Immersion education outcomes and the Gaelic community:Identities and language ideologies among Gaelic-medium educated adults in Scotland

Scholars have consistently theorised that language ideologies can influence the ways in which bilingual speakers in minority language settings identify and engage with the linguistic varieties available to them. Research conducted by the author examined the interplay of language use and ideologies among a purposive sample of adults who started in Gaelic medium education during the first years of its availability. Crucially, the majority of participants’ Gaelic use today is limited, although notable exceptions were found among individuals who were substantially socialised in the language at home during childhood, and a small number of new speakers. In this paper, I draw attention to some of the language ideologies that interviewees conveyed when describing their cultural identifications with Gaelic. I argue that the ideologies that informants express seem to militate against their more frequent use of the language and their association with the wider Gaelic community. In particular, I discuss interviewees’ negative perceptions of the traditionally defined, ethnolinguistic identity category ‘Gael(s)’ in their expression of language ideologies and identities, and the implications of this finding for other contexts of minority language revitalisation

Language attitudes, linguistic authority and independence in 21st century Catalonia

peer-reviewedIn a context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity and political uncertainty in Catalonia, this article reports on a research project which set out to explore the attitudes of members of independence organisations operating in the city of Girona toward the Catalan and Spanish languages. This study approaches language attitudes through the theoretical lens of linguistic authority, in particular, the concepts of anonymity and authenticity. The data, gathered from six focus groups, provide an insight on the nature of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Two themes emerge in the informants’ discussion of Catalan and Spanish: ‘twenty-first Century Catalanisme’ and ‘Embracing Linguistic Diversity’. The comments of the respondents indicate that, against the backdrop of the independence process in the region, bilingualism and multilingualism have become highly valued in the territory. In addition, this study suggests that a fuller understanding of the situation in Catalonia may be facilitated by qualitative approaches, which explore attitudes in-depth

Language ideologies and language practices in France and Spain : the case of Breton, Occitan, Catalan and Galician

PhD ThesisThe aim of this dissertation is to investigate the situation of minoritised languages in France and Spain, by developing a comparative framework for the analysis, and taking into account the theoretical and empirical sociolinguistic research context with regard to language planning and language ideologies. To date, theoretical and empirical studies have tended to focus on one region, have adopted a comparative approach that focuses on individual languages without an explorative comparison of the regimes behind those languages, or have preferred to adopt a generalised theoretical approach that does not discuss in great detail the specifics of any one region. In my comparison of languages spoken in France and Spain that are not the state language, I explore the impact of contrasting political regimes on language planning to discover if state regime is an important factor behind the long-term survival of minoritised languages. The subject matter for this investigation concentrates on two languages from each country: Breton and Occitan for France, and Catalan and Galician for Spain. The empirical data for my investigation consists of questionnaire responses by native, non-native and non-speakers of the languages in question that covers an age-range from eighteen to eighty-five, rural and urban dwellers and lifelong residents and incomers. In addition, I have obtained data from language planners and I have analysed language plans and surveys via means of the Internet. The Internet has formed a key part of the research for this PhD, so that the methodology has taken advantage of new technology that could provide a change of direction for future research programmes.School of Modern Languages, Newcastle Universit

Integration or Assimilation? A Comparative Intertextual Analysis of Language Policy in Madrid and Catalonia

Language policy forms an integral part of constructing, upholding, and contesting the status and social space of languages. Such policies may perpetuate social inequalities between speakers of different languages in multilingual societies (Tollefson, 1991; Van Dijk, 1993; Escobar Alméciga, 2013; Ready, 2018). Policies that typically address society as a whole may also reference language use of migrant populations. The current study analyzes integration policies in Spain at the federal and regional levels in the autonomous communities of Madrid and Catalonia, and examines how these policies shape and characterize the role of language practices as they relate to immigrants’ participation in Spanish society. Drawing on Critical Dis- course Analysis (Fairclough, 1989), this study relies on intratextual and intertextual analyses to examine how discourse is produced and reproduced throughout national policy in com- parison to policies of two of Spain’s most populated autonomous communities with large immigrant populations. Findings indicate that – for both communities – integration through language education is considered a crucial aspect for active citizenship and maintaining social cohesion. However, while language education in Madrid refers to developing proficiency in Spanish, Catalan is central to Catalonia’s language policies. In both cases, however, lack of competence in these languages is considered a major obstacle to integration and thus, social cohesion. Additionally, while migrant languages and cultures are emphasized as being important to interculturality and are referenced as having a role in integration, policies often fall short in their support for immigrant languages

Putting Policy into Practice: The Problematisation of Catalan Language Planning and Ideologies in Media Discourse

The revitalization of the Catalan language has been an ongoing effort in Catalonia for decades. The language policies that have stemmed from this effort have perpetuated ideologies that promote the use and legitimization of Catalan as both an official and a vehicular language. While this effort is widely regarded as an example of successful language revitalization, the process has not been without conflict between Spanish and Catalan, particularly in terms of domains of use and disparate attitudes towards the two languages (Newman & Trenchs-Parera, 2015; Woolard, 2016; Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019; Ianos et al., 2020). Given that these policies aim to be implemented in public sectors, the objective of this study is to examine how media discourse represents language practices in such domains. Using critical discourse analysis, the present study draws on articles from Madrid- and Catalonia-based news sources that focus on language use in public sectors. While differing perspectives on language use frequently appear together in the same texts, Madrid- and Catalonia-based sources at times use different linguistic strategies to report the same events and often produce seemingly contradictory discourse, such as reporting language discrimination against both Spanish and Catalan speakers in the same domains

The ideological construction of legitimacy for pluricentric standards:Occitan and Catalan in France

Bourdieu (1991) maintains that the use of ‘legitimate language’ serves to maintain dominant power structures, with legitimacy being determined by a complex array of economic and social conditions inherent in speech communities. Standard languages function as ‘normalised products’ (Bourdieu 1991: 46) and are imbued with a greater degree of legitimacy than non-standard varieties due to the Standard Language Ideology (SLI, cf. Lippi-Green 2012). This leads us to question what happens when a non-dominant language seeks to acquire greater legitimacy and prestige. Can standardisation increase legitimacy for varieties that have been subjected to centuries of political and ideological subordination? What then happens to minority languages when there is not one clear standard, but rather a pluricentric situation with competing solutions? We examine speaker testimonies regarding the role of standardisation, focusing on Occitan and Catalan in France. We show that the discursive construction of legitimacy for standard varieties is frequently contingent on the ideological creation of linguistic difference. We conclude that the application of the SLI to non-dominant language varieties is fraught with problems, and that any attempts to subvert existing hegemony and challenge social order need to address underlying ideologies of linguistic insecurity held by minority language speakers

The ecology of language contact: Minority and majority languages

The most important contributions of linguistic ecology to our understanding of contact between ‘majority’ and ‘minority/minoritized’ language groups are the result of the broad, dynamic perspective that the ecosystemic view can give. Research should focus on the application of the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ in the field of linguistic communication (a more ‘global’ language should not do anything a ‘local’ language can do). From this approach, a sustainable contact will be that which does not produce linguistic use in allochthonous language at a speed and/or pressure so high as to make impossible the stable continuity of the autochthonous languages of human groups