Engaging with community languages: visibility and practice within the voluntary sector in Devon (UK)

Bottois, Cari 2025. Engaging with community languages: visibility and practice within the voluntary sector in Devon (UK). PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Community languages (CLs) have long been a focus of research, yet this phenomenon has rarely been explored within the UK’s voluntary sector despite its significance in society. Notably, peripheral or regional perspectives at this intersection are largely absent. This study addresses this knowledge gap by exploring the visibility of CLs and related practices among voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) in the Devon region. This expands on studies with international NGOs and VSOs situated in hyper-urban areas of the UK. Bourdieu’s social theory provided a framework for interpreting the positionality and practices of VSOs. Data were collected using mixed methods on an overall sample of 76 VSOs. This included digital observations on 40 VSOs, survey data from 47 VSO agents, and five semi-structured interviews with agents from different VSOs. Despite population changes showing an increase in CLs in the region, the findings revealed a distinct lack of visibility and practice among the majority of VSOs. Where engagement with CLs was found, VSOs exhibited a range of practices including an apparent trend for language technology, translating materials, and using telephone interpreters. These practices were, for the most part, associated with charitable purposes, or doxa, oriented towards ethnically-diverse beneficiaries. Relational analyses suggest that other concepts i.e., economic capital (income level), cultural capital (operational reach and the longevity of VSOs), or social capital (number of agents within VSOs), were less influential in generating CL-related practices. Yet the data also indicated that fields of power from funding bodies and the symbolic influence of affiliation to national organisations created a positive effect on CL-related practices within VSOs. These findings point toward a segregated landscape concerning engagement practices for CLs and a propensity for social exclusion within large swathes of the voluntary sector at a regional level.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Modern Languages
Funders:	AHRC SWWDTP
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 January 2026
Last Modified:	22 Jan 2026 13:55
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183929

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