Study of the substitution or maintenance of Catalan in the Matarranya region

Abstract

This paper studies the sociolinguistic situation of Catalan in the Matarranya region. It specifically investigates whether the transmission of the Catalan language between generations and within the generation among the pupils in the second year of compulsory secondary school at the Matarranya secondary school of Vall-de-roures is maintained, as a sign of a possible substitution process in the Franja area. The data will be obtained by a survey and the continuity of the transmission of Catalan between classmates and between parents and their children will be related to different variables (sex, social class, language with siblings, identification language, etc.) to try to understand the causes of the substitution process in the cases in which it occurs. Likewise, these data will be supplemented by interviews with parents, teachers and pupils. The interviews with parents will be focused on understanding the reasons for the rupture of language transmission between generations. The interviews with teachers and pupilswill be focused on understanding the reasons for the rupture of intragenerational language transmission between the pupils of the secondary school.
Keywords: Franja area, substitution, transmission, intragenerational, intergenerational.