050: A Million Welsh Speakers – the latest strategy to increase the number of Welsh speakers. This document describes Welsh as one of the treasures of Wales and outlines an ambitious strategy to double the number of Welsh speakers by the middle of the 21^st century. The strategy is divided into three themes: (a) increasing the number of speakers; (b) increasing the use of Welsh; and (c) creating favourable conditions for the learning and use of Welsh. In the strategy, WAG recognises the importance of new speakers (Walsh and Lane 2014, O’Rourke et al 2015) to achieving their target number.

The contribution of speakers who acquire Welsh outside the home is vital to the success of our strategy. Creating the right conditions for new learners of all ages to develop and use their skills is a key objective – from the early years, through every stage of compulsory education and post-16 provision, to opportunities for adults to learn Welsh (Welsh Government 2017: 17).

Further on in the document, the Government declares that they wish Welsh to be relevant for all residents of Wales, irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic background (Welsh Government 2017: 60). The new speakers of Welsh that the Government wishes to see, then, comprises not only the Wales-born population, but also in-migrants from other parts of Britain and abroad. Hence, it is important to study what motivates the post-16 population of Wales to continue the study and use of Welsh. Considering the influx of adult migrants into Wales, it is also vital to research not only the motivations they have for learning the country’s minority language, but also what obstacles they face and what discourages them from doing so.

Teaching Welsh to migrants, however, seems to be a neglected area since language provision focuses primarily on English (ESOL – English for Speakers of Other Languages) (Higham 2020). Nevertheless, research conducted by Higham (2014) indicates that migrants have rather positive attitudes to learning Welsh and view it in terms of increasing their multilingual repertoires and negotiating their multilingual experiences and identities. In addition, skills in Welsh were viewed as having economic value, i. e., increasing one’s employment opportunities (Higham 2014, 2020). As shown later in this article, the experience of living in Wales, over time, prompted some Poles – currently, the largest migrant group in Wales – to take interest in Welsh and learn it in formal and informal contexts, with a view to understanding the local culture better and to better integrate with Welsh communities. In what follows, I discuss motivational factors in learning Welsh by Polish post-2004 migrants to Wales.

6 The present study

The data used in this paper comes from two ethnolinguistic studies conducted in Wales among Polish post-2004 migrants. As migrants learning minority languages is an under-researched context in motivation research, qualitative data collection methods were used as they allow researchers to explore participant-based, emic perspectives and yield invaluable insights on differences and degrees of motivation (Ushioda 1994: 79; Thompson & Vásquez 2015: 161). The first study took place in July and August 2014 in various locations across Gwynedd in northwest Wales, a region with a Welsh speaking population of 70 % – the highest across all of Wales (Welsh Government 2018). As the main aim of this study was to investigate the migration experience and attitudes towards Welsh, the potential participants ideally had to have at least a basic knowledge of Welsh. The second study was conducted in Aberystwyth (Ceredigion) in May and June 2018, as the town has a significant Polish population. The 2011 National Census recorded 371 speakers of Polish living in the Aberystwyth area (661 in Ceredigion). Similarly to Gwynedd, Ceredigion is one of the heartlands of the Welsh language, with the percentage of Welsh speakers estimated at 44 % of the population. In Aberystwyth itself, 31 % of the population declared skills in Welsh, compared to the national average of 19 % as recorded in the 2011 National Census. Taking into account the small numbers of Polish nationals learning Welsh found in the Gwynedd study, the main focus this time was on factors deterring Poles from taking up Welsh. The analysis discussed in the present article, then, addresses the following research questions: (1) What motivates Polish adults living in Wales to learn the Welsh language; (2) To what extent are the L2MSS framework and the concepts of integrative orientation and integrativeness applicable to studying motivation to learn minority languages; and (3) Which language ideologies are at work in this language learning context?

7 Integrativeness

Let us return to Dörnyei’s criticism of the concept of integrativeness in language learning motivation, as proposed by Gardner and Lambert (1959, 1972) and Gardner (2001). The criticism is based on a claim that with the lack of a specific target L2 community in the case of global English, the concept of ‘the other language community’ that the learner would want to ‘get closer to’ (Gardner 2001) does not apply. This argument was supported by Noels et al (2000: 60), who maintain that integrativeness is not fundamental to the process of motivation to learn languages as it has relevance only in specific sociocultural contexts. However, this claim, though not without merit, seems to be valid only in the context of learning English, and other ‘major’ languages, in a foreign language classroom. Integrativeness played a significant role in motivating participants learning Irish in Flynn and Harris’s (2016) study. As shown by O’Rourke and DePalma (2017) learning minority languages surpasses instrumental motivation and

implies taking a particular stance towards the language and its speakers that goes beyond reaping social and economic benefits in terms of access to broader markets and higher social strata. Indeed, learning a minoritized language provides social access, but such access is mediated by desires to belong to social circles that are, in part, defined by counter-ideologies (O’Rourke and DePalma 2017: 334).

The themes of social access, belonging to social circles and integrating with local communities are strongly present in the data from Wales. As one of the participants from Aberystwyth put it, learning a minority language is about finding a cultural community:

It’s not a matter of communicating but understanding and rapport. It’s a matter of finding a cultural community rather than sheer communicating, exchanging information. I think it opens doors. (AA27F)^[3]

In the opinion of one of the participants living in northwest Wales, learning the local language is not only about personal gain or economic benefits, but also and more importantly, about showing respect for the host community and interest in its culture:

I was learning Welsh more for K. [daughter] and for pleasure, and not because I had to, so that’s a different kettle of fish, sort of. (...) It opens doors, it opens a lot of doors, and it helps meeting people who are in a similar situation, and.... I think it’s important to show that I’m interested in your language, your culture. I think it comes from a kind of respect I feel for this place. And I think it’s worth it. (GC38F)

The metaphor of opening doors was used repeatedly with reference to increased opportunities in terms of social interactions, social acceptance, integration, and employment that the knowledge of Welsh provides. Knowing Welsh did not only allow participants better access to the job market and local Welsh-language culture, but it also helped them to integrate better with the local communities. A few of the participants underlined that their knowledge of Welsh helped them to be more accepted by the locals.

Yes, certainly. 100 %. You feel more accepted, they trust you more, they accept you more. (GC36F)

Uhmmm I think that it helped with being accepted more, that’s all. Because when I say that I’m learning Welsh, they say ‘I didn’t know’ and they have big smiles immediately and they switch to Welsh to speak it with me. It certainly did help. (GC38F)

It is worth noting at this point that Wales is a bilingual country and that Welsh culture in English and Welsh language culture intertwine but remain largely separate. Knowledge of Welsh, then, allows one to participate in those parts of social and cultural life of Wales that exist in Welsh only. In fact, newcomers to Wales often need to make a conscious choice about which Welsh-only spheres of life and culture they want to participate in:

So it’s a question of which environment or community you want to be part of, because, you know, there’s a huge overlap between the two [language] groups, it’s not that you have one group speaking only Welsh and the other speaking only English. People who speak Welsh can speak English and you have a lot of place for manoeuvre here. But true, there are things that belong only to the Welsh speakers (AA27F).

In his definition of integrativeness, Gardner (2001) suggests that in its extreme form it might result in complete identification with the (target) community leading to a possible withdrawal from one’s own group. He concedes, however, that it is more common for integrativeness to involve both communities. This is indeed the case of one of the participants from Wales:

Certainly, yes. Sometimes I feel as if I lived in [town name] in three different circles of friends, three cultural circles. An English-speaking one is mainly friends and people on the streets. I also have Welsh-speaking friends, my neighbours, parents from my daughter’s school, people from the Welsh language course, meetings, family members. Polish-speaking from the Polish school. This community is growing, I know quite a few of these people. And I feel I’m in three different communities which intersect but actually they are next to one another. I know a few people who speak Welsh and I could not chat with them in their native language, and now I can. And that gives me the feeling that I’m part of this community to a greater extent (GC36F).

Learning Welsh came to indicate a wish to integrate with the Welsh-speaking community, to open up to the local culture, and to show respect, despite the fact that it may only be a part of the complex cultural and linguistic situation in Wales. In the experience of the participants, the ability to communicate in Welsh helps not only in communication and being accepted, but also opens up the local community and its culture, thus meeting Gardner’s definition of integrativeness.

8 Ideology of utility

Whereas some participants were motivated to learn Welsh by a wish to integrate better with the Welsh-speaking communities, others did not seem to regard learning Welsh as necessary to achieve that. The limited ‘utility’ of the minority language, then, was a demotivating factor in taking up Welsh. The term ‘ideology of utility’ is used here to refer to the belief that learning minority languages does not bring any discernible benefits as they are going to die out sooner or later, and their use is usually restricted to one geographical locality in which the local community speaks a majority language in addition to the minority one anyway. Even though west Gwynedd is characterised by the highest percentage of Welsh speakers, reaching 70 % in some areas (Welsh Government 2018: 6), one of the participants living there was still not motivated to learn the language because of his strong belief that Welsh is in severe decline:

I think that the Welsh language will die its natural death sooner or later, it will be a sort of curiosity, a tourist attraction, there’ll be someone still speaking it, there’ll be an old man leading the groups of tourists and saying something in Welsh, and they’ll be recording him. It’s a matter of years. For me this language is completely useless. (GC40M)³

When discussing the plans to learn new languages, one of the members of the Aberystwyth group said:

I’d rather bet on practical use of what I’m learning, so I cannot see any concrete use for Welsh, because Welsh is used in... Is it used anywhere outside of Wales? (AA203M)

This comment displays a transposition of the status of English as a lingua franca on a minority language – Welsh. English is and can be used globally, therefore, if a language is to be learned, it should be a language that can be used globally. Hence, in the opinion of the participant, the restricted geographical area where the language is used daily by a local/national community renders its learning impractical. In addition, all speakers of Welsh living in Wales speak English as well. Thus, some potential learners of Welsh may not to be motivated as they already share a language of communication – English, as shown by the following quotes:

ymm If I really needed it, if they only spoke Welsh, I would definitely learn it. But because they also speak English, most people, basically everyone ... (...) but if I had to learn it, If I needed it to live here, I’d definitely learn it. (AA202M)

When I came here and saw how often the language is used here, and by saying that I mean that the language is used sporadically and in the situations when the people really want to communicate in Welsh, they don’t have to do it, I decided that perhaps it’s [learning Welsh] is not my priority. (AA19M)

I’m not kidding myself, I will never be fluent in Welsh, I’ve only just learned English. And with whom would I be speaking it anyway? I wouldn’t be speaking it at home because my husband doesn’t speak it. My brother-in-law speaks it. But he also speaks English of course, so there’s always English, we can always speak English. (AC38F)

For a Welsh cultural life it’s [speaking Welsh] important but I don’t think you need Welsh for everyday life, because everyone here speaks English anyway (AC39M)

Yet, as discussed subsequently, learning a minority language is not only about communication itself, understood as exchange of information, but involves becoming a part of a cultural community. As the ideology of utility tends to deter potential learners from taking up the language, it should be taken into consideration in any model of motivation to learn minority languages.

9 Ideology of authenticity

Whereas the ideology of utility inhibits motivation to learn a minority language, ideologies of authenticity and legitimacy (Costa 2015) are at work after one has started learning and reaches increasing levels of competence. As rightly pointed out by Dörnyei (2006: 7–8) English is less and less associated with any particular country, state or culture. This is very much in contrast to minority languages, which are very much connected to particular communities. Indeed, the ideology of authenticity “locates the value of a language in its relationship to a particular community. That which is authentic is viewed as a genuine expression of such a community (...), a speech variety must be perceived as deeply rooted in social and geographic territory in order to have value” (Woolard 2008: 304). Hence, for it to have value and to be perceived as authentic a given language variety must be ‘from somewhere’ in speakers’ consciousness, as indicated by Woolard (2008: 304). Several authors (O’Rourke 2015; O’Rourke & Ramallo 2013; Woolard 2008) have pointed out that the ideology of authenticity might, on the one hand, constrict minority language learning and use by those who may not feel sufficiently natural and native-like. On the other hand, this ideology might prompt traditional native speakers to establish a social closure, which would affirm their status as authentic speakers. The social closure then becomes socially restrictive and acts as an identity control mechanism, which new speakers (O’Rourke et al 2015: 1) may find to be working against their motivation to learn and use the language.

Several studies in Wales have paid attention to the phenomenon of traditional native speakers switching to English when interacting with learners of Welsh. Trosset (1993: 29–30) attributes this to the rules of politeness, which require different language choices in different social situations. English, according to these rules, is to be used when speaking to strangers and when at least one member of the group is not a speaker of Welsh. When it comes to learners of Welsh, Trosset’s study showed that “Learners attempting to converse in Welsh with native speakers often find that the first time they make a linguistic mistake, thus signalling their lack of total fluency, the Welsh speakers will switch to English” (Trosset 1986: 169). Failure to speak an ‘authentic’ language was also the reason for native speakers’ reluctance to converse with learners in a study conducted by Pritchard-Newcombe (2007). Because of this, many Welsh learners felt demotivated to practice their Welsh. However, my data shows that using a variety deviating from that of one’s interlocutors need not necessarily lead to the social closure and demotivation of the learner.

The Welsh language has developed a written standard. When it comes to the spoken varieties, however, a general distinction between north and south Welsh is made, with each having distinctive local dialects. A participant from Aberystwyth, who is now proficient in Welsh, noticed that when her interlocutors detect differences between her Welsh and theirs, they tend to assume she is still an ‘authentic’ speaker that hails from a different region of Wales:

Sometimes it happens that they ask me if I had learned Welsh, because they assume that I had learned it in the north, for example, or in some dialect, which they do not entirely understand, so they often assume that, ok, she said it that way, but maybe it’s correct where she comes from, but they understand what I mean and they don’t think that I have learned the language, and you know, they are extremely happy when they realise that you’re learning Welsh. (AA27F)

Such experiences, then, seem to act as factors motivating the advanced learner to continue with the language.

Authenticity in speaking Welsh, and other minority languages, does not only involve speaking a local dialect, but also accepting code-switching and code-mixing as part of a natural phenomenon in bi/multilinguals. Code-switching, defined as alternating between two or more languages or language varieties in the conversation that depends on the conversational setting or social context, is a characteristic feature of stable bilingualism in a community (Pritchard-Newcombe 2007: 50). While code-switching is intentional, code-mixing is not. Code-mixing is the use of words or phrases from one language when speaking another. In her study of Welsh-English bilinguals in North Wales, Deuchar (2006) found that the majority of participants code-switched and code-mixed, though as pointed out by Pritchard-Newcombe (2007) learners viewed such linguistic practices in a negative light and tried to avoid it themselves, often going to the extremes and using hyper-correct grammatical forms and formal vocabulary. As a result, they were often perceived as inauthentic by the traditional speakers of Welsh, who stopped speaking Welsh to them. This, in turn, affected learners’ confidence in their language abilities and demotivated them from using the language outside the classroom.

Negative attitudes towards code-switching were also expressed by a participant in the Aberystwyth study:

Welsh is not a rich language, they don’t say... There’s a generation of older people, who speak Welsh naturally, they don’t use any English words, but ¾ of the population uses English words in Welsh sentences. I was learning Welsh for about six months. In general, Welsh is not difficult to learn because phonetically it’s like Polish, so you can learn it, and you can read everything, and I can still read some books with my children. But it was difficult for me to concentrate on it, to think in Polish, because I was learning it through Polish, and say a sentence in Welsh, where suddenly you had to use an English word in a Welsh sentence because there was just no Welsh word for it. (AC34F)

The participant found code-switching to be a sign of an incomplete, impure language, or a language in decline. This belief, in turn worked against her motivation to pursue language learning further. Such beliefs may be deeply ingrained in learners of minority languages in the course of formal education, which emphasises the ‘correct’ use of language and discourages students from using lexical borrowings and calques. However, another of my participants noted that at first, like other learners, she was trying to avoid anglicisms in her Welsh. As she became more proficient in the language, however, she noticed that code-switching is necessary when speaking Welsh casually:

You can write an MA in Welsh, go to a lecture about Welsh politics, understand every word, but go to a pub 30 miles of where you live and ask something easy and it may happen that you wouldn’t understand the answer. It’s rather shocking and sometimes depressing, in particular when somebody speaks really fast. So that’s one thing. And I had to learn that when you don’t know how to say something in Welsh, just say it in English, it’s the norm, nobody will mind it, apart from some huge enthusiasts of linguistic purism. But even if you talk like that, it can only add authenticity to your language. (AA27F)

Hence, according to the participant, code-switching is not only a natural part of bilingual speech but also adds authenticity to the language use of a learner, or a new speaker.

10 Conclusions

Participants in this study were Polish adult migrants living in Wales and engaging in learning Welsh, the minority language of the country, to different degrees. The context of the study is unique but suitable to study the motivation to learn languages as adults in general, and minority languages in particular, as the participants were exposed to two languages within the same community. Admittedly, not all participants achieved high levels of fluency in Welsh. However, their cases provide a good point of departure for further considerations of what aspects of a language, language learning situation, and wider societal factors hamper language learning motivation. By using qualitative methods of data collection, I gained crucial insight into participants’ attitudes, motivations, and ideologies, in a way that is inaccessible through quantitative methods. I have discussed the connection between participants’ attitudes towards Welsh and motivation to learn it or lack of it in relation to the concept of integrativeness and language ideologies.

The findings of this study suggest that integrativeness plays an important role in minority language learning. Positive attitudes towards the L2 community, the L2 community’s positive reactions towards learners and becoming closer to the L2 community did significantly influence motivation to learn Welsh. Participants often underlined that they took up Welsh not only because of their interest in learning languages, but also because learning the language is a means of showing respect towards the host community and gaining their trust and acceptance. Hence, more research is needed to find out to what extent these factors play a role in minority language learning.

As has been shown, ideologies strongly influence minority language learning at various stages. The ideology of utility seems to be a major disincentive for learning a minority language. The belief that the effort put into acquiring language skills will not bring the immediately recognised assets that speaking English and other ‘major’ languages offer, is a factor preventing people from taking up a minority language. A further study could assess whether psychological reactance (Thompson & Vásquez, 2015) counteracts the ideology of utility and to what extent this ideology could be subsumed under instrumental orientation. Once a person decides to learn a minority language, however, other ideologies are at work, acting as motivating or demotivating forces. As has been shown by several studies, ideology of authenticity is particularly strong among speakers and learners of minority languages. It would transpire that it plays a significant role in integrative orientation. Consequently, any model for studying motivation to learn minority languages should include language ideologies as its components. Further studies regarding motivation to study minority languages, however, are needed.