“The language that connects us all”. Discourses on English language learning among adolescents from Mataró

Abstract

Globalization and the linguistic processes that it involves have a great impact on the linguistic repertoires of the Catalan adolescents of today, which are significantly different from those of past generations. Present-day teenagers are influenced by a deep-seated Catalan-Spanish bilingualism that is facilitated by the model de conjunció en català (a teaching policy that has enforced the use of Catalan as the language of instruction in schools), the increasing importance of English in both the academic world and cultural and media consumption, as well as by the daily presence of other languages from all around the world, which have come to Catalonia through new waves of immigration. This paper draws on discourse analysis techniques to study the manners in which the predominance of English is reflected in Catalan adolescents’ perspectives on language. According to the information presented, it is concluded that Catalan adolescents ascribe to the “common sense” that dictates the “need” to learn English, justifying this point of view by asserting its “utility” in gaining access to the job market and citing the vast number of English speakers and the assumed “universal” nature of English. This article similarly attempts to assess the extent to which the interest in and expectations of learning English are linked to the socioeconomic class of our informants.

Key words: language ideologies, English, globalization, multilingualism, discourse analysis, Catalonia.