Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism: Challenging Welsh Language Identities via Selective Syncretism with English Allan James The article examines the linguistic expression of different forms of nonmainstream Welsh language identity, Cymreictod, and for this purpose analyses a number of „transgressive‟ scripted texts from medieval and modern literature, a TV sports interview and sweatshirt design. Each of the texts is shown to be socioculturally provocative in different ways, the key to this being the selective syncretism of the Welsh with English, where the latter actually verbalises the essence of the „cambrophone‟ transgression. These texts-fordisplay are further shown to constitute prime examples of late modern bilingual practices in a sociolinguistic perspective. “…there‟s more ways than one of bein‟ Welsh.” Dai Dando, in Meic Stephens Yeah, Dai Dando (2008: 211) “…syncretism is the normal condition of codes in contact.” (Coupland 2012: 21) 1. Introduction The linguistic expression of Welshness (Welsh Cymreictod) in Wales has traditionally been formulated in terms of the strict binary categories of Welsh-speaking (bilingual) or English-speaking (monolingual), and personal identity thereby defined as Cymro or „Taffy‟, respectively. Indeed, this clear separation of the two languages of Wales (i.e. “The Dragon Speaks Two Tongues” (Jones 1968)) permeates the whole of Welsh society, reflected as much in official language policy (notably displayed for instance in the „parallel-text bilingualism‟ of public signage (Coupland 2012: 9-13)) as in the general public perception (for further discussion, AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Allan James 28 cf. Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 7-9, 20-22; Coupland 2012: 6-7). It is manifested too, geographically, in the well accepted division of Wales into its Welsh-speaking areas (broadly, the north and west, i.e. Y Fro Cymraeg) and English-speaking areas (broadly, the south and east). And while there is understanding for these radical classifications from a language protection point of view, with significant political initiatives since devolution (1997) promoting and supporting yr hen iaith („the ancient tongue‟) in education and beyond, which itself reflects a noticeably heightened awareness of the cultural and educational value of the Welsh language, the realities of language use „on the ground‟ in Wales present, not surprisingly, a considerably more differentiated picture. With regard to Welsh, beyond the more rarefied spheres of literary language use, there continue to be degrees of linguistic borrowing (established and ad hoc) and code-switching involving English, i.e. „non-traditional forms‟, in daily cambrophone practice (Robert 2009: 97). With regard to English, regional forms of Welsh English, perhaps most notably the prominent „Wenglish‟ (Lewis 2008) or „Valleys Voice‟ of South Wales (James 2011), in any case show substantial lexical borrowing and phonetic and phonological influence from Welsh (e.g. see further Penhallurick 2008; Walters 2003). Returning to Welsh, while regional dialects (northern and southern, within the latter e.g. Gwenhwyseg) are still valued for their relative linguistic „purity‟ (i.e. showing some resistance to ad hoc anglophone borrowing and code-switching), there has evolved in addition in the capital, Cardiff, an urban form of the language which manifests acceptable forms of the colloquial, i.e. non-literary standard, language, while at the same evidencing a frequent almost stylised code-switching into English (e.g. as amply represented in the fictional works of Llwyd Owen (e.g. 2006)). Regarding attitudes of acceptability and prestige to these „mixed‟ Welshes, Robert (2009), in research studying the perception of L2 learner Welsh by L1 Welsh speakers, confirms that “There is a strong purist element among Welsh speakers, and notions of standardness and correctness are closely linked with the influence of English, whether through calques, loanwords, convergence, rule simplification, or restricted lexicon in many speakers” (2009: 97). Such negatively evaluated speech is often dismissively labelled bratiaith („broken language‟). With Welsh Englishes, largescale sociolinguistic research has shown that on a scale of acceptability for the factors „Welshness‟ and „social prestige‟ it is the English of southwest Wales (i.e. Carmarthen and region) which scores highest (Garrett et al., 2003: 135-136). Perhaps tellingly, this English shows almost complete phonetic overlap with the Welsh of the region itself (Mayr et al. 2015). By contrast, north-east English (i.e. of Wrexham and region) and Cardiff English, as the anglophone dialects manifesting far less phonetic influence of Welsh score lowest values on „Welshness‟ and „social prestige‟ (Garrett et al., 2003: 203-204). At the same time, Valleys Voice as the Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 29 English of the former industrialised South Wales upland area to the north-west and north-east of Cardiff is seen as a heritage dialect from an immediately past age, strong on „pleasantness‟, „warmth‟, „friendliness‟ and other socially positive factors but is considered weak on „prestige‟ (Garrett et al. 2003: 120-121). It is interesting to note that in more recent years Valleys Voice has been accorded a new social semiotics via the hugely popular daily BBC Wales radio Chris Needs Show (2002-) such that: ...Chris Needs himself re-valorises the „ordinariness‟ of Valleys Voice by displaying as an „ordinary celebrity‟ his homosexuality, his love of bling, disco, sun-worshipping and camp as being consistent with his use of Wenglish, a variety in industrial „Old Wales‟ strongly associated with traditional manual work-based masculinities. (James 2011: 58) The presenter “deauthenticates himself relative to old certainties of class and gender” (Coupland 2010a: 110) and in doing so subverts the social significance of a well established and stable regional dialect to express an individual‟s sexual and lifestyle preferences. It is the wholescale appropriation of a historically formed syncretic Welsh English dialect that constitutes the „transgressive‟ language use here. In variety terms, a dialect is converted to a register, reinforced by the cultivation in discourse with his listeners of a strong horticultural metaphor of belonging and sharing in “The Chris Needs Friendly Garden Association”. In the following, while attention will be given to re-semiotisation processes involving sexuality and lifestyle as well as other social referents, the main focus, in contrast, will be on how both languages of Wales in combination are linguistically (not just sociolinguistically) subverted. This, it will be shown, takes the form of scripted syncretism to project alternative verbal (and visual) social identities. 2. Scripted code-mixing in Wales and identity as late modern sociolinguistic practice The recognition of late modern language practices in sociolinguistic analysis and how they challenge the foundations on which a „modern‟ linguistic interpretation of language use is based is relevant to the consideration of mixed-code social language behaviour in Wales. Such practices, which from a discourse perspective are seen as in the first place - selectively - drawing on the semiotic resources rather than per se on the structural properties of available linguistic codes (languages, but also dialects, registers, etc.) for their expressivity challenge the traditional compartmentalisation of language production as the bringing forth of strictly separate „whole‟ language codes (which may situationally and Allan James 30 „challengingly‟ mix). Late modern language practices involve „heightened levels of reflexivity‟ (Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 449), manifest an „artful use of speech in expressive performance‟ (Rampton 2006: 16), and a whole score of „meta‟-processes such as „performance and performativity, style and stylisation, stance and positionality, parody and irony, transgression, metadiscursive practices, and so on” (Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 450). Relating these observations to the present texts under consideration, it would appear that literary practices of language mixing in particular would seem to link in well with these posited discourse practices of the late modern sociocultural era. Literary text construction is by definition reflexive and „artful‟ and it scripts for performance (whether for being read or directly vocalised), while critical syncretic texts can provide the „cultural hybridity‟ and „exclusive sites of authenticity‟ that Bohata (2004) calls for from Welsh writing in English (2004: 27). Similarly, the „metadiscursive‟ non-literary practices of late modernity also script for local performance and in (sub-) culturally hybrid verbal interaction have been identified as increasingly bior multilingual in nature: after all, in a „language as practice‟ ontology as opposed to „language as system‟ one, “Languages don‟t just exist alongside each other, but merge, blend, mesh, coalesce into a symbiosis where traditional labels struggle to find a place” (Saraceni 2015: xi). They do so in local multilingual discourses in practices labelled „languaging‟ (Jørgensen 2008), „metrolingualism‟ (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010) or „code-meshing‟ (Canagarajah 2006), which capture the fluid use of complementary linguistic substance from more than one source code in expressing the local social meanings within one linguistic repertoire (cf. also James 2014, 2016). These meanings are, to a greater of lesser degree, also meanings of the kind of „voluntary‟ or „selfconsciously constructed‟ Welsh identity referred to by Bohata (2004: 27) in the context of mixed-language writing in Wales, and indeed may project locally „transgressive‟ forms of a personal national or ethnic identity. Pursuing the issue of Welsh identities, the use of syncretic or mixed language cambrophone-anglophone codes has been confirmed above as very present in Wales, being, as has been noted, diachronically motivated via considerable structural borrowing from Welsh into the English of the country (and also vice versa specifically on a lexical level) and synchronically presenting both ad hoc borrowing and code-switching (in both directions). In a late modern perspective on language use, this „use‟ is of cambrophone and anglophone semiotic resources to signal local social meanings, prominently of personal identity, in contextually defined discourses. To the extent that ethnic or „national‟ identity is a prominent part of personal identity and can be linguistically constructed, i.e. scripted, projected and performed (at varying levels of reflexivity) in discourse in various ways, then mixed-language Welsh identities can of course equally be realised as such and co-define a speaker‟s late modern „style‟ (Coupland 2007: 29-30). For example, in this connection James Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 31 (2016) offers a detailed sociolinguistic analysis of the Welsh-English mixing in the digital communication of two Welsh-speaking 13 year old girls via Instant Messaging, in which the “casual interplay of cambrophone and anglophone linguistic substance as well as the casual ‟truncated‟ written form that both languages are partly represented in”, i.e. the nonstandard and reduced spellings typical of the social media (2016: 271), create a locally „transgressive‟ bilingual identity (relative to the prevailing sociolinguistic norms of cambrophone north-west Wales), one of, e.g., youthful playfulness and digital „cool‟. For illustration, the first four lines of the “convo” are included here in original form, Welsh standard spelling and English word-for-word translation, where “part.” stands for “particle” (James 2016: 272): Speaker 1: so be t bd n neud hddw so beth ti bod yn wneud heddiw so what you be part. do today Speaker 2: went 2 einirs bday party lst night aye you went to Einir‟s birthday party last night and you Speaker 1: v d bd i Bangor fi wedi bod i Bangor I part. Be to Bangor Speaker 2: kl cool An examination of the whole transcript with relation to the predominant semantics expressed by the identifiably more cambrophone and more anglophone sections of the text leads to the conclusion that whereas the „Welsh‟ conveys largely factual meanings, the „English‟ carries largely social and affective meanings (a similar conclusion having been reached, for example, with regard to the Serbian-English digital „chat‟ of female teenagers by Talibrk and Tosić (2012), indicating a similar register differentiation between the two languages involved). However, since “The Dragon Speaks Two Tongues” (see above) and (Welsh) English is in practice the majority language of Wales in any case, its frequent ascriptions in sociolinguistic analysis as standing for its worldwide users‟ projected identities of social attractiveness, verbal sophistication and wit, personal dynamism, youthfulness (of spirit), individuality etc., etc. do not necessarily apply for its Welsh users. Nonetheless, as will be demonstrated in the following analyses, anglophony in particular co-occurrences in particular cambrophone texts can be ascribed a significant role in facilitating the social acceptance of personal identities which in the first instance would not be expressible by cambrophony Allan James 32 alone. Specifically, it will be shown below how particular „transgressive‟ types of Welshness are projected by a particular mixing of the cambrophone and anglophone in scripted texts for performed bilingual discourse. 3. Scripted bilingualism for transgressive Cymreictod 3.1. Syncretic texts: medieval and modern An early „transgressive‟ cambrophone-anglophone scripting was produced by the medieval Oxford scholar and poet Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal in his Hymn to the Virgin of around 1480. It is an ode addressed to God via the Virgin Mary, composed according to traditional Welsh cynghanedd, specifically awdl metre, written in a version of late Middle English, but in Welsh orthography in order to ensure the correct alliterations, assonances and rhymes required by the Welsh metre. This is the first verse (of thirteen): O michdi ladi, owr leding / tw haf at hefn owr abeiding yntw ddy ffest efrlesting i set a braents ws tw bring. A transliteration into Modern English would be: O mighty lady, our leading / to have At heaven our abiding Into the feast everlasting Ye set a branch us to bring In the prologue to the poem, Swrdwal, countering the dismissive comments of his fellow English students at Oxford that the Welsh were poor scholars and poets, challenges his distractors thus: “I shall compose a poem in English, in your own tongue; and if all the English men in England compose such a poem or equal it, revile the Welsh. If you cannot compose it, leave the Welsh the privilege which God has given them. And recognize yourselves that you cannot compete with the Welsh” (translation, Dobson 1954: 112). And naturally no English scholar or poet was in a position to compose in cynghanedd metre. Clearly, the poem constitutes linguistic „transgression‟ on two levels: writing English in Welsh orthography and writing „English‟ verse in cynghanedd, and as German (2009 ) concludes “it is perhaps the earliest example of an extended text in which Welsh-influenced English is used by a Welshman for the purposes of underscoring Welsh national identity” (2009: 33). As such, imbuing the English with Welsh, Swrdwal achieves a Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 33 written synthesis of the languages as an act of well-reflected sociolinguistic non-conformity avant la lettre. 3.2. Poem as syncretic text: Partisan by Peter Finch (1997) Peter Finch is an avant-garde poet, critic and author based in Cardiff, whose poem Partisan appears in his twenty-first collection entitled Useful (1997). He has been humorously referred to Wales‟ literary Dadaist, with his poetry dense and heavily absurdist. He regularly mixes Welsh and English in his work for ironic and parodic effect, often in the service of intense lampooning of salient (and revered) sociocultural and sociopolitical reference points of past and present Wales with its prominent national icons. This is radically the case in his poem Partisan: PARTISAN rydw i am fod blydi I am rydyn ni rydw i rody i rodney rodney I am rhydyn am fod I am I am I am rydw i yn Pantycelyn Rhydcymerau Pwllheli yes I am bicupping mainly cym sticker aardvark the dictionary cymro hirsuit weirdo on fire arrested finger-pointed rhydych chi imperialist long-nosed pinky cottagers roeddwn i‟n fine yn y bore oherwydd y heddlu not able anyway little zippo lager considerable influence tried to burn it not enough alcoalcohol corner shop four-pack Diamond White Red Stripe brns your heart out rudin wedi dysgu hen ddigon ol‟ mouldering Welsh Saunders Mabinignog crap nasty blydi books we‟re a digidol neishyn smot superbod sam tan brilliant example ac yn nawr? bod ar y satellite no defense carchar poms yn saesneg dim yn gallu handlo‟r cymraeg ril traditional blydi Welshman Allan James 34 Linguistically the text is a thickly intertwined mélange of „Welsh‟ and „English‟ with artfully created syntactic, lexical, phonological and orthographic fusion. Syntactically, „Welsh‟ integration with „English‟ pivots on clause-initial forms of the present tense of bod („to be‟) such as in the first stanza rydw i, rydyn ni, („I am‟, „we are‟), in the second stanza rhydych chi („you (pl.) are‟) and past tense roeddwn i („I was‟) in stanza three. The close occurrence of the forms of the present tense is reminiscent of the verb conjugations found in learner textbooks (and perhaps chanted in the classroom by learners themselves). In reality and paradoxically, these forms of the verb bod are considered artificial and unsuitable for colloquial use. For instance, in the first stanza, in the first line the Welsh verb phrase rydw i am (fod) („I want to (be)‟) mutates into the English „I am‟ via homographic equivalence and in the second line via the same process Welsh rydw i mutates via nonce *rody i to English „rodney‟ („rodney I am‟), establishing that the writer character is in fact a „rodney‟, i.e. Wenglish for „idler, layabout‟. Welsh am (literally „for‟) as in the truncated first person plural rydyn am fod („we want to be‟) homographically mutates into a thrice repeated „I am‟ in line four and in the first line of the second stanza is incorporated into the continuous form „I am bicupping‟. Lexical integration from Welsh into an English frame is mainly at word level, whereas at phrase and clause level English itself is more prominent, there being for instance longer stretches of „uninterrupted‟ English text in stanza two and three (but cf. the Welsh clause frame with English insertion in roeddwn I’n fine yn y bore (oherwydd/ y heddlu...) („I was fine in the morning (because/ the police...)‟) in stanza three). The Welsh lexical insertions largely represent culturally and politically rich points of reference for Wales and are contextually parodied: e.g. in stanza one the placenames Pantycelyn and Rhydcymerau refer to, respectively, the pseudonym of a canonical author of the 18 th century and the location of a canonical early 20 th century novel; and Pwllheli most likely stands for the location of the R.A.F. „bombing school‟ which was (in-)famously set on fire by a group of Welsh political activists in 1936. Saunders (although, strictly, anglophone) is the name of the poet, dramatist, critic and political activist Saunders Lewis who was a member of the arsonist group, but who also held a seminal radio lecture on Tynged yr Iaith („The Fate of the Language‟) in 1962, which inspired subsequent concerted institutional action on the promotion of the Welsh language. The bastardised Mabinignog is a deflating version of the Mabinogi, a four-part series of Welsh mythical tales appearing in the 12 th and 13 th centuries, the fused nignog being (British) English slang for „a silly person‟. Other Welsh lexical items with sociocultural baggage would be in stanza two cym as the country abbreviation for „Wales‟ on car stickers and cymro for „Welshman‟, in stanza three y heddlu („the police‟), and in stanza four smot, superbod, and sam tan as Welsh language children‟s animation figures („Spot‟, „SuperTed‟ and „Fireman Sam‟, respectively). Further, in Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 35 the last stanza yn saesneg and ‘r cymraeg (respectively „in English‟ and „Welsh (language)‟) hardly need commentary, except for the fact that they are not spelled with a capital letter. In general the English lexical substance directly expresses „subversive‟ activity or traits of the poem‟s „I‟: in stanza two „bicupping‟ refers to a surgical process of removal, „hirsuit weirdo‟ is a mildly amusing physical description of the protagonist, whereas his antagonists, the English „cottagers‟ in Wales, are deftly labelled „imperialist‟ (a pseudo-radical political designation) and „longnosed pinky‟ (physical othering of Caucasians from an Asian perspective). The third stanza has, for instance, the proper names „zippo‟ for „cigarette lighter‟ and „Diamond White Red Stripe‟ as a beer brand name (blending „Diamond‟ and „Red Stripe‟) associated with the „subversive‟ activities of setting fire and (over-) consumption of alcohol. Other notable „transgressive‟ lexical uses would be the slang „aardvark‟ for „hard work‟, the fusion item „alcoalcohol‟ of stanza three containing „coal‟ as an icon of South Wales industry, „mouldering‟ in four as a pejorative blend of „mold(y)‟ and „smouldering‟, and „carchar poms‟ as semi-pejorative Australian English for „white Englishmen‟ who can‟t handlo (Anglicism „handle‟) ‘r cymraeg. Other deliberate Anglicisms are fine in the third stanza and the transliterated neishyn („nation‟) in the fourth in combination with the preceding Cambricism digidol for „digital‟. Further transliterations into Welsh are brns, ril for „real‟ and, most prominently, in the first, twentieth and last line blydi for „bloody‟. The poem presents images of different Welsh identities as „partisan‟ - the „rodney‟, the (incantating) learner of Welsh, „the dictionary cymro‟ („Welshman‟), the „hirsuit weirdo‟, and the political activist/ (drunken) arsonist. It is implicitly critical of past Welsh-language literary and political icons, but equally so of the digital age of (children‟s) entertainment, of satellite television (prefaced by the line ac yn nawr? („and now? ‟)) and with it the concomitant further incursion of the English language. There is implied criticism of both a contemporarily shallow and a historically saturated Cymreictod (characteristically transmogrified by Finch into bilingual „cymrectitude‟ in another poem St. David’s Hall (2001)). The picture is of a bricolage of particular Welshnesses in a time of continuing linguistic and cultural challenges and change. This is linguistically underscored as itself bricolage, showing radically “the way both the languages of Wales can be used in the same piece of writing without fitting into the categories of code-switching” (Bohata 2004: 127), where ultimately it is only revealing to a point to artificially dissect the discourse into the ostensible cambrophone and the ostensible anglophone for a deeper understanding of the poem. Partisan does “create at least an illusion of an „ethnorhythmic‟ fusion of the two languages” (Bohata 2004: 127), forming a dense cambrophone-anglophone synthesis. This, it seems, might indeed be the true syncretic idiom of a „ril traditional blydi Welshman‟. Allan James 36 3.3. Play as syncretic text: Llwyth (Tribe) by Dafydd James (2010) A syncretic idiom of less „traditional‟ Welshmen characterises the discourse of the play Llwyth, which portrays the social life of a group of four cambrophone Cardiff gays, Aneurin, Gareth, Gavin and Rhys (together with the older Dada), who are back in the city from London on the day of a Wales rugby international. The language depicted is a quickfire combination of colloquial spoken Welsh richly interspersed with colloquial English, with frequent use of gay register and jargon, resulting in a decidedly „transgressive‟ form of an „ethnorhythmic‟ dialogue. Overall, its “cheeky poetic rhythms, speedy as a racer bike, spurt with interjections from all involved”, constitute a high speed maswedd („banter‟) (Savill, quoted in Rabey 2015: xiii-xiv). The following extract is taken from the opening scene (Golygfa Un), in which while Rhys is singing popular modern Welsh language songs with a choir in a Cardiff chapel (off stage), and Aneurin is moving around in his London flat, Rhys phones / my translations/ : Mae Aneurin yn estyn ei ffôn o’I boced i weld yn union pwy sy’n galw (Aneurin reaches his phone out of his pocket to connect with the caller) Oh! My favourite gay! Aneurin: Beth ti moyn? (What do you want? ) Rhys: Ble wyt ti? (Where are you? ) Aneurin: Ble ti’n feddwl? (Where do you mean? ) Rhys: Ar fore Sadwrn? (On Saturday morning? ) Aneurin: Last chance, lovely. Rhys: Slag. Aneurin: Rhys Thomas, I take offence at that! Ti’n canu ar fore Sadwrn, that‟s equally anifeilaidd. (You singing on Saturday morning, that‟s equally beastly.) Rhys: Ni off w’thnos i heddi, nagyn ni? Taipei, here I come… (We‟re off a week today, aren‟t we? ) Aneurin: Rho hanner awr i fi and I‟ll be coming too. (Give me half an hour) Rhys: Twat. Aneurin: Knob. Rhys: Make notes. Aneurin: I‟ll report back with all the gory details! It‟s my gwobr. Am fy narganfyddiad ysgytwol am Iolo Morgannwg… (It‟s my reward. For my shocking discovery about Iolo Morgannwg...) While a linguistic consideration of this short extract can hardly substitute for a full analysis of the dense and varied cambrophone and anglophone richness of the play text as a whole, it will hope to identify certain recurring patterns of language use. In terms of code-mixing typology, both Welsh and English show predominantly clause-level „alternation‟ (Muy- Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 37 sken 2000) in both characters‟ speech, for instance as illustrated in Aneurin‟s fifth speech: Rho hanner…‟coming too‟, where Welsh and English clauses alternate. However, there are also individual „insertions‟ (Muysken 2000) such as in Aneurin‟s fourth speech: anifeilaidd in the clause „that‟s equally…‟. Gay register (here slang banter) is anglophone in the form of declarative non-finite commentary clauses: „Last chance, lovely‟, „Slag.‟, Twat.‟, Knob.‟ Comparing in general the situational semantics and social semiosis of the „Welsh‟ and the „English‟, one might conclude that while the former expresses more factual arrangement meanings, the latter is used to signal more affective (attitudinal, judgemental, emotional) meanings. Llwyth has attracted substantial critical attention, responding as it does to “the desire for new fictions that re-imagine Wales” (Blandford 2005: 191), for “Wales needs continually to „perform‟ its identity” (2005: 177). In performing Wales, the play performs cambrophone (with anglophone) queer identities, a combination hitherto unknown in contemporary Welsh theatre. In the words of the play‟s director Arwel Gruffydd: “Welsh speakers are continually confronted with issues of identity but seeing Welsh-language identity through a gay prism was not only bold and at times shocking but more immediately it was refreshing, fun and unexpectedly revealing. At the heart of this vision of Welshness is an assertion that being a Welsh speaker is like being gay; there is an innate queerness about lesser-used language identity” (2015: 174). But at one point in the play the character Gavin asks the older gay Dada polemically: Mae Cymraeg yn queer? („Is the Welsh language queer? ‟) to which the reply is Yn gallu bod („Can be‟). However, Gavin (here standing for Dafydd James himself, by the playwright‟s own admission) still struggles with this juxtaposition and reflects that there is actually no word in Welsh for „gay‟. This, though, is flatly contradicted by Morgan (2016), who in a historical review of cambrophone sexually ambiguous performance practices since medieval times actually provides the Welsh for „gay‟ as hoyw and further concludes that “we will find, in fact, that Welsh is a very queer language after all” (2016: 70). In a broad discussion of the play, Osborne (2015) sums up that “Wales is a representational space where ethnic and sexual differences coincide” (2015: 8), i.e. llwythau („tribes‟) come together. The play queries, and thereby subverts, a number of Welsh cultural icons in its “critical saturation with consciously and identifiably Welsh tropes” (Adam Somerset, quoted in Greer (2016: 220)). It profiles a „transgressive‟ cambrophone hybrid identity, e.g. by indirect reference probably to the drug addition (Aneurin‟s „shocking discovery‟) of the poet, romantic philosopher (and literary forger! ) Iolo Morgannwg (1747- 1826) as in the above extract, and throughout the play to the early medieval Gododdin saga whose hero Aneurin is transformed into a leader of an army of gays in the play character Aneurin‟s developing novel. Other Welsh sociocultural cambrophone as well as anglophone sociocultural Allan James 38 points of reference are also drawn into the script to underscore a staking out of Welsh territory - e.g. choral singing, chapel, rugby, Cardiff Bay, to name but a few. Thus while the performed hybrid identities of Llwyth might be seen to challenge monochrome cambrophone social practice, they are crucially complemented, if not indeed facilitated, by anglophone discourse specifically expressive of the most challenged identity of gay. Apart from whether Welsh has or has not an appropriate word for „gay‟, it remains highly significant that Welsh is not used in the banter of the play for the direct expression of sexual orientation. Relative to the discussion in 2. above of late modern language practices, one may conclude that Llwyth truly offers in Bohata‟s (2004) words an “exclusive site of authenticity” presenting a “self-consciously constructed kind of Welsh identity”, i.e. a transgressive performed mixedlanguage Welsh „style‟ (2004: 27). 3.4. Television interview as syncretic text: Rhian Madamrygbi Davies In contrast to Llwyth, which strives for the acceptance of a transgressive Welsh authenticity, Rhian Madamrygbi Davies embodies a totally stylised performance of a modern self-consciously vulgarised Welsh „identity‟, that of the seemingly naïve enthusiastic female rugby supporter who has access to her player heroes in the guise of a TV reporter. Her interviews are performed in (southern) Welsh, with scattered but significant anglophone „switches‟. The Welsh employed is of an over-familiar colloquial style, not entirely „appropriate‟ to a sports star interview - again a linguistic and stylistic transgression. Hers is a multimodal medial identity, dressed in an emblematic red Wales rugby shirt inscribed at the front with CYMRU („Wales‟) in white letters, sporting white jeans with a thick golden plastic wicker belt, red high-heel sandles and a cowboy-style hat in Welsh flag design, and typically over-gesturing in a stereotypically naïve enthusiastic manner (see Figure 1). The character‟s name, Rhian Madamrygbi Davies, includes the intralingual punning of English „Mad(am)‟ and „mad‟, which can only be totally disambiguated inter-lingually by comparing an English understanding of „Madamrygbi‟ as „title‟ „Madam‟ plus „surname‟ rygbi („rugby‟) with a Welsh interpretation of „Madamrygbi‟ as English-borrowed adjective „mad‟ as Mad, followed by Welsh am (English „for‟ or „about‟), followed by rygbi. Hence the personal name shows a dense cambrophone-anglophone syncretism. Her first name, Rhian, is a Welsh female forename with the meaning „maiden‟, while her last name, Davies, is a common surname in Wales. Madamrygbi, played by the actress Eirlys Bellin, featured prominently in the weekly Jonathan sports programme shown on the Welsh language TV channel S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru) in the period 2011-2014. Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 39 Fig. 1: Rhian Madamrygbi Davies posing in front of iconic Caernarfon Castle, draped with Welsh flags The following transcript is an extract from an interview conducted with the player Shane Williams before a crucial game between Wales and Ireland during the Rugby World Cup held in New Zealand in 2011 (provided in Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 171). (The English translation is that included in the original source; “(.)” signals pause): RHIAN 1 mae sgorio cais yn gwpan y byd yn breuddwyd i bawb ond (.) (scoring a try in the World Cup is everyone‟s dream) 2 mae‟n reality (.) ar gyfer y legend (.) Shane Williams (it‟s a reality for the legend Shane Williams) SHANE 3 yeah alright RHIAN 4 alright Shane? SHANE 5 yeah good RHIAN 6 sut ti‟n teimlo am y gêm fawr yn erbyn Iwerddon? (how are you feeling about the big game against Ireland? SHANE 7 o mae‟r bois yn edrych mlan am y gêm nawr ch‟mod (.) (oh the boys are looking forward to the game now you know (.) 8 sdim byd i colli nawr ma rhaid i mynd mas a warae (.) (there‟s nothing to lose now we have to go out and play (.) 9 a nab eth - ni (.) ti‟mod i ni‟n mynd i neud ar dydd Sadwrn (and that‟s what - (.) you know what we‟ll do on Saturday 10 so er (.) excited iawn ond edrych mlan (so er (.) very excited but looking forward RHIAN 11 i‟n nerfus achos bydde ni‟n crappo fy hyn? (are you nervous because I‟m crapping myself) Allan James 40 While the linguistic substance of the interview is clearly Welsh, anglophone syncretisms occur. They range from the integrated loans sgorio, gêm, bois and nerfus to the anglophone discourse markers „yeah‟, „alright‟, „good‟, „oh‟, „so‟ and the hesitation marker „er‟ to the ad hoc incorporated „reality‟, „legend‟, „excited‟ and „crappo‟. Hence the non-integrated „English‟ expressions are used for i) interpersonal phatic communion („yeah‟, „alright‟, „good‟), ii) to introduce speaker turns („oh‟, „so‟) (Shane) and iii) to signal strong affective meanings („reality‟, „legend‟, „excited‟ and „crappo‟) pertaining to the subject under discussion (Rhian) - the last profanity supplied with the necessary Welsh verbal suffix „-o‟. The deployment of these ad hoc anglophone syncretisms in a cambrophone TV interview would count as transgressive in itself, and we can note again how „English‟ is employed as a transgression-compounding register (in Llwyth above as „gay talk‟, with Rhian as over-familiar interpersonal framing and genre-inappropriate „spontaneous‟ emotional hyperbole). But as Pietikäinen et al. (2016) remind us, “many other Welsh people have come to experience their linguistic and sporting cultures in ways not dissimilar to how Rhian performs them. For them, the Welsh language cannot simply be „chosen‟ once and for all, in its entirety, as an alternative to English…In that sense, Rhian‟s linguistic syncretism and her „profane‟ identity projections lessen the burden of being a „real speaker of Welsh‟” (2016: 176). In this way “a space is opened up for metacultural reassessment, for rethinking what Welshness and bilingualism can be” (2016: 176). As a highly stylised meta-parodic identity performance Madamrygbi creates a hugely self-concious verbal and visual act totally consistent with the more entertaining of late modern language practices. 3.5. Sweatshirt display as syncretic text The final scripting to be analysed is a „portable and talkable bit of the linguistic landscape‟ of Wales (Coupland 2010b: 77), namely reflexively constructed sweatshirt inscription which is syncretic semantically and semiotically, showing both cambrophone-anglophone and specifically cambro-graphic-anglographic mixing. In other words, the display is both verbal and visual, both text and image. The general presence of Welsh and English in the linguistic landscape of Wales is predominantly in the form of „parallel text bilingualism‟ (see also above, Coupland 2012: 9-13) as highway signage, road markings, pedestrian directions, institutional designations, etc., where the two language texts juxtapose and are inevitably presented in the same font size, type and colour, and this situation makes the explicit or implicit linguistic mixing for public display itself „transgressive‟ with regard to Welsh sociocultural norms. With sweatshirts, the „meaningful‟ and reflected linguistic hybridity projected is also transgressive with regard to conventional fashionand image-driven inscription practice on such garments. Such syncretic texts displayed Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 41 Coupland labels „Laconic Metacultural Celebration‟ (2012: 17), a typical two of which are shown as Figures 2 and 3: Fig. 2: Sweatshirt (hoodie) 1 Fig. 3: Sweatshirt (hoodie) 2 Sweatshirt 1 in Figure 2 is in a patriotic red, with contrasting light blue hood cord. The inscription CMRU 4MBTH is boldly presented in large white upper case sans serif characters, the two lines directly on top of each other, left-justified. The text is recognisably a version of the traditional Welsh homeland slogan CYMRU AM BYTH („Wales for ever‟), but with both Y vowels omitted and A replaced by the digit 4. The first Y vowel is mid central / ə/ and the second high-mid front-central / ɪ/ . The two words as written CMRU and BTH would in practice be both pronounceable and readable, and hence recognisable, without the missing vowels. The missing letters, producing „fractured Welsh‟ (Coupland 2012: 89), are eye-catching and subversive in the way that public „signage‟ in Welsh is expected to be perfectly spelled. The substitution of the digit 4 for the A of AM is both linguistically and graphically „syncretic‟. With AM meaning „for‟ / fɔ: / in English, the digit 4 functions as its rebus, while the graphic shape of 4 is reminiscent of an A, which in turn would be the letter of the „original‟ Welsh word for „for‟ AM. Sweatshirt 2 in Figure 3 is in a purple, with contrasting lemon yellow hood cord. The inscription ffab is presented in relatively large white Beatles‟ Yellow Submarine letters, technically „Amelia‟ font, i.e. “the bulbous psychedelia…designed to look like an underwater LSD trip” (Garfield: 2010: 274). While this font is not likely to be encountered elsewhere in the public signage of Wales in any case, it signals in a pop art way a further subversion by association with the social mores projected by the Beatles‟ music of the time (1969). As for the linguistic syncretism, the word ffab is the Anglicism „fab‟ in Welsh, suitably transliterated. The original „fab‟ was teenage slang for „fabulous‟ at the time of „The Fab Four‟, i.e. the Beatles themselves. The expression is therefore highly dated, and in any case at first glance of ffab, a reader might briefly pon- Allan James 42 der on whether he or she is looking at a Welsh or an English word (apart from a small number of rare family names (e.g. „Ffrench‟, „Fforde‟) in reality there being no words beginning with „ff-„ in English). The sweater scripts (with also orthography as script(s) and font as script(s) are transgressive therefore on a number of levels - involving Welsh-English syncretism linguistically and (ortho-)graphically, and beyond this with reference to sociocultural associations evoked by the words and font types. Again here further typicalities of reflexive late modern language practices come to the fore: „fractured language‟ (i.e. truncated spellings familiar from styles of e-communication), display, visuality (i.e. multimodality), and not least ludicity. 4. Conclusion It has been regularly pointed out how the above mixed-language texts evidence late modern sociolinguistic practices particular to Wales. At the broadest level, of such practices it is perhaps the metacultural awareness displayed that is most pervasive: it is shown in multilinguality (Swrdwal, Finch, Llwyth) as the metalingual, in multimediality (Rhian) as the metamedial, and in multimodality (sweatshirts) as the metamodal. The presented texts all comprise Welsh-English syncretism in different manifestations: from the poetic transliteration of Swrdwal, the „chaotic‟ bricolage of Finch, the gay banter of Llwyth, the „loose‟ vernacular of Madamrygbi, the subtle punning of the sweatshirts. Each inscription is constructed for interlingual performance and interpretation, but projects transgressive Welshnesses relative to the conventional practices of their sociocultural contexts. Above all, it is Cymreictod, i.e. cambrophone Welshness, that is challenged, which needs English for its facilitation, its mediation and subsequently its realisation. It has been shown in all cases that it is the presence of „English‟ in the scripted texts that focusses the transgression and it is the anglophony itself that directly articulates it as a form of its enregisterment. 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