was applied to our data, and in order to gain more insight into the potential
role of extra-linguistic variables, a description of the two bilingual communi-
ties is in order.
The Bilingual Communities
In her study of bilingual development in children from Wales and Miami,
Gathercole (2007: 226-7) outlined the main differences and similarities
between the bilinguals in these two speech communities. As in our own
study we compare across the same two communities, we draw (and expand
where appropriate) on her description below.
Differences between the two bilingual speech communities
(a) Bilinguals speak English and Spanish (a Romance language) in Miami,
while they speak English and Welsh (a Celtic language) in Wales
(cf. Gathercole, 2007: 226).
(b) Wales has housed an established bilingual speech community for just
over a century,^5 whereas Miami has a relatively ‘young’ bilingual speech
community that became established in the 1960s. In Wales, Welsh is the
older, indigenous language, while English is historically the language of
migrants, primarily non-Welsh-speaking workers migrating to indus-
trial areas of Wales from the 18th century on. In Miami, on the other
hand, Spanish is the language of migrants, whereas English is histori-
cally more established.
(c) The bilinguals that we recorded in Wales are mostly native or native-
like in both languages, whereas the Miami bilinguals consist of fluent
bilinguals and second-language learners of English whose fluency in
English is non-native-like. In Miami, there are monolingual speakers
of each language in question, but that is not the case in Wales, where
there are monolingual speakers of English but no monolingual speak-
ers of Welsh.
(d) The most fluent bilinguals in Miami are second or third generation chil-
dren of Hispanic immigrants. In Wales, however, the most fluent bilin-
guals are often descendants of the indigenous, Welsh-speaking group.
What both communities have in common is that the most fluent bilin-
guals usually identify with the minority group, whether immigrant or
indigenous.
Similarities between the two communities
(a) The minority languages (Welsh and Spanish) are used alongside English
on a daily basis by people at all socioeconomic levels. On average, 76.1%
of the population in the Gwynedd County in North Wales, which is
Factors Influencing Code-Switching 115