Baptist Chapels as an index of cultural transition in the South Wales coalfield before 1914

“When the Welsh language dies the Welsh Congregational Union of Monmouth will of necessity die. The day of the burial of the Welsh language will be the burial day of the Union, which for centuries has been the means of the hands of God's Spirit to turn many to the Saviour. When the Welsh language expires, the spirituality and sacredness of religion will expire at the same time.”^[1]The cultural transition from Welsh to English in the developing South Wales coalfield before 1914 is reflected in the language used in Baptist chapels. Nonconformist chapels were foci of the emerging industrial culture, and the Baptists had a universal appeal to both Welsh- and English-speaking populations. The geographical distribution of Baptist chapels categorized by language of foundation is analysed in three chronological phases, during which the coalfield was transformed from a uniformly Welsh cultural area before 1860, through an intervening phase of linguistic heterogeneity, to a situation in the final phase after 1890, when the dominance of Welsh was restricted to the western section only. Moreover, the period after the foundation of a Welsh chapel was characterized by linguistic instability, since processes at work in the community created pressures for linguistic change from Welsh to English. The ensuing linguistic transition from monoglot Welsh through bilingualism to monoglot English is examined in the Monmouthshire section of the coalfield, and suggests a progressive “rolling-back” of Welsh from east to west, a rapid and regular process in which bilingualism was only a transient resting-place.     

Privacy and False Identification Risk in Geomasking Techniques

Recent years have seen an increase in location privacy research, including the application of geomasking procedures. Geographical masks aim to protect privacy and preserve spatial information through the displacement of point data. False identification, or the mistaken association of data with the incorrect person or household, is an unexplored issue in geomasking, despite legal protections against false association. This study introduces a topological framework for assessing identification risk and examines the risk of false identification in four masking techniques: random perturbation, donut masking, and the newer Voronoi and MGRS masking techniques. While Voronoi masking is found to best preserve the clustering properties of a sample of urban foreclosure data, the other three masking techniques result in better protection against correct and false identification.