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Dr Ianto Gruffydd

(he/him)

AFHEA BA, PhD

Research Associate

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

cymraeg
Welsh speaking

Overview

I am a research associate on the sociolinguistic South Wales Speech project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Our research aims to measure language variation and change in four communities across south east Wales from the conurbation of Cardiff and Barry to the valley towns of Pontypridd and Caerphilly. 

My doctoral research was also in the field of language variation and chance, examining the sociophonetics of Cardiff Welsh for the first time. Cardiff Welsh is a new variety of Welsh that had never before been studied. My PhD used an ethnographic approach and analysed how social structures influence variation in Welsh for the first time.

I also research explicit and implicit language attitudes, specifically aiming to improve our understanding of the relationship between speakers' attitudes and language in minority language speakers. Similarly, I am interested in the perception of different Welsh accents.

Publication

2024

2023

2022

Articles

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

Other

Thesis

Research

Research Themes

Language Variation and Change

My researches focusses on variation and change in both Welsh and Welsh English. Firstly, my research on Welsh is borne out of the current sociolinguistic landscape of Wales whereby demographic changes is giving rise to notable linguistic developments. Increased mobility and migration has led to linguistic changes in both languages that my research aims to examine by considering the effect lingusitic and social factors have on these language varieties. Specifically I have researched Cardiff Welsh, a new variety of Welsh spoken by young people, that arose through the growth of Welsh-medium education and migration to the city from traditional Welsh-speaking areas. Currently, I am working on the Leverhulme-funded South Wales Speech project headed by Professor Mercedes Durham exploring language variation and change between Cardiff and three south east Welsh towns (Barry, Pontypridd and Caerphilly). Our project aims to investigate the potential regional dialect levelling and diffusion of features to and from the Welsh capital in this area of south east Wales.

Language Attitudes and Language Revitalization

I am also interested in language attitudes, particularly towards minority languages. My research as part of the Language Attitudes Research Team led by Professor Marco Tamburelli aims to better understand the relationship between speaker attitudes (from the explicit to the implicit) and language use across different European speech communities using a range of approaches, including sosiolinguistic, psycholinguistic and neuro-linguistic methods. More generally, I am interested in the implications of language attitudes research on language revitalization and language policy and planning. 

Accent Perception

My interest in accent perception bridges my interests in attitudes and dialectal varieties. Specifically, in a project led by Dr Jonathan Morris and Dr Robert Mayr we look at how Welsh home language speakers perceive accents from varying language learning background both in terms of if and how they are able to identify these speakers and how they perceive them socially.

Biography

Array

Contact Details

Specialisms

  • Sociolinguistics
  • Sociophonetics
  • Language Attitudes
  • Accent Perception
  • Language Revitalization

External profiles