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2) Intergenerational language shift
was found to be intimately connected with place of residence. The city thus becomes a
powerful catalyst in the process of shift to Spanish, such that, even when both parents
are Catalan speakers from outside the city, moving to Valencia sets in motion a major
process of bilingualisation, which frequently results in Spanish rather than Catalan being
transmitted to their offspring..
3) The most
influential factors in use of Catalan by young people are: the presence in their speech
networks of Catalan speakers, positive academic experience of doing the school subject
Valencian, leftwing political orientation, the language attitudes of the parents and,
above all, cultural militancy in favour of Catalan.
4) The
teaching of Catalan was not seen to have any influence (except possibly a negative one) on
the language habits of the students. In contrast, teaching in Valencian was seen to
have positive effects and contributed to the student becoming bilingual.
All in all,
according to Casesnoves, the existence of two divergent sociolinguistic patterns can be
discerned: that of the city of Valencia, with Catalan in an advanced state of recession,
and that of the rest of the Valencian Country, where there would seem to be a slight
recovery which on occasions may be camouflaging what is happening in the city of Valencia.
2.3 Precarious maintenance: the county of Marina
The picture
being outlined until now, taking the form of rapid and drastic language shift in the main
urban areas, has to be moderated somewhat when we contrast this with figures from the
rural areas of the País Valencià. A recent study by M. Àngels Diéguez and M. Isabel
Guardiola entitled Transmissió lingüística intergeneracional a la Marina (2002)
will prove paradigmatic here.
The study is
based on a survey carried out in 1997 with almost a thousand students and teachers at the
county secondary schools of Altea, where the authors interviewed individuals fom
throughout the county, having previously divided it up into five zones according to
socioeconomic, demographic and linguistic factors. This procedure enabled them to detect
greater incidence of Catalan speakers in the most rural areas, with little migration into
the area and predominantly agricultural activity.
Bearing in
mind that intergenerational transmission is closely correlated with households where both
parents are Catalan speakers or Catalan is the language of 50% of mothers and 60% of the
fathers, one would expect that it would be spoken by 50% of the students, not more. This
turned out to be an accurate prediction of the situation. Some 48% of those questioned
claimed to use Catalan habitually, a further 19.7% used it only sporadically and 32.3%
never used it, and in fact these percentages indicate a good level of maintenance
with no more than l.1% incidence of language defection of intergenerational
transmission.
The results
given above are confirmed by the data on transmission amongst such speakers of Valencian
extraction, which emerges as 84.8% percent of the 91.3% of couples who use Catalan as the
language used in the relationship. Regarding children of mixed marriages,
intergenerational transmission has undergone considerable erosion (25% speak to their
children in Valencian, 36% in Spanish and 29% each in their own language), a situation
which will get worse when the second generation immigrants virtually half of the
students reach adult age.
2.4 An overall X-ray picture of the state of the language in the Valencian
Country
I have
deliberately left until the end, the review of Ernest Querol's contribution, Els
valencians i el valencià (2000), both because of its scope, referring to the whole of
the Valencian Country, and because of its ambitious theoretical underpinning, based as it
is on the formulation of a new and ambitious model for the study of processes of language
shift, partially released by the author in earlier publications.
Space does not
really allow us to provide much of a description and critique of the complex Querolian
theoretical edifice, which in any case has begun to elicit exacting if
positive appraisal (Calaforra, 2002). At the risk of oversimplifying, let us say
that the source of his approach was his dissatisfaction with the unsatisfactory nature of
the most usual sociolinguistic models when looking at the factors that determine language
use. To overcome the limitations he detected, Querol combined the interlinguistic
relations approach of Aracili's model of interposition with trifactorial explanations of
language use on the one hand, and the sociological paradigm of social definition (Querol,
2000: 21-43) on the other. That led him to conceive language shift as an (exclusive or
hierarchic) choice, the mechanisms of which he illustrates on the analogy of
migratory processes and a list of basic antonyms.
Overall, it
becomes an attempt to integrate the theory of ethnolinguistic vitality especially in
the version which compares lammergeier or bearded vulture of prey, put forward by Allard
and Landry, who developed the questionnaire used (in abbreviated form) by Querol
within the framework of the theory of social representation put forward by Moscovici. The
latter is furthermore rounded off by recourse to the juridical institution of legal
representation and topological catastrophe theory, with which he establishes a formal
analogy that attains isomorphism (Querol, 1997).
The basic
hypothesis of the author is that in a process of language shift defined as
"progressive isolation and reduction of the use of a language in its demographic
extension, in its geographic extension and in its domains of use and, therefore, in the
representation of its possibilities of use" (Querol, 2002b: 73) the different
types of possible linguistic behaviour are the result of the interaction of the social
representations that speakers make of the languages in place, of the interpersonal network
of communication and of the social reference group.
The empirical
part of the research comprises 452 questionnaires (67 more than the minimum necessary),
administered in 1998 students of the fourth year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education,
with students age 16). In order to guarantee greater representativeness of the sample with
respect to the whole of the population, one also has to control a series of strategic
variables such as, for example, the provincial division, the linguistic area
(Valencian-speaking / Spanish-speaking), type of the settlement (lesser / greater than
50,000 habitants) and language of instruction of the school.
The large
amount of information obtained for each student (478 items per individual), was submitted
to a whole series of statistical treatments: analysis of frequencies and percentages of
each variable, crossing of two variables and multivariable analysis (discriminating and
multiple regression), as well as application of the new SIPINA technique using induction
graphs.
The most
interesting results for our purposes are, clearly, those relating to the percentages of
speakers of each language. If we only consider the historical Valencian-speaking area, we
find that Spanish is overwhelmingly the language most spoken by the younger generation:
72.7% of the students have it as their first language, while Catalan can only manage a
desultory 25.2%. In the case of their parents' generation, figures are very similar: 68.3%
of parents speak Spanish, while only 28.8% speak Catalan, and taking the mothers only the
figure rises to 29.9% while Spanish decreases to 65.1%.
The situation
gets no better when we consider intergenerational transmission. Valencian-speaking parents
(18.9%) do not transmit Valencian in 11.25% of cases in contrast, Spanish-speaking
couples (63.02%) who do not transmit Spanish do not amount to more than 1.89%. When the
couples are mixed, if the mother is Valencian-speaking and the father Spanish-speaking
(9.9%) they speak to the child in Valencian in 36.8% of cases, while in the reverse
situation (8.3%) the figure drops to 26.5%. In a generation, therefore, the percentage of
Valencian speakers has diminished by 4.25%.
But Querol's
work does not stop here, since it seeks to explain the determining factors behind the
language choice made by speakers, to be able to understand better the processes of
language shift / language maintenance. Regarding the three variables under consideration,
his results indicate that the use of Valencian correlates above all with social network,
that is, the group of Valencian speakers the speaker regularly interacts with, verbally.
These results contrast with those obtained by Querol in Catalonia (Querol, 1999, 2001),
where the use of the language was linked above all to social representation. They
contrast, too, with what he found in the Balearic Islands, where the most important
variable, the one that best correlates with language use, is the social representation of
Spanish (Querol, 2002a). This is a problematic finding, given that if the social network
shrinks progressively in intergenerational transmission, use will be reducing as well.
The
consequences are clear: to reverse a process of language shift we need to ensure that the
variable that best correlates with language use is social representation and that
intergenerational transmission is not negative for the recessive language (Querol, 2000:
196).
3. Final observations
Over and above
the diversity of approach, scope and methodology, the earlier studies enable us to sketch
the outline of the linguistic situation in the Valencian Country, characterised by the
precarious subsistence of the principle cities such as Valencia, Alacant (Alicante) and
Castelló de la Plana (Ferrando et al, 1990) where complete breakdown in the
intergenerational transmission of the language has either already occurred or will do so
over the next couple of generations. This parallels its generalised maintenance in more
rural areas, especially in certain counties such as Safor or Alcoià, a fact which renders
them increasingly important with respect to the linguistic community as a whole (Montoya,
2002: 36-43). This is what Vicent Pitarch (1988: 16-20) has called "the rusticity of
linguistic domains".
The
persistence of the current norms of use, characterised by convergence on Spanish as the
common language, increases the danger of massive language shift. Two processes in progress
could also contribute to this in a powerful way: the increasing urbanisation of the
population and the current flow of newcomers into the area (Morelló, 2002). The latter
join others who came earlier, around the middle of the last century, from various parts of
the Spanish state, and who in large part did not assimilate linguistically. The
sociolinguistic situation described here, therefore, does not in any way support, far from
it, the optimism exuded by the official research. Rather we could see it as a clear
instance of the failure of "politica lingüística" (language policy) if
we could call it that (Pradilla, 2002) set in motion, and restricted until now
almost exclusively to education and the use of generic-type propaganda.
It would be
fair to say that the result of these "policies" has been very modest. While they
have contributed to improving attitudes and competence in Catalan among the school
population they have not succeeded in halting language shift, or indeed in fostering
linguistic integration of second generation immigrants. Worse still: we cannot rule out
negative repercussions. This in fact is observable in the form above all of abdication of
responsibility for intergenerational transmission of the language observable in some
sectors of Catalan-speakers with linguistic habits of undervaluing (Castelló,
2002). The presence of Catalan on the school timetable opens the door to what economists
call externalisation of costs, leaving the transmission of the recessive language
to the schools something we have seen for sometime in the case of religious
education. Far from being a minor detail, this externalising strategy complementary,
obviously enough, to the internalisation of Spanish is entirely congruent
with a more general social trend which threatens to transform the school system into a
kind of drawer for odds and ends, a place in which to stow all that the modernisation of
society doesn't have time for. In such a situation, bearing in mind, moreover, how
ineffective the school is when it comes to transforming the social order, Boudon (1973),
can anyone be surprised at the ineffectiveness of the "normalisation" measures
dictated by the Valencian institutions?
As we see it,
possible solutions to the challenges posed by the current sociolinguistic situation are
neither easy nor can they wait. Perhaps the most pressing need at this time is to call for
the design and implementation of specific linguistic policies, adapted to the specific
circumstances of each area. It should be quite clear that different situations cannot be
tackled in the same way. The main tasks at the present time, as I see it, are to reinforce
and increase the existing fullness of use of Catalan in certain rural counties, halt
linguistic defection in others, increase the competence of young Spanish speakers and
preserve the Catalan-speaking minorities in urban areas. Securing of these objectives goes
hand in hand with radical transformation of the current framework for the management of
the linguistic diversity of Valencian society. In a paper that may or may not one day see
the light I have put forward a self-management model of interlingual relations based on
the formula of what I call libertarian liberalism; here, however, I will content
myself with stating the need for changes in the current model of education, in terms of
the creation of a public network of educational centres in Catalan, and parallel to
that the taking of decided steps towards the construction of a new type of forum for
communications, shared with the rest of the language community (Gifreu &
Corominas, 1991).
Obviously, we
cannot hope that these demands will be satisfied by any gracious concession from the
powers that be. On the contrary: the élite of Valencian power have always distinguished
themselves by their frank hostility to Catalan, and will not respond to anything but
decided pressure from people. We are faced, therefore, with the peremptory need to bring
together the Catalan speaking population of the Valencian Country, providing them with
instruments for the reclaiming of their civil rights in language matters. Rather than a
political process, this is a prepolitical process, essential for the emergence of
alternative élites to the existing ones and now firmly linked with the replacement of the
present political culture of the subject. This culture, with its corollary in
nationalism, is dominated by the subjective idea of the benefits that power could
contribute to the cause, should (I would argue) be replaced by a participational
one, where consciousness of such benefits goes with recognition of the participation habit
teamed with indispensable new initiatives for the proper functioning of the political
system (Almond & Verba, 1963: 34-36). In my view, the existence of the Federació
Escola Valenciana www.fev.org (Valencian School
Federation) constitutes a hopeful indication that cultural change is beginning to take
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