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For decades, prehistorians thought Celtic languages arrived in Britain about 2400 years ago in the Iron Age, along with "Celtic" art and inscriptions first spotted in Central Europe. "Celtic becomes just one of a succession of languages that migrants have brought to Britain over the course of 2000 years or so: Latin with the Romans, English with the Anglo-Saxons, Norse with the Vikings, French with the Normans.". [Extracted from the article]

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In 2022 a survey of the languages research community in the UK was undertaken, with 536 responses (150 PhD students, 386 post-PhD researchers), complemented by 29 interviews across all career stages, as part of a Future of Languages Research Fellowship funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This article reports findings from that survey, presenting data on research expertise, funding applications and successes, engagement with government and other stakeholders, and future directions and areas for development. Presenting the perspective of researchers themselves, our study adds to our understanding of the current state of languages research in UK Higher Education, complementing other sources including the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the British Academy & University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) 2022 report on trends in language learning in Higher Education, and providing useful data for international comparisons. The article concludes with recommendations for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sacred kings of Late Iron Age northern Britain are thought to have symbolised fertility and considered responsible for the wellbeing of the lands and people; components of a system of governance maintained by conservative religious beliefs and champions of a local goddess of sovereignty, also associated with the cuckoo and the planet Venus. Their regicide was undertaken by their successors with a sacred spear at cult-sites at eight-year intervals when Venus set at its evening extreme at Samhain. Titled after the cuckoo, the symbol of male fertility across Europe, they mimicked the cuckoo's polygynous behaviour. Others have suggested their exploits were based on myths about the cuckoo. They are recalled in Irish legends, Arthurian tales and the writings of contemporary authors, depicted on stones and confirmed in recent place-name and archaeoastronomy studies, but not previously recognised. This paper explores the evidence for, and significance of, British, Irish and continental European warrior-champions named after the cuckoo. The study strongly suggests a continuity of cosmological beliefs, celestial associations, myths and legends, religious symbolism, sacred kingship and governance of tribal societies from the Indo-European immigrants to Britain until the adoption of Christianity and its associated form of kingship by the Picts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ontological politics of research in the field of community studies. Focusing on a migrant community in London, UK, it shows how the community is (re)assembled in different ways through the different research practices of academics and practitioners. Guided by a framework based on material semiotics, this article compares the agendas, methods, and representational texts that inform the different research practices. It argues that community studies researchers have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge the particular enactments of communities that emerge through their research and the role that agendas, methods, and texts play in constructing those enactments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2011 Census in England broke new ground, as a question about language had never previously been asked. After stakeholder consultations and a series of trials, the census authority decided on two questions based on earlier censuses in the USA: one about the respondent’s ‘main language’ and another about proficiency in English. This paper provides a critique of the census questions, showing how the pressure to produce questions which were straightforward to answer and consistent with the predominant monolingual ideology led to the choice of two questions which were problematic in different ways. This raises doubts about the validity of the questions themselves and the usefulness of the data collected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way to look at some of the scholars in English-language comparative education in the 1960s is to see them as being concerned with ‘methods’. They themselves emphasised that they were re-thinking ‘method’ in comparative education. Victories were won and courses were rewritten. That ‘historic’ moment is taught (if it is taught at all nowadays, because history can be made to disappear) as if all that was at stake is mistakes in method. The general argument of this article is that the complex kaleidoscope of our history can and should be tapped. There was more to the scholars of the 1960s than mere ‘method’, and there is more to be learned from them, for us now. At a time when – especially in England – it is becoming conventional to stress the importance of technically rigorous empirical fieldwork as the kind of ‘robust and relevant research’ work that politicians and national academic quality control agencies think the nation needs – it is sensible to pause and ask: is our ‘history’ of the 1960s, with its remarkable emphasis on discussions about method, a simplification of something more complex? What have we been missing? What questions should we take to the archives, to illuminate the present? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 29 and 30 May 2014, this seminar was hosted at Lews Castle College, University of the Highlands and Islands and organised by BAAL member Dr Cassie Smith-Christmas. In total, there were 16 participants from 13 universities across the UK. A total of nine papers were delivered over the two days and an hour-long roundtable was held at the close of the seminar. Keynote speakers were Professor Rosamond Mitchell (University of Southampton) and Professor Wilson McLeod (University of Edinburgh). Professor Kenneth MacKinnon (University of Aberdeen) acted as keynote discussant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the history of communication in Wales and the role of bilingual elites such as the clergy and gentry in shaping the dynamics of political culture. Emphasis is given to topics such as the vertical integration of political opinion in public politics, the socials statuses of the English and Welsh languages, and the oral transmission of news and gossip.

The present study, situated in the area of variational pragmatics, contrasts tag question (TQ) use in Ireland and Great Britain using spoken data from the Irish and British components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). Analysis is on the formal and functional level and also investigates formfunctional relationships. Findings reveal many similarities in the use of TQs across the varieties. They also point, however, to a lower use of TQs in Irish English and in a range of variety-preferential features on both the formal and functional levels. The paper shows how an in-depth analysis of form-function relations together with a fine-tuned investigation of sub-functions gives an insight into formal preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results are presented of a comparative study of the reasons for parental choice of Scottish Gaelic-medium and Welsh-medium primary education in the year 2000 and of the reasons for pupils' decisions to continue with Gaelic or Welsh-medium education at secondary school in 2007. Parents in both contexts cited the quality of Celtic-medium education to similar extents in the choice of Welsh or Gaelic-medium education, but parents in the Welsh context more frequently cited employment rationales, and parents in the Scottish context more frequently cited heritage and the benefits of bilingualism. The Welsh-medium and Gaelic-medium pupils cited a preference for learning in Welsh or Gaelic, a wish to continue to be educated with friends, heritage, quality of Celtic-medium education and employment rationales to similar extents in the choice of Celtic-medium secondary education. However, Welsh-medium pupils more frequently cited the Welsh-medium education experiences of older family members, and Gaelic-medium pupils more frequently cited valuing bilingualism as a reason for such a choice. The results are discussed in relation to previous research on choice of Gaelic and Welsh-medium education, and in relation to contextual factors, such as linguistic demographics, and the level of institutionalization of Gaelic and Welsh within each national context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cornwall differs from other English counties, not least because a significant percentage of those who live there self-identify as ‘Cornish’ rather than ‘English’ or British'. Sport has helped to underpin ‘the persistence of difference’. Distinctive versions of hurling and wrestling were key signifiers in this respect. In addition, Cornwall developed a particular affinity for rugby, similar to that found in Wales. In the late twentieth century, with indigenous Cornish culture threatened by deindustrialisation and in-migration, the county's rugby team enjoyed considerable success. Sport, in these conditions, became a signifier not merely of difference, but of a self-conscious Cornish identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Present-day people from England and Wales have more ancestry derived from early European farmers (EEF) than did people of the Early Bronze Age 1 . To understand this, here we generated genome-wide data from 793 individuals, increasing data from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in Britain by 12-fold, and western and central Europe by 3.5-fold. Between 1000 and 875 BC, EEF ancestry increased in southern Britain (England and Wales) but not northern Britain (Scotland) due to incorporation of migrants who arrived at this time and over previous centuries, and who were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from France. These migrants contributed about half the ancestry of people of England and Wales from the Iron Age, thereby creating a plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain. These patterns are part of a broader trend of EEF ancestry becoming more similar across central and western Europe in the Middle to the Late Bronze Age, coincident with archaeological evidence of intensified cultural exchange 2-6 . There was comparatively less gene flow from continental Europe during the Iron Age, and the independent genetic trajectory in Britain is also reflected in the rise of the allele conferring lactase persistence to approximately 50% by this time compared to approximately 7% in central Europe where it rose rapidly in frequency only a millennium later. This suggests that dairy products were used in qualitatively different ways in Britain and in central Europe over this period., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)