Summary 1. Introduction
2. Objectives
3. The new theoretical framework
4. Methodology
5.
Results
5.1
Descriptive
5.2
Explanatory
5.3
Predictive
6. Conclusions
7. Bibliography
1. Introduction
One of the
main aims of social science research is to be able to make predictions. The model that we
have designed allows us to arrive at this point. However, before doing so, we will present
the description of language uses, the explanation of these uses and finally,
the predictions for future uses that we discuss in this article.
2. Objectives
For our
description, we need to find out the language uses of fourth-year ESO pupils. As regards
the explanation, we want to find out the main variables that favour the use of Catalan,
and as for predictions, we will reveal the prospects for use indicated by our theoretical
and methodological model. Overall, therefore, our aim is to corroborate this new model
again as we did with Catalonia in 1993 and 2000, the Valencian Country in 1998 and,
as we stated above, we are now testing in Andorra. (1)
3. The new theoretical framework
A new
theoretical framework was required to obtain this type of explanatory and predictive data,
since the results obtained with the concept of language attitude were not
statistically significant (Wicker 1969). We have presented this new proposal on a number
of occasions, including in this journal (Querol 2001a). (2)
Figure 1
summarises our theoretical model for the study of language uses (dependent variable). The
independent variables will be:
- social
representations of languages, (3)
- social representations of reference groups and, (4)
- social representations of social networks. (5)
Figure 1.
Relations between the independent variables and the dependent variables (use of languages)
Source: Own
work.
All of the
independent variables relate to each other and to the dependent variable, i.e. they feed
from one another. The hypotheses we put forward initially focused on the relationships
between all of these. We shall see these hypotheses now. |