Changes in language use with peers during adolescence: a longitudinal study in Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This article presents a longitudinal panel study analyzing the evolution of a sample of more than 1000 informants in the language practices with peers during the period between the end of primary education and the end of secondary education in Catalonia. Results led to the identification of five clusters of informants according to their linguistic trajectories. Three of them, which together accounted for 75% of all informants, combined the strong predominance of a single language —respectively Catalan, Castilian, and other languages— and a remarkable stability in patterns of language choice during the five years’ period under scrutiny. The other 25% of informants, grouped in two different clusters, declared more bilingual/multilingual behavior and underwent more significant changes that may be related to linguistic mudes [Pujolar, Joan, and Isaac Gonzàlez. 2013. ‘Linguistic “Mudes” and the Deethnicization of Language Choice in Catalonia.’ International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism]. The study also explores the relevance of the transition between primary and secondary education as a social moment favorable for linguistic mudes and concludes thata small but still significant percentage of informants went through such changes in that transition.

KEYWORDS:

• Language use
• linguistic mudes
• Catalan
• maintenance bilingual education
• language choice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

F. Xavier Vila is head of the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics, and director of the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. His areas of research are educational sociolinguistics, language policy, management and planning, and demolinguistics. Some of his recent publications are Les veus del professorat (Teachers' Voices. Language Teaching and Management in Secondary Education in Catalan); Language Policy in Higher Education. The Case of Medium-Sized Language Communities, and Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges.

Josep Ubalde is a PhD candidate in the area of sociology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. His research focuses on the sociology of language, sociolinguistics and the sociological methods of research.

Vanessa Bretxa is a researcher of the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (CUSC), Universitat de Barcelona. She has participated in several large-scale sociolinguistic projects regarding language use, language competence, cultural practices and media consumption in the Catalan-speaking areas. She has been a visiting researcher at the Centre for Catalan Studies, – School of Modern Languages – Queen Mary, University of London (2007) and CREFO- Centre de Recherches en Éducation Franco-Ontarienne, University of Toronto (2008–09). She is the co-editor of the academic journal LSC - Language, Society and Communication.

Llorenç Comajoan-Colomé is Associate Professor at the Department of Philology and Language and Literature Teaching at the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (Spain), where he coordinates the Research Group on Education, Language and Literature. He coordinates the Ph.D. program in Teaching Innovation and Intervention and the M.A. Program in Teaching Catalan as a First and Second Language, and he is a member of the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the University of Barcelona. His areas of research are educational sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and language teaching.

Notes

1 Although (Kulick and Schieffelin 2004) would argue that this may be an extreme viewpoint subservient of a dated model of enculturation, since, as proved by a number of studies, language changes may take place at many other moments of life.

2 For more details on the project, see Bretxa and Vila (2012), Bretxa and Vila (2014), Bretxa et al. (2016), and the project website: www.ub.edu/cusc/sleducativa.

3 Other languages were too numerous to be broken down in this study.

4 Due to the anonymity of data one cannot tell whether the evolution in language behavior derived from changes in language practices within each dyad, or rather from changes in the members of the network. Nevertheless, since the goal of this research was measuring whether informants were using more or less Catalan, Castilian or other languages, the origin of changes was interesting but secondary.

5 The term Catalan-speaking areas refers to the territories where Catalan is the traditional and historical language, which include Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community, La Franja (Aragon), Andorra, Northern Catalonia (France), and Alghero (Italy).

6 Only two times (T1 and T3) were used here for the sake of simplification. More detailed analyzes will be found in the next paragraphs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under [grant number FFI2016-75416-P]; by Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca under [grant number 2017 SGR 942]; and by “La Caixa” Foundation under grant Recercaixa 2014.