First language and language with parents. A single reality or two different variables?

Abstract

This article analyses the interplay between two of the most important sociolinguistic variables, the first language (L1) and the language used with parents. Thanks to the data gathered from the first wave of the RESOL project in the municipalities of Sant Just Desvern and Sant Joan Despí based on a sample of 407 sixth-grade primary school students, this study offers an exploratory analysis in order to describe the sociolinguistic reality and the possible causes underlying the differences between these two variables. The two towns studied display different sociolinguistic realities, as Catalan is the predominant language of use in Sant Just Desvern, whereas in Sant Joan Despí, the primary language is Spanish. According to the numbers obtained by combining the data from the two communities, the sociolinguistic profiles of the students show more of a balance be tween the two languages of use. The main objective of this study is to examine the profiles of the youths whose L1 does not coincide with the language they use with their parents, placing particular emphasis on psycholinguistic variables (language attitudes in Catalan and Spanish), linguistic uses (language spoken between parents, with siblings, in the social network and in the classroom) and variables relating to identity (the feeling of belonging to Spain, to Catalonia and the language of identification). The results show that linguistic diversity in the home and within the social network, where the uses of Catalan and Spanish coexist in different proportions, is the key determining factor for the differences between the first language and the language spoken with parents, although other variables such as the language of identification also play an important role.

Key words: intergenerational language transmission, first language, language with parents, family uses, exploratory analysis.