Legitimacy and social class in Catalan language education for adults

Abstract

Adult students of Catalan are worthy of study because they reveal complexities underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. Far from fitting into neat bundles aligning language of origin, social class, and national orientation, the students in this study exemplify the breakdown of boundaries traditionally assumed to exist between Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. These findings point to a disjuncture between public discourse and the lived experience of language users. Close examination of actual speakers' motivations, classroom performance, and national orientations reveals much more nuance; in this classroom, the fault lines run along social class divisions, which are themselves contrary to stereotypes. This finding advances studies of linguistic authority, suggesting that native speakers may be positioned differently in different sociolinguistic contexts, depending on their social class and whether the language in question is an institutionalized code or a minoritized one.

Keywords:

• Catalan
• adult education
• native speakers
• social class
• second language acquisition
• language ideologies

Acknowledgements

This research was sponsored by Fulbright IIE, The Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Albert Branchadell and Xavier Luna of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona were my institutional hosts. My thanks to Bernadette O'Rourke, Valentina Pagliai, Chantal Tetreault, and Kathryn Woolard for comments on earlier versions of this article and to Jacqueline Urla for discussing it at the June 2011 Council for European Studies conference where it was originally presented. Finally, I thank my Catalan teacher and classmates for their willingness to participate in this study and for their many gifts of time, friendship, and insight.

Notes

1. This level was equivalent to Level C of the Catalan administration.

2. I distinguish this group of speakers from the Castilian speakers in an attempt to capture locally relevant categories. The contrast between catalanoparlant and castellanoparlant, in my experience, applies only to people of the Spanish state. Native Castilian speakers from Latin America do not count socially as ‘castellanoparlants’. I use the code label ‘Castilian’ as a synonym for the code label ‘Spanish.’

3. The upper class is associated with Castilian, a relationship that dates to the fifteenth century, when Castilian-speaking Ferdinand I came to the throne of Catalonia-Aragon. In response to the concomitant changes in the linguistic marketplace, the Catalan aristocracy began shifting to Castilian, while commoners continued to use Catalan (Ruiz, Sanz, and Solé i Camardons 1996)

4. Until the time of this writing (July 2012), functionary positions have been extremely secure. However, new austerity measures have many functionaries wondering if they are indeed ‘permanent’ employees.

5. While social class is notoriously hard to define, in this article I use occupation as a proxy for social class. I classify as ‘middle-class’ professions requiring university education. I classify as ‘working-class’ jobs not requiring university education.

6. This pattern raises the question of whether there are factors that discourage the foreign-born from pursuing civil service careers.

7. There is no particular reason to think that in expressing this opinion participants were influenced by my identity as a non-Catalan researcher. Catalanism is a mainstream, socially acceptable position and not something that respondents were likely to want to hide from me. Also, if they were political nationalists, they would likely see my research as an opportunity to advocate for an independent Catalonia.