Justifying preferences. How Catalan adolescents explain their linguistic choices

Abstract

Unlike other Western multilingual societies, Catalonia has not developed independent social structures for each of its main linguistic groups: on the contrary, the ideologies and practices fostered since the recovery of the Government of Catalonia (Generalitat) have been opposed to separation, in an ethnolinguistically non-polarised integrationist society. This paper seeks to establish the bases on which a group of adolescents from the town of Mataró justify their linguistic preferences and identifications, and how these choices fit into the predominant integrationist framework. The informants usually show a preference for their L1 while doing so on the basis of little polarised discourses, with rationales relating for the most part to the private sphere and especially to interpersonal language uses and to the “convenience” of using the language. Accordingly, there is a notable scarcity of discourses based on group identity and politicised discourses on languages.

Keywords: linguistic ideologies, discourse analysis, Catalonia, integrationist society, Mataró, adolescents, educational sociolinguistics.