Miss Katharine Young
Research student
School of English, Communication and Philosophy
- Welsh speaking
Overview
I graduated from Bangor University with a First in French and Welsh, before training to teach Welsh as a Second Language under Teach First in South East Wales. My research looks at morphosyntactic variation in different registers of formality in Welsh. My project is jointly funded by the ESRC and Welsh Government.
Publication
2024
- Young, K., Durham, M. and Morris, J. 2024. Possessive pronouns in Welsh: stylistic variation and the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. Language Variation and Change
2022
- Morris, J. and Young, K. 2022. Iaith – beth mae cyfnewid cod yn ei gyfleu?. [Online]. Golwg 360: Available at: https://golwg.360.cymru/gwerddon/2108980-iaith-beth-cyfnewid-gyfleu
- Morris, J., Ezeani, I., Gruffydd, I., Young, K., Davies, L., El-Haj, M. and Knight, D. 2022. Welsh automatic text summarisation. Presented at: Wales Academic Symposium on Language Technologies 2022, Bangor, Wales, 28/01/2022Language and Technology in Wales, Vol. 2. Bangor: Banolfan Bedwyr
2019
- Young, K. S. 2019. Executive Summary - Research on sociolinguistic variation among teachers of Welsh. Project Report. Unpublished.
Articles
- Young, K., Durham, M. and Morris, J. 2024. Possessive pronouns in Welsh: stylistic variation and the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. Language Variation and Change
Conferences
- Morris, J., Ezeani, I., Gruffydd, I., Young, K., Davies, L., El-Haj, M. and Knight, D. 2022. Welsh automatic text summarisation. Presented at: Wales Academic Symposium on Language Technologies 2022, Bangor, Wales, 28/01/2022Language and Technology in Wales, Vol. 2. Bangor: Banolfan Bedwyr
Monographs
- Young, K. S. 2019. Executive Summary - Research on sociolinguistic variation among teachers of Welsh. Project Report. Unpublished.
Websites
- Morris, J. and Young, K. 2022. Iaith – beth mae cyfnewid cod yn ei gyfleu?. [Online]. Golwg 360: Available at: https://golwg.360.cymru/gwerddon/2108980-iaith-beth-cyfnewid-gyfleu
Research
Previous research in Canada has shown that students in French immersion classrooms often struggle to acquire the range of registers available to L1 speakers and so do not reach full sociolinguistic competence. The situation in Wales differs insofar as pupils from Welsh-speaking and non-Welsh-speaking homes are taught together. There has, however, been no work which compares the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence among pupils from these two backgrounds.
Looking at the spoken Welsh forms that pupils are exposed to inside and outside of the classroom, the project will answer the following research questions:
- To what extent is there variation in pupils’ linguistic registers?
- To what extent do other social factors (home language, use of Welsh in the community, use of Welsh outside school) affect sociolinguistic competence?
