Language use in the context of double minority: the case of Japanese–Catalan/Spanish families in Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This study explores language use in Japanese–Catalan/Spanish families in Catalonia with a special attention to Japanese. In a community such as Catalonia wherein two languages of different status are in conflict within its own territory, the ability of families to maintain a socially ‘weaker’ language and transmit yet another language that does not have an official status within the community raises an important question: how do these cross-linguistic families cope with a ‘double minority context’ in terms of organising their language use within the family? Analysing the data collected through a questionnaire survey conducted with 29 Japanese–Catalan/Spanish-speaking families living in Catalonia revealed that the parents in said families adopted a mostly monolingual use of Spanish; however, this practice does not affect the families’ Catalan and Japanese use. Not establishing a single common language for the family may be one of the strategies to combat the threat to minority languages. In general, especially for the survey participants, Catalan and Japanese remain significantly utilised. Our study also found that sibling existence can influence language-use patterns between parent and child(ren), with monolingual practices tending to be used in single-child families.

KEYWORDS:

• Language use
• cross-linguistic families
• Catalan
• Japanese
• language transmission
• heritage language

Acknowledgements

This study presents a part of the findings of my doctoral thesis ‘Els japonesos a Catalunya i la llengua catalana: comunitat, llengües i ideologies’ (Japanese in Catalonia and Catalan language: community, languages and ideologies). I would like to thank Dr. Francesc Xavier Vila for his many valuable suggestions, and all my colleagues for their great support. I especially thank all the participants who collaborated in this study. Without them, this study would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Makiko Fukuda http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8601-6609

Notes

1. Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya. This number excludes those who obtained Spanish nationality.

2. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (www.ine.es/jaxi/tabla.do).

3. For example, the number of Chinese in Catalonia was 51,646 in 2011 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística).

4. See Fukuda (2009).

5. There were forty inter-married families in total in the Supplementary School and 10 in Japanese school when the research was conducted.

6. Children’s language use can be biased, though most parents probably know which language they use together when they are playing together (Barron-Hauwaert, 2011).

7. To guarantee the privacy of our participants, their names have been codified.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by CUSC (Centre Universitari de Sociolingüística i Comunicació) of the Universitat de Barcelona under the grant EVOPLUR (‘Evolució de les societats plurilingües: representacions, comportaments i capitals lingüístics’), Ministry of Science and Technology (BFF 2002-01323), and research group INTERASIA of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2009SGR-1103, Generalitat de Catalunya) under the grants 'Interculturalidad de Asia Oriental en la era de globalización' (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, FFI2008-05911/FISO) and 'Processos interculturals d'Àsia Oriental en la societat internacional de la informació: ciutadania, gènere, i producció cultural' (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, FFI2011-29090).