Language uses and linguistic ideologies in French-Catalan mixed families in Catalonia

Abstract

In this article, which presents data from a project involving semi-structured interviews, we analyse a set of declared language uses as well as linguistic ideologies provided by ten French-Catalan families with school-aged children in Catalonia. This study forms part of the GLOBINMED project at the University of Barcelona focusing on the qualitative study of different types of linguistically-mixed couples. In this paper we describe the language uses between partners, from parents to children, among brothers and sisters and among all the family members together. We include as well several factors that can influence to a greater or lesser extent the use of Catalan and the transmission of the parents’ native languages to their children. We noted that the linguistic ideologies of the interviewees involve a hierarchical conception of languages in which Spanish and French acquire a higher status than Catalan. Nonetheless, together with French or Spanish, Catalan is also considered a vehicular language in familiar interactions.

Keywords: intergenerational language transmission, mixed French-Catalan families, language uses, linguistic ideologies.