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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1005

Part of Session 180: New Speakers in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

New Speakers in Catalonia: “The Country and the City”

Authors: Puigdevall-Serralvo, Maite
Submitted by: Puigdevall-Serralvo, Maria Teresa (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)

Catalonia is an autonomous territory of North-East Spain where two languages are official: Catalan (the traditional language of the region) and Spanish (the language of the state). According to the 2003 language use survey, the native languages of the younger generations (15-34 year olds) are Catalan (36,8%), Spanish (55,1%), and both languages (8%). However, this population is overwhelmingly bilingual and most people use both languages in everyday life, this is, there is marked hybridism of language uses. Actually, of those who ordinarily speak Catalan in everyday life, 41,6% are native speakers of Spanish. Thus, almost half of the users of Catalan are not native-speakers of the language.

This presentation relies on the results of a study on language practices amongst young people (16 to 35 year-olds) that combined the analysis of wide-scale surveys with that of 25 interviews and 15 focus groups. Through the qualitative sample, it explored, amongst other things, the so-called linguistic “mudes”, that is, the biographical moments or processes of transformation of linguistic practices and repertoires.

In this presentation I shall focus on the importance of the social presence of a language, this is "language density", as a variable triggering or explaining these mudes in different geographical areas (mainly, the big conurbation of Barcelona and the rest of the Catalan territory). Language density refers to the relative ordinary presence of one language in a specific place. So I will explore the ways in which high density of Catalan in a given place can strongly influence mudes of Spanish native-speakers. Former Spanish speakers with high educational levels that have incorporated the use of Catalan in their everyday life are to be found everywhere in the territory, maybe more clearly outside Barcelona. But one of the important findings in relation to the density variable is that in Catalan high density areas there is an important group of former Spanish speaking individuals with low educational levels that make “mudes” to Catalan in more varied moments than those in Catalan low density areas.