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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1126

Part of Session 169: Sociolinguistic perspectives on the internationalization of HE (Other abstracts in this session)

The impact of internationalization on the minority language: clashing stances between global and local interests in Catalonia

Authors: Gallego Balsà, Lídia; Cots Caimons, Josep Maria
Submitted by: Gallego Balsà, Lídia (University of Lleida, Spain)

This paper aims at exploring the discourse of international students and their Catalan and Spanish language teachers at the University of Lleida to decode individuals’ positioning towards the languages compounding the multilingual repertoire at the institution. We start from Jaffe’s (2009) suggestion that whereas “in monolingual contexts, speakers take stances by using a variety of linguistic forms”, in bilingual contexts “speakers have an added stance resource: language choice” (2009: 119). Since in Catalonia languages carry connotations that are seminal for individual identity construction and identification, we follow Jaffe’s work adopting stance as a mediating concept between linguistic forms and social identity. Hence, we look at the positioning these individuals take on languages for being at the heart of the dilemma between local and global interests.

The data analysed come from two two-hour long focus group sessions held with seven international students and four Catalan/Spanish language teachers, respectively. Following a discourse analytical approach to the analysis of stance (see for instance, Englebretson, 2007) we conduct a bottom-up analysis to reveal how subjects (i) ascribe specific values to linguistic choices and index socio-cultural patterns, (ii) construct their selves and how this is dialogically interpreted, contested and legitimated, and (iii) align or disalign with other participants in the interaction as a resource for building intersubjective relationships.

The analysis will show that whereas teachers position themselves in favour of the institutional language policy aimed at reconciling multilingualism with the promotion and protection of the vernacular language, international students conceive their stay abroad as an investment for their future professional and socio-economic situation and, therefore, their stance is based on the symbolic power of languages. Institutional language policies created to protect the vernacular language from the ‘threat’ of bigger languages raise feelings of inequality among international students who see their expectations frustrated. However, both in the case of teachers and international students we can witness how participants are capable of modifying their initial stances in the course of the interaction by approaching global interests to the local ones and vice versa.

References:

Englebretson, R. (ed.) (2007) Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamis Company.

Jaffe, A. (2009) Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford University Press.