Language exposure in Catalonia: An example of indoctrinating linguistic ideology

Abstract

Institutionalized linguistic domination can affect both language practices and ideologies (Bourdieu 1977, 1991, 1997). Along these lines, this paper examines some of the results of official language policies in Catalonia during the Franco regime. Woolard (1985) claimed that the use of Spanish in public domains such as the school never succeeded in displacing Catalan as the language of legitimate authority in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the present research reveals that individuals in Barcelona who were exposed to Spanish more than Catalan in academic environments tend towards more proSpanish and less proCatalan ideologies. In a sociolinguistic investigation of speech data gathered from 58 individuals in Barcelona, quantitative analysis demonstrates that relative exposure to Catalan and Spanish is the major explanatory variable in accounting for informant to informant variation in measures of political ideology (p <.0000, R² =.79, F = 69.17). Qualitative analysis suggests that official academic language policies in Francoist Spain may have served to inculcate centralist ideologies at the expense of regionalist political and linguistic beliefs. The link between relative exposure to legitimated language and the development of certain political and linguistic philosophies constitutes a significant step towards understanding the ramifications of extended linguistic domination. Thus, this paper broadens our knowledge of the intricate relationship between bilingualism and ideology in a political economy of language.