Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T21:59:23.529Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The streets of Bethesda: The slate quarrier and the Welsh language in the Welsh Liberal imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2004

H. Paul Manning
H. Paul Manning
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Trent University, Peterborough, ONT K9J 7B8, Canada, paulmanning@trentu.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sociolinguistic debates about the fate of the Welsh language have since at least the mid-20th century posited the relationship between language and political economy as a central factor in the death or rebirth of the Welsh language since the Industrial Revolution. Such studies have been concerned primarily with empirical head counts of actual speakers and the movements of populations and distributions of languages as determined by political economic independent variables. This article argues that the relationship between language and political economy was also crucially and consequentially construed in the 19th century in terms of “imagined” exemplary speakers of Welsh. In the imagined voice of the Welsh slate quarrier, Welsh elites of the 19th century found a “modern” Welsh-speaking figure who participated in industry while remaining Welsh, both linguistically and culturally, thereby associating the Welsh language itself with the desirable properties of modernity, particularly industrial productivity, and this allowed it to be imagined as a language at home in modernity.The research for this paper was made possible by a Reed College faculty grant and the friendship and generosity of Dylan Morgan and his family. Versions of this material have been presented at the AAA in San Francisco and Bard College, and I would like to thank my fellow participants and audiences there for their helpful comments. I would like to thank Richard Bauman, Mario Bick, Steve Coleman, Elizabeth Duquette, David Garrett, Alex Hrycak, and Rupert Stasch for comments and encouragement, as well as Jane Hill and the anonymous reviewers provided by Language in Society. Errors are my own.

Keywords

Welshpolitical economylanguageideologymodernity.
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 517 - 548
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agha, Asif (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language & Communication 23:231–73.Google Scholar
Arnold, Matthew (1906 [1866]). On the study of Celtic literature and on translating Homer. New York: Macmillan.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Brooke, David (1983). The railway navvy: ‘That despicable race of men.’ Newton Abbott: David & Charles.
Herald, Carnarvon, & Herald, Denbigh (1873). Special Correspondent. The slate quarries of North Wales. 15 February, pp. 2, 6.
Chatterjee, P. (1992). The nation and its fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Edwards, H. T. (1980). Gwyl Gwalia: Yr Eisteddfod genedlaethol yn oes aur Victoria 1858–1868 [Gwyl Gwalia: The national Eisteddfod in the golden age of Victoria]. Llandysul: Gomer.
Edwards, H. T. (1994). Arwr glew erwau'r glo: Delwedd y glöwr yn llenyddiaeth y Gymraeg 1850–1950 [Brave hero of the coal acres: The image of the collier in Welsh literature: 1850–1950]. Llandysul: Gomer.
Edwards, H. T. (1996). The Welsh collier as hero: 1850–1950. Welsh Writing in English 2:22–48.Google Scholar
Edwards, O. M. (1893). Diwrnod ym mlaenau Ffestiniog [A day in Blaenau Ffestiniog]. Cymru 1893.
Gal, Susan (1989a). Codeswitching and consciousness in the European periphery. American Ethnologist 14:637–53.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan (1989b). Language and political economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 18:345–67.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan (1991). Bartok's funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian political rhetoric. American Ethnologist 18:440–58.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan, & Irvine, Judith (1995). The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 62:967–1001.Google Scholar
Harrison, Royden (1978). Independent collier: The coal miner as archetypal proletarian reconsidered. New York: St. Martin's.
Harvey, P. (1997). Introduction. In Technology as skilled practice, special issue of Social Analysis 41:3–13.Google Scholar
Hechter, M. (1975). Internal colonialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Herzfeld, Michael (1996). Cultural intimacy: The social poetics of the nation-state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hofer, Tamás (1980). The creation of ethnic symbols from the elements of peasant culture. In Peter F. Sugar (ed.), Ethnic diversity and conflict in eastern Europe, 101–45. Oxford: ABC-Clio.
Ingold, T. (1997). Eight themes in the anthropology of technology. In P. Harvey (ed.), Technology as skilled practice, special issue of Social Analysis 41:106–38.Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako (2003). Speech without a speaking body: ‘Japanese women's language’ in translation. Language & Communication 23:315–30.Google Scholar
Jenkins, G. (ed.) (1998). Language and community in the nineteenth century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Jones, Dot (1995). The coming of the railways and language change in North Wales: 1850–1900. Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.
Jones, Dot (1998). Statistical evidence relating to the Welsh language 1801–1911. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Jones, E. (1964a). Canrif y chwarelwr [The century of the quarrier]. Dinbych: Gwasg Gee.
Jones, E. (1964b). Casgliad o dermau chwarel [A collection of quarry terms]. Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 20:373–88.Google Scholar
Jones, I. G. (1987). Communities: Essays in the social history of Victorian Wales. Llandysul: Gwasg Gomer.
Jones, I. G. (1992). Mid-Victorian Wales: The observers and the observed. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Jones, P. E. (1989). Migration and the slate belt of Caernarfonshire in the nineteenth century. Welsh History Review 14:610–29.Google Scholar
Jones, R. M. (1982). The North Wales quarrymen 1874–1922. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Jones, R. M. (1986). Y Chwarelwr a'i gymdeithas yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg. [The quarrier and his community in the nineteenth century] In Cof Cenedl: Ysgrifau ar Hanes Gymru, 127–55. Llandysul: Gomer.
Jones, R. M. (1988). Ethnicity and class in the Penrhyn lock-outs, 1896–7: 1900–3. In L. H. Van Voss & H. Diederiks (eds.), Industrial conflict: Papers presented to the Fourth British-Dutch Conference on Labour History, 41–8. Amsterdam: Stichting beheer HSG.
Jones, R. M. (1992). Beyond identity? The reconstruction of the Welsh. Journal of British Studies 31:330–57.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb (2003). Semiotics and the social analysis of material things. Language & Communication 23:409–25.Google Scholar
Kerr, C., & Siegel, A. (1954). The inter-industry propensity to strike – an international comparison. In A. Kornhauser et al. (eds.), Industrial conflict, 189–212. New York.
Knox, W. (1999). Industrial nation: Work, culture and society in Scotland, 1800–present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kuklick, Henrieka (1991). The savage within. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lovering, J. (1978). The theory of the ‘internal colony’ and the political economy of Wales. Review of Radical Political Economics 10(3):55–67.Google Scholar
Manning, H. P. (2001a). The craft of reference: The Welsh language and the division of labor in nineteenth century slate quarries. Language and Communication 21:209–33.Google Scholar
Manning, H. P. (2001b). On social deixis. Anthropological Linguistics 43(3):55–100.Google Scholar
Manning, H. P. (2002). Welsh rocks and English money: Ideologies of divisions of language and divisions of labor in nineteenth century Welsh slate quarries. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44:481–510.Google Scholar
Manning, H. P. (2003). ‘The rock does not understand English’: Welsh and the division of labor in 19th-century Gwynedd slate quarries. In Brian D. Joseph et al. (eds.), When languages collide: Perspectives on language conflict, language competition, and language coexistence, 45–75. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Manning, H. P. (2004a). Owning and belonging: a semiotic investigation of the affective categories of a bourgeois society. Comparative Studies in Society and History 46: 300–325.Google Scholar
Manning, H. P. (2004b). The geology of railway embankments: Celticity, Liberalism, the Oxford Welsh reforms, and the word order(s) of Welsh. Language and Communication 24 (2), 135–163.Google Scholar
Matthews, Ioan (1998). The Welsh language in the anthracite coalfield c.1870–1914. In Jenkins 1998, 125–46.
Metcalfe, A. (1989). The demonology of class: the iconography of the coalminer and the symbolic construction of political boundaries. Critique of Anthropology 10:39–63.Google Scholar
Millward, E. G. (1960). Industrialisation did not save the Welsh language. Welsh Nation, July 1960, p. 4.Google Scholar
Millward, E. G. (1991a). Pob gwybodaeth buddiol [Every useful knowledge]. In Morgan 1991, 146–65.
Millward, E. G. (1991b). Kilsby Jones, Darwin a rhagluniaeth [Kilsby Jones, Darwin and providence]. In Cenedl o Bobl Ddewrion, 158–165. Llandysul: Gomer.
Moore, Robert (2003). From genericide to viral marketing: on ‘brand’. Language and Communication 23:331–57.Google Scholar
Morgan, Prys (1986 [1967]). The Gwerin of Wales: Myth and reality. In I. Hume and W. T. R. Pryce (eds.), The Welsh and their country, 134–52. Llandysul: Gomer.
Morgan, Prys (ed.) (1991). Brad y Llyfrau Gleision: Ysgrifau ar hanes Cymru [The treachery of the Blue Books: Writings on the history of Wales]. Llandysul: Gomer.
Owen, Trefor (1986). Community studies in Wales: An overview. In I. Hume & W. T. R. Pryce (eds.), The Welsh and their country, 91–133. Llandysul: Gomer.
Peris, D. (1896 [1875]). Chwarelyddiaeth [Quarrying]. Winning essay, Eisteddfod Bethesda, 1875. Y Geninen 14, 52–54, 273–74.Google Scholar
Pietz, William (1993). Fetishism and materialism: The limits of theory in Marx. In E. Apter & W. Pietz (eds.), Fetishism as cultural discourse, 119–51. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Postone, M. (1996). Time, labor and social domination: A reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchard, Caradog (1988 [1961]). Un nos ola leuad [Full moon]. Caernarfon: Gwasg Gwalia.
Pryce, W. T. R. (1975). Industrialization, urbanization, and the maintenance of culture areas: Northeast Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. Welsh History Review 7:307–40.Google Scholar
Pryce, W. T. R. (1998). Language areas in North-East Wales c.1800–1911. In Jenkins 1998, 21–61.
Quam-Wickham, Nancy (1999). Rereading man's conquest of nature: Skills, myths, and historical construction of masculinity in Western extractive industries. Men and Masculinities 2(2):135–51.Google Scholar
Rabinbach, Anson (1990). The human motor: Energy, fatigue and the origins of modernity. New York: Basic Books.
Richards, M. (1876). Slate quarrying and how to make it profitable. Bangor: Evan Williams.
Roberts, Dafydd (1988). Y Deryn Nos a'i deithiau: Diwylliant derbyniol chwarelwr Gwynedd [The Night Bird and his journeys: The acceptable culture of the Gwynedd quarrier]. Cof Cenedl 3, 151–79. Llandysul: Gomer.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ernest (1963). Bargen bywyd fy nhaid a hanesion eraill [The bargen of my grandfather's life and other tales]. Lladybïe: Llyfrau'r Dryw.
Roberts, Kate (1928). Y nofel Gymraeg [The Welsh novel]. Y Llenor 7:214–15.Google Scholar
Rogers, Susan (1987). Good to think: The peasant in contemporary France. Anthropological Quarterly 60:56–63.Google Scholar
Samuel, R. (ed.) (1977). Miners, quarrymen and saltworkers. London: Routledge.
Sherrington, E. (1992). O. M. Edwards, culture, and the industrial classes. Llafur 6:28–41.Google Scholar
Smith, Dai (1993). Wales through the looking glass. In his Aneurin Bevan and the world of South Wales, 45–66. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Thomas, Brinley (1959). Wales and the Atlantic economy. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 6:181–92.Google Scholar
Thomas, Brinley (1987). A cauldron of rebirth: population and the Welsh language in the nineteenth century. Welsh History Review 13:418–37.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past and Present 50:76–136.Google Scholar
Urla, Jacqueline (1993). Contesting modernities: Language standardization and the production of an ancient/modern Basque culture. Critique of Anthropology 13(2):101–18.Google Scholar
Warner, M. (1990). The letters of the Republic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Williams, S. Rh. (1988). Iaith y nefoedd mewn cymdeithas ddiwydiannol: Y Gymraeg a chrefydd yng Ngorllewin Sir Fynwy yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg [The language of the heavens in an industrial community: Welsh and religion in West Monmouthshire in the nineteenth century]. In: G. H. Jenkins & J. B. Smith (eds.), Politics and society in Wales, 1840–1922, 47–60. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Williams, S. Rh (1992). Oes y byd i'r Iaith Gymraeg: Y Gymraeg yn ardal ddiwydiannol Sir Fynwy yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg [The Welsh language forever: Welsh in the industrial district of Monmouthshire in the nineteenth century]. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru.
Y Chwarelwr (1876). Bras Holltwr. Caban Rolant Dafydd [The caban of Rolant Dafydd]. No. 7, p. 12.
Y Faner ac Amserau Cymraeg (1864). Chwarelwr. Meddwdod yn Ffestiniog [Drunkenness in Ffestiniog]. 7 December, p. 789.
Y Faner ac Amserau Cymraeg (1874). Elihu. Undeb y chwarelwyr III [The Quarrier's Union III]. 24 November, p. 14.
Y Faner ac Amserau Cymraeg (1890). Treforfab. Darlun o'r chwarelwyr [Portrait of the quarriers]. 19 February, p. 13.
Y Genedl Gymreig (1882). Ymddyddanion y caban: Adolygiad llyfr Morgrugyn Machno [Caban conversations: a review of the book by Morgrugyn Machno]. 8 November, p. 2.
Y Goleuad (1874a). Chwarelwyr Llanberis a'u hundeb [The quarriers of Llanberis and their union]. 1 August, p. 2.
Y Goleuad (1874b). Chwarelwyr Llanberis a'u hundeb III [The quarriers of Llanberis and their union III]. 15 August, p. 2.
Y Goleuad (1875). Y cload allan [The lock out]. 27 March, p. 8.
Yr Herald Cymraeg (1858). Ymdeithydd. Taith Trwy Ffestiniog [Journey through Ffestiniog]. 17 July, p. 7.