INTRODUCTION
Attempts to undo the effects of 40 years (since 1939) of linguistic
suppression under Francisco Franco, in those parts of Spain where
languages other than Castilian are traditional, have had mixed results.
The case of Valencia – one of the six out of seventeen
“autonomous communities” constituting the Spanish state1
Below the state (Spain) and the community
(Valencia), levels of political and administrative organization include
the province (three in the Autonomous Community of Valencia), the
comarca ‘county’ (34 in the Community), and the
municipality (541 in the Community, of which the city of Valencia is
the largest).
to have its own official language – is
particularly complex. The economic, political, and demographic forces
that favor either Castilian or Valencian are crosscut by influences
from the highly successful restoration of Catalan in all domains in
Catalonia, the neighboring autonomous community, particularly because
Catalan and Valencian are two closely related varieties of the same
language.
Policies meant to halt or even reverse the process of shift to
Castilian have resulted in increased competence in Valencian, most
dramatically among the school-age population. However, though Valencian
is now used in domains from which it was previously excluded, such as
government and the educational system, its overall rate of use does not
seem to have kept pace with gains in competence. The main goal of this
study is to document and explain this divergence, drawing on diverse
historical and current data on competence, usage, and language
attitudes. Because of the complexity of the political and social
context, we will tailor a number of quantitative analyses and displays
to these data in order to tease out particular relations, groupings,
and connections, rather than risk losing such details via a standard
global multivariate analysis.
Language planning in Valencia is highly controversial and has been
complicated by differing attitudes toward the future of Valencian at
the levels of municipal and Community (i.e., the autonomous community)
governments. The Community where Valencian is widely used implemented a
number of measures favoring increased usage of Valencian instead of
Castilian during the incumbency of a progressive government until 1995,
whereas the municipality, where Valencian is much less frequently used,
has consistently reinforced the hegemony of Castilian as the majority
language of Spain and restricts its promotion of Valencian to its
defense against perceived influences from Catalan (the
“secessionist” position). As a result, the two levels have
adopted contradictory measures. We will not explore these policies in
any detail here, but will focus on the effects of this political
struggle on the attitudes and behavior of the youth of Valencia.
OUTLINE
The clearest indicators of the current state of a process of language
shift include data on language use by different segments of society in
a full range of contexts or domains. To understand the forces that have
produced this result, however, and to attempt to predict future
outcomes, we require some idea of how these forces interact in
motivating speakers to use one language rather than another, and how
the social context is evolving. In this article, we report on the
post-Franco process of linguistic “normalization”2
Aracil 1965
introduced the concept of “linguistic normalization” into
Catalan sociolinguistics. It is essentially equivalent to
“language planning,” but it pertains to the specific
context of a society-wide project (i.e., both motivating and
transcending governmental initiatives) to undo the injustice of forced
linguistic shift inflicted during a preceding era. Note that this term
was introduced during the struggle against Franco for political,
cultural, and linguistic freedoms.
in Valencia after 1977,
first focusing on the demographic level, then on the level of language
choice in particular domains, and finally on attitudes toward different
varieties of Valencian, Catalan, and Castilian, based on a generalized
matched guise elicitation of subjective reactions. The informants for
the usage and subjective reactions studies were high school students,
whose vision and motivation will be a major determinant of the course
of language shift in the long term.
We will first sketch the historical background of the current
linguistic context, stressing the particular situation of Valencia
among the Catalan-speaking areas with respect to the political and
economic influences of the center (Madrid and the Castilian-speaking
regions). We will describe the changes during the dictatorship and the
attempts over 25 years to redress them, as well as the emergence of a
movement for the linguistic “secession” of Valencia in
reaction to Catalan political and cultural nationalism.
Our attitude study is based on reactions by subjects to recordings of
a number of individuals, each speaking a specific variety of Castilian,
Valencian, or Catalan. To control for the effects of different
speakers, we borrowed from the matched guise technique by having some
of the speakers perform in two varieties. This showed that subjects
respond to the linguistic variety and not to personal factors (voice
quality, timbre, personality, etc.).
The sample of high school students from the city of Valencia and the
nearby town of Xàtiva was thoroughly characterized, both with
regard to socioeconomic, demographic, cultural and political factors
and in terms of language usage. This allows us first to assess the
pertinence of this sample against census and other comprehensive data
available from the city of Valencia and the larger community. After
validation for consistency and coherence, informants' suggestions
about utterances appropriate to diverse interactions help us pinpoint
the interactional contexts that are the locus of socially determined
language choice. This involves a new approach to the methodology of
implicational scaling.
The literature on linguistic attitudes mediating language choice has
focused on the relative status of varieties and on their integrative
function, and this is particularly true in the Valencian context. We
will use our comprehensive data on each student to evaluate the roles
of many demographic, political, economic, cultural, and educational
factors in determining these attitudes. This type of analysis, however,
does not reveal whether the factors favoring one variety or another
combine independently, or co-occur in a sizable proportion of the
sample, resulting in emergent subgroups with their own coherent and
distinctive attitudinal patterns. To investigate the latter
possibility, we undertook an experiment in the classification of the
speakers according to their judgments of status and integrative value
of Valencian, Catalan, and Castilian, and we show that a small number
of such patterns suffice to account for a large majority of the
subjects.
The results of these analyses allow us to attribute the current
status of the normalization process in Valencia to specific
crosscutting demographic, socioeconomic, political, and educational
forces acting in the educational system and the wider society. They
also point to longer-term outcomes as a function of political and
educational choices to be made in the near future.
BACKGROUND
The 1978 constitution divides Spain, formerly centralized both
politically and linguistically, into seventeen autonomous communities,
six of which (the Basque Country, Navarre, Galicia, Catalonia, the
Balearic Islands, and the Country of Valencia) have their own official
languages alongside Castilian, the official language of the Spanish
state. Historically, Valencian (a variety of Catalan) was the language
spoken in Valencia, though Castilian had become increasingly prevalent
in some sectors and regions even before the dictatorship. Catalan also
has official status in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and the
Principality of Andorra, and it is spoken as well in the eastern part
of Aragon, in parts of the French Pyrenees, and in the city of
L'Alguer in Sardinia (cf. Sabater 1984
and Vallverdú 1984).
Valencia is the locus of two different conflicts whose points of
reference are external to the community itself. On one hand, there is
the conflict that pits Valencian against Castilian – where two
genuinely different, mutually unintelligible languages are involved,
with centuries-old political, cultural, linguistic, and economic roots.
The Spanish state, or at least its political and economic elite, has
been a party to this conflict, as have the Castilian-speaking and
Valencian-speaking populations of Valencia. On the other hand, there is
the confrontation between Valencian and Catalan, two very similar
varieties. This conflict is scarcely 30 years old and has few
substantive historical correlates. The parties to the latter conflict
are essentially all within Valencia, although they refer to ongoing
social and political processes in Catalonia.
Ninyoles (1972, 1995) distinguishes three stages in the
“minorization”3
“Minorization” is a process whereby the
vitality of a language is reduced, often quantitatively through
language shift and demographic processes, but essentially qualitatively
through the narrowing of its domains of usage and through its social
and political subordination to another language. A minority language is
thus not necessarily “minorized,” and vice versa.
of Valencian. The first stage, beginning in the first third of the 16th
century, was “selective” and “horizontal.” It
involved the gradual spread of Castilian within a small segment of the
population of Valencia, beginning with the aristocracy and the higher
clergy. It reinforced the prestige of these people and the social
distance they maintained from the community at large. In the second
half of the 19th century, the use of Castilian extended
“vertically” to the new dominant class, the landed
oligarchy and the petite bourgeoisie of the city of Valencia, who
followed the lead of the aristocracy in distancing themselves from less
privileged people. Castilianization was rapid and intense, affecting
all domains of usage, including the family environment. Finally, under
Franco in the mid-20th century, the replacement of Valencian by
Castilian became a coercive, all-encompassing process. No longer was
Castilian a mark of social status or mobility, as it spread to all
groups and classes. Factors facilitating this process included the
acceleration of industrialization and urbanization in the 1960s, which
occasioned a major rural-to-urban migration primarily from the
far-flung Castilian-speaking regions of Valencia, the increasing impact
of the monolingually Castilian mass media, and the deepening
stigmatization of Valencian, reflecting the preexisting
Castilianization of the dominant classes. The asymmetric bilingualism
that characterizes present-day Valencian society (there are monolingual
speakers of Castilian, and bilinguals, but no monolingual speakers of
Valencian remain) was consolidated during this period.
The factors that today favor further replacement of Valencian by
Castilian mostly originate in this long period of Francoism. The
interruption of intergenerational transmission of Valencian is a crucial
fact in the major cities, such as Alicante and Valencia: irreversible
in the case of Alicante (Montoya 1996), but perhaps
reversible in Valencia. This period also saw an increased association
of Valencian with rural and familial contexts, as demonstrated by Ros 1982 in her study of linguistic attitudes. To
use Valencian was socially stigmatized, and its prohibition in formal
contexts left Castilian the only language of prestige, formality, and
wide utility. The disappearance of monolingual speakers of Valencian, a
consequence of obligatory education in Castilian and exclusive use of
Castilian in the audio-visual mass media, gave rise to asymmetric
bilingualism and to illiteracy of Valencian speakers in their own
language. The official language of the Spanish state even infiltrated
private communications, and slogans such as “Let's speak
Christian” – i.e., Castilian – reinforced existing
tendencies of assimilation to Castilian.
It was in the immediate post-Franco era, when the future political
and linguistic organization of Spain was being decided, that the notion
of a conflict between the Valencian and Catalan “languages”
became a serious political issue. Largely as a result of geographically
based differences in terminology (Catalan, Valencian, Majorcan, etc.)
for denoting a single, fairly homogeneous linguistic entity, as well as
of a very small number of bona-fide phonological, morphological, and
lexical distinctions, there had for centuries been calls for vigilance
against undue influence from Catalan, occasional grammar-writing
projects, and worries about territorial annexation by Catalonia. But in
the 1960s, this was made into a major political issue. The Valencian
dominant class, thoroughly Castilianized and with strong ties to
rightist, centrist, and even Francoist political elements, was
confronted by the model of a Catalonia dominated by progressive social
forces and the full restoration of the Catalan language, and by a
Valencian nationalism celebrating the common interests of the
Catalan-speaking peoples. Seizing upon the linguistic issue provided a
way of attacking the ascendancy of the Valencian left. This gave rise
to a right-wing “secessionist,” anti-Catalanist movement
whose discourse included the dangers of political dependency or even
annexation of Valencia to Catalonia, as well as the threat to the
Valencian language from the hegemony of Catalan. The effect of this
movement was to divert attention from the question of linguistic
normalization: the process of remedying the social and linguistic
damage caused by the forcible imposition of Castilian on the Valencian
population.
These developments set the stage for the “Battle of
Valencia” (Mollà & Mira 1986)
in October 1979 in the city of Valencia, during its first Social Democrat
mayoralty. During the time in which the Statute of Autonomy of Valencia,
including key linguistic provisions, was scheduled to be drafted, rightist
politicians, anti-Catalan action groups, and elements of the media mounted
a concerted campaign making effective use of the symbolic triple: the
flag with a daub of blue harking back to a traditional flag of the city
of Valencia, the original beachhead of Castilian; national status
(regne ‘kingdom’ rather than país
‘country’); and language free of “Catalanisms”.
The net effects of this campaign were to weaken the Statute of
Autonomy, particularly by leaving its linguistic provisions vague, to
crystallize the anti-Catalan movement in a right-wing political party
and in a “Royal Society for Valencian Culture,” and to set
up a competing set of norms4
The secessionist
norms are based largely on the apitxat, the variety spoken in the
city of Valencia and surrounding counties (Horta, Camp de Morvedre, and
Ribera Alta). One of the most noticeable phonetic characteristics is the
devoicing of alveo-palatal consonants (sibilants): voiced palatal affricate
;
voiced alveolar affricate /dz/ > /ts/ and voiced alveolar
fricative /z/ > /s/. These norms thus stipulate writing
albarchina for albargina, formache for
formatge, etc., adapting the Castilian orthography. Other
characteristics include the complete absence of written diacritics and
the introduction of numerous Castilianisms.
in opposition to
the one adopted by the University of Valencia. Nevertheless, the Statute
was adopted, as well as an Educational Law that requires the teaching of
Valencian in primary and secondary schools. Thus began the process of
linguistic normalization, where the intent is to reverse the effects of
Castilianization. Its detailed goals remain unclear, especially given
the very different demo-linguistic situations across the rural and
urban areas of Valencia, the traditional Valencian-speaking and
Castilian-speaking areas,
5 This division
originated in the conquest by the Catalan-Aragon confederation in the
13th century (the Catalans settling on the coast, the Aragonese in the
interior). In the 14th century, two additional Castilian-speaking
counties were transferred from Castile: Plana d'Utiel and Alt
Vinalopo.
and the component provinces of Valencia, Alicante,
and Castellon. Nevertheless, some 20 years into the process of
linguistic normalization, Valencian shows unmistakable signs of
revitalization.
The policies meant to normalize the status of the language have been
monitored in both government and independent studies. As we shall see,
comparison of the linguistic censuses of 1986 and 1991 reveals gains in
all measures of competence in Valencian, particularly among the
school-age population. As for actual usage, surveys made in
Valencian-speaking regions by the Council for Culture and Education of
the Valencian Generalitat in 1989, 1992, and 1995 show a slight
increase in the use of Valencian. There also has been a series of
scholarly studies attempting to tap the relevant attitudinal variables
in order to explain ongoing changes and predict future tendencies.
These, as well as the government studies, suggest an increase in
favorable opinions of Valencian and of extensions of the domains of its
use.
COMPETENCE AND USAGE
Evolution of competence
The data for studying the evolution of written and oral competence
come from the linguistic censuses of the city of Valencia in 1986,
1991, and 1996 (CCE 1989, IVE 1994, Ajuntament de
València 1998). Data for the entire autonomous community are
available for 1986 and 1991 only. Though some regions show distinctly
higher rates of competence than the city, the overall trends are
consistent.
From Figure 1, we see that the proportion
of the population who understand Valencian is roughly double the
proportion who can speak it. The rate of passive competence has
increased somewhat over the ten years in all age groups, so that the
vast majority of adults and secondary students claim to understand the
language. On the other hand, the degree of active competence has
increased dramatically only in the younger age groups. This can be
explained by the introduction of Valencian into the educational system.
From Figure 1, we can infer that the first
language of about 90% of the speakers is Castilian; these speakers may
acquire some understanding of Valencian in the home context, but the
main increase occurs in their school years.
Evolution of the degree of passive and active oral competence in the
city of Valencia. Group aged 15–19 highlighted.
Evolution of usage
Usage surveys were carried out in 1989, 1992, and 1995 by the
Cultural Council of the Generalitat of Valencia, which sampled
residents of Valencian-speaking regions over 15 years old (CCE 1992, 1995). Table 1 shows self-reports of the use of Valencian
(always or usually) rather than Castilian in various contexts. The
proportional increase in the number of people using Valencian ranges
from 6% to 15%, with the exception of “with friends,” where
it has fluctuated only slightly over the period. The use of Valencian
in public places, however – including “in the street”
and “in the supermarket” – remains about half of what
it is in more individualized contexts such as “at home,”
“with friends,” and in small, owner-operated shops.
Rate of use of Valencian in the Valencian-speaking regions in various
contexts. Based on a total of 1,200 interviews for each time
period.
These results are the aggregate of all Valencian-speaking regions.
The trend in the city of Valencia by itself cannot be directly
estimated because we have data only from 1993 (CCE
1993), but two facts are clear (see Table
2). First, rates of Valencian use in the city are one-third to
one-half the rates in the Community as a whole. Second, the distinction
between public and individualized contexts in Table
1 is paralleled exactly in the city, as shown in Table 2.
Rate of use (always or usually) of Valencian in the city of Valencia.
Based on a sample of 1,110 informants.
Finally, we contrast the degree of active competence in oral
Valencian shown in Figure 1, ranging from 40%
to 50% of the population of the city, with the much lower rates of
usage shown in Table 2, 7–20% depending
on the context. To understand this shortfall in usage, we collected and
analyzed the data described in the following subsection and below.
Domains of usage
To obtain data on language choice, we focused on 16 different
situations and contexts: institutions including the hospital, the
secretariat of the high school, the Tourism Office, the Registry of
Associations, and the Valencian Institute of Youth; other public places
such as a pub, a supermarket, a bank, and interactions with passersby
on the street in Barcelona and Valencia; and more individualized and
familiar contexts with parents, siblings, neighbors, and friends,
individually or in groups. Direct self-reports of which language is
spoken in which context can be of dubious validity, especially in
politically self-conscious contexts. We took a number of measures to
mitigate this problem. First, instead of asking outright which language
they would use in each context, we elicited the choice data indirectly
by having the students write, for each of the 16 contexts described in
both Valencian and Castilian, the expression that they would normally
say for a specified purpose – for example, asking for seconds at
a family meal, asking the time of a stranger on the street, or
explaining a payment at the bank. We then noted the language in which
the response was formulated. Second, as will be seen below, we
confirmed the differential language preferences for various groups of
contexts according to informal ethnographic observation. Third, we
tested the differential language preferences of the students through
their responses on a separate questionnaire item asking whether they
generally used Valencian or Castilian. Finally, we assessed the entire
array of responses for self-consistency, using an implicational scale
analysis.
The statistical analysis we applied was developed by Sankoff &
Rousseau 1980, 1981
for finding the underlying structure of noisy scales, based on
mathematical results of Rousseau & Sankoff
1978, which integrate logistic regression with implicational
scaling. The regression analysis is first applied to the choice data,
with informant and context as independent variables. The coefficients
of the informants and the contexts provide the vertical and horizontal
orders of a rectangular array of choices, as in Figure 2a. Characteristically, at one corner of the
array is a relatively homogeneous region where all choices are of the
same language, while at the opposing corner is a homogeneous region
where the other language is chosen. The remaining area of the array is
a wide diagonal where language choice alternates from informant to
informant and from context to context.
Rectangular array with informants ordered from top to bottom on
vertical axis, from greatest to least tendency to choose language V
over C, and contexts ordered from left to right on horizontal axis,
from greatest to least tendency to have language V chosen. (a) Orders
determined by original regression. Clear areas represent homogeneous
choice of V or C, while in shaded area choice is not implied by that in
neighboring contexts or by neighboring informants. (b) After rejecting
a large proportion of the data (black dots), no underlying scale is
clear. (c) After rejecting a small proportion of data, variable region
collapses, revealing underlying scale.
In further steps of the analysis, outliers (“scaling
errors”) are sequentially rejected from the data set on the basis
of likelihoods provided by the previous regression. A new regression is
carried out on the remaining data, and the procedure is repeated until
either an unacceptably large proportion of the data has been rejected
(e.g., a third or a quarter of the data), representing a failure of the
method, as in Figure 2(b); or the variable
region collapses into a series of small variable blocks along the
diagonal, revealing a strongly scaled underlying structure, as in Figure 2(c).
Before undertaking the analysis, we removed data representing seven
students who obviously misunderstood this portion of the questionnaire
as a test of Valencian skills (responding in Valencian to all items,
though from previous parts of the questionnaire, it was clear that all
their daily interactions were exclusively in Castilian), and seven
others with significant numbers of missing responses. Among the 166
students with validated usage data, 94, or 56.6%, responded in
Castilian for all contexts, and 24, or 14.5%, answered in Valencian for
all contexts. For the remaining 48 (28.9%) who acknowledged some
context-based variability in usage, our method resulted in the array
shown in Table 3. There are only 27 rows
because row 23 represents 22 individuals with identical responses.
Interactional context: a (passerby, Barcelona), c (mother), b
(siblings), e (friends, group), d (father), f (high school
secretariat), g (Valencian Institute of Youth), j (friends,
individual), h (Tourism Office), k (hospital), i (Registry of
Associations), l (neighbor), m (passerby, Valencia), n (bank), o
(supermarket), p (pub). Crossed-out symbols indicate data deleted
during the search for an underlying scale. Clear and lightly shaded
triangular regions in upper left and lower right represent contexts
where, according to the underlying model, the corresponding speakers
would normally choose Valencian or Castilian, respectively. The more
heavily shaded rectangular areas represent, as in Figure 2(c), contexts and speakers where the model
postulates that language choice is variable.
We arrived at this scale after successively rejecting 35 responses
out of a total of 768 for the 48 students, or only 4.6%. This was a
meaningful point at which to terminate the procedure, because rejecting
any fewer responses left us with a relatively unstructured scheme like
Figure 2(b), and rejecting a few more reduced
the size of the two variable blocks only slightly. This result is not
the same as a “scalability” index of 95.4%, since we do not
consider any of the responses in the variable block to be
“errors” in any sense; rather, they represent potential
contexts of genuinely variable use by the corresponding subset of
students. Of course, the responses rejected in the preliminary steps
are not necessarily erroneous either, but rather represent particular
behaviors of specific individuals that obscure the underlying pattern
in the bulk of the data.
Table 3 shows that the global
sociolinguistic environment is of primordial importance to the
bilinguals; it is in Barcelona, where Catalan is the preferred and
prestige language choice, where almost all these students will speak
Valencian instead of Castilian. This reflects the somewhat exaggerated
perception that Castilian is little heard on the streets of
Barcelona.
Second, there is a block of contexts, not only private (family and
friends) but also public (the high school and the Valencian Institute
of Youth), where Valencian predominates, and within which a subset of
students manifests variable behavior. The two public contexts are of
particular interest because they represent sectors under the authority
of the Valencian Generalitat, the government of the entire autonomous
community, which is the level of government responsible for linguistic
normalization.
Third, another block of contexts, where a second subset of students
exhibits variable behavior, is made up of both individual interactions
(with passers-by on the street in Valencia, with neighbors, with a bank
teller) and institutionalized interactions (the Registry of
Associations, the Tourist Information Office, and the hospital) where
Castilian predominates. The clear boundary between the institutional
sectors in the previous block and in this one can be explained by their
connection with the Community-wide Generalitat in the first case and
the local municipal council in the second.
Valencian is chosen least often in “nonofficial” public
places such as the supermarket or the pub. Ninyoles
1996 has previously suggested that the impersonal character and
the policy of large commercial establishments such as supermarkets
favor the use of Castilian. The pub is a gathering place for the
younger generation, which has the least inclination to use Valencian
despite their increased competence (Ninyoles
1992).
It is of interest that in official public contexts, although there is
great variability, the tendency is more toward Valencian than in the
nonofficial public contexts. Thus, the sociolinguistic generalization
that the prestige variety, here Castilian, is preferred in more formal
settings does not hold true, demonstrating the effects of normalization
as propagated during the 1980s and early 1990s by official and
semi-official institutions.
ATTITUDES
In a bilingual community, although the choice of which language to
use in a given situation may be a simple binary decision, the factors
influencing this choice are normally numerous and diverse. In
particular, the immediate purposes, beliefs, and attitudes that impinge
directly on this choice may be complex and multidimensional. This is
why an understanding of linguistic attitudes has been a favored way
explaining bilingual language choice and has been considered a
prerequisite for successful language planning.
Previous studies in Valencia
Similar adaptations of the matched guise technique, as originally
elaborated by Lambert and colleagues (Anisfeld &
Lambert 1964, Lambert, Frankel & Tucker
1966) were previously applied by Ros
1982, Blas Arroyo 1995, and Gómez Molina 1998 in the city of Valencia.
All of these sampled secondary students, though Gómez Molina
also included evaluators from other age groups. Only the two more
recent studies analyzed the results in terms of evaluator
characteristics, categorizing them by sex, origin, maternal language,
and bilingual ability. In addition, Gómez Molina considered
residential area, sociocultural level, and age group. All three studies
compared standard Valencian, standard Castilian, and nonstandard
Castilian guises, though the nonstandard variety differed; Ros used a
Valencian-accented Castilian, Blas Arroyo a southern variety (the
Castilian of the Canary Islands), and Gómez Molina a variety of
Castilian spoken by primarily Valencian speakers in the region of the
city of Valencia. Ros and Gómez Molina also included nonstandard
urban varieties of Valencian, while Ros and Blas Arroyo included
standard Catalan.
These studies all show that the evaluators differentiate between
standard and nonstandard varieties, as would be expected in a situation
of diglossia, both within Castilian and within Valencian. In addition,
there is a suggestion of a progressive increase in the status of
Valencian at the expense of Castilian. In the 1980s, Ros could conclude
that to speak standard Castilian in Valencia conveyed an image of
higher social standing, intelligence, wealthy ancestry, city residence,
high professional status, and so on, while to speak standard Valencian
evoked interpersonal attraction, regional identity, and familiar
contexts (Ros 1982:695); by the mid-1990s,
however, Valencian was equaling or surpassing Castilian with respect to
certain aspects of social and personal status, although it was still
lagging in the aggregate measure (Blas Arroyo); and by the end of the
1990s, Gómez Molina could, with some qualifications, attribute
greater prestige to Valencian than Castilian. It would seem that the
new legal status of Valencian has been to its benefit, since in less
than 20 years the statuses appear to have been reversed.
Attitudes were shown to vary according to evaluators'
socio-demographic and linguistic characteristics. Thus, women and
evaluators of average sociocultural level are more likely to favor
speakers in Castilian guise, while middle-aged evaluators of higher
sociocultural level are more likely to favor Valencian speakers (Blas
Arroyo, Gómez Molina). In addition, Gómez Molina points
out a marked heterogeneity in the linguistic attitudes of younger
speakers.
These results leave many questions unanswered, however. In the first
place, given the limited institutional support for the diffusion of
Valencian or its establishment in formal domains, as well as the
minimal expansion in usage as analyzed above, what is the significance
of the apparent radical increase reported in the evaluation of standard
Valencian? Second, what is the role of Catalan, aside from the
evaluations generally parallel with those of standard Valencian, as
noted by Blas Arroyo; in particular, what is its status in the
three-way interrelation between the three standard varieties which
underlies the current sociolinguistic situation in Valencia? Finally,
although heterogeneous attitudes of younger speakers have been
documented, it seems crucial to study the socio-demographic and
ideological structure of this diversity statistically. This is
fundamental if we are to predict or to plan for future sociolinguistic
developments.
The recordings
The matched guise technique originally involved one or more
individuals, each speaking the same set of language varieties. This is
not practicable when there are eight varieties to be compared, as
listed in Table 4. We therefore had to use
different speakers for many of the varieties, though two of our
speakers were each recorded in two different guises, their maternal
language (Valencian or Castilian) and an accented version of the other
language. Since the two guises of these speakers were evaluated very
differently (Casesnoves Ferrer 2001), this
serves as a control to show that judgments were influenced by attitudes
toward language varieties and not toward speakers' voice quality,
timbre, or personality. In addition, we controlled for other influences
on evaluations by restricting ourselves to male speakers aged
20–30 whose voice qualities were all somewhat similar. All spoke
on the same topic, home cooking.
Varieties recorded for the subjective reaction
test.
The eight linguistic varieties listed in Table
4 represent different “accents” that can be readily
heard in Valencia (with the exception of the standard Catalan of
Barcelona). These varieties represent two oppositions: an
intralinguistic opposition (varieties differing according to the degree
of standardization), and an interlinguistic opposition (contrasting the
varieties of Castilian to those of Catalan). The two nonstandard
varieties of Valencian are the apitxat variety of the city and
surroundings, and meridional Valencian. The remainder of the
present article focuses exclusively on the results obtained for the
standard varieties.6
We have introduced
the nonstandard varieties and second-language guises here not only to
show that we have controlled to a certain extent for the use of
different voices, but also to situate our analysis in the context of
the larger study and to help explain why we had to modify the
traditional matched guise technique by using multiple speakers. First,
to find somebody in Valencia with native competence in all varieties is
not feasible, in contrast to many other bilingual situations. More
important, in this context the evaluation of status in particular is
extremely sensitive to nonstandard and second-language features. Trying
to use the same speaker for several varieties would have risked
detection, conscious or unconscious, by some of the students, and it
would have resulted in a downgrading of the status
evaluations.
The sample
Our sample was made up of 180 students from three schools in the city
of Valencia (92.8%), and one school in the city of Xàtiva
(located 54 kilometers southwest of the capital) (7.2%), where
Valencian speakers form a majority. We focused on high schools for a
number of reasons. In the entire group of Catalan-speaking territories
of Spain, it is the age cohort between 10 and 25 that shows the
greatest competence in Catalan (cf. Figure
1), owing to its introduction into the educational system
(Reixach 1998:17). However, this increased
linguistic competence, particularly in the written language, does not
correspond to a parallel increase in usage (Ninyoles
1992:492), as we have confirmed. The behavior of young people is
diagnostic of the success of linguistic planning because they presage
the direction of future linguistic change. Moreover, the classroom is
an ideal research site because it provides a large,
“captive” group happy to forgo schoolwork, first in order
to be tested and second, on a subsequent day, to continue filling out
lengthy questionnaires gathering social and linguistic data. The
selection of schools in the city of Valencia was based on five
criteria. First, the districts were categorized by social class (Ninyoles 1996), percentage of immigrant population,
and an index of competence in Valencian (Municipal Register of
Inhabitants of 1996). Second, schools were classified according to
their public or private character and the availability of a full
program of studies in Valencian. During the 1997–98 school year,
there were 63 private and 39 public secondary schools in the city of
Valencia, of which 12 offered the possibility of studying in Valencian
(only 2.3% of the total of secondary students availed themselves of
this opportunity). Table 5 summarizes the
choice of schools according to these criteria. Note that the
sociolinguistic aspects listed in the table refer to the overall
characteristics of the districts, and do not preclude that the schools
themselves all receive students of all social classes, origins, and
competence levels (cf. Table 6).
Choice of secondary schools in the city of Valencia based on
sociolinguistic characteristics of the district and type of school. PEV
indicates availability of study in Valencian.
Comparison of average ratings for three standard guises within all
categories of socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral variables.
Percentages are of the whole sample of 180 students. Key for item
abbreviations appear at the beginning of this section. Of the three
positions in each cell, the first compares Valencian and Castilian, the
second Valencian and Catalan, and the third Catalan and Castilian.
Higher rating is indicated by v, s and t for Valencian, Castilian and
Catalan, respectively, with significant differences in boldface upper
case.
Responses to the subjective reaction test
After listening to each of the speech samples, the student evaluators
rated the speaker on a number of 5-, 7-, or 11-point ordinal scales,
attributing psycho-sociological characteristics to the speakers,
measuring their own identification with the speaker, guessing the type
of employment the speaker is likely to have, and so on. Several of the
scales were grouped into a number of subsets, based largely on the
matched guise literature pertaining both to Valencia and to other
contexts worldwide. Subset (a), status, rated intelligent-stupid (int),
educated-uncultivated (edu), responsible-irresponsible (rsp),
refined-crude (ref), credibility as a university professor (pro),
credibility as a boss (bos), and ability to find a job in the European
Union (job). Subset (b), integrative value, rated
trustworthy-untrustworthy (trs), amusing-boring (ams), likely to be a
friend (frn), and evaluator's identification with speaker (id).
Subset (c), instrumental value, rated ability to find a job in
Valencia. In the analysis we focused on the first two of these subsets,
status and integrative value.
The evaluators: Sociodemographic, behavioral, and
ideological characteristics
To enable an assessment of how linguistic attitudes vary according to
evaluator characteristics, we administered a sociolinguistic
questionnaire as well as a questionnaire about behavior in various
contexts. The sociolinguistic questionnaire contained two types of
question: those pertaining to socio-demographic characteristics known
from previous studies to be associated with attitudinal differences,
and questions about cultural activities, ideology, and linguistic
competence that have not previously been explored in this kind of
study. The need to operationalize the data led us to construct a series
of compound variables, or indices, that represent the synthesis of
several questions.
(a) Linguistic competence: We constructed two ordinal scales
to measure overall competence (combining scales for understanding,
speaking, reading, and writing) in Valencian and in Castilian. Using
the mean value of each scale as a cutoff point, we divided the sample
into two groups or categories, “more competent” versus
“less competent,” both for Valencian and for Castilian.
(b) Culture: This variable combines several questions
related to cultural activities (theater attendance, public conferences,
and musical concerts), the amount of extracurricular lessons, the
number of books read annually in Catalan, Castilian, and foreign
languages, and the amount of music listened to in Catalan, Castilian,
and English. (Note: For us, and for the evaluators, the term
Catalan includes Valencian when it refers to print media or
music.) Again, the average on this scale was used to separate the
“cultured” from the “uncultured” evaluators.
(c) Catalan orientation: This scale was constructed from
questions about identity (by taking the difference between the degree
of identification with Catalans and with Valencians7
In another study (Casesnoves Ferrer
& Sankoff 2003), this “subtractive” index of
Catalan identity proved to be a strong predictor of the use of
Valencian, while the analogous index of Castilian identity operated in
the opposite direction.
) and from questions about preferences
in mass media (the difference in frequency with which they tune in to
Catalan versus Valencian television channels). Here, the above-average
group was called the “Catalanists” and the below-average
one the “non-Catalanists.”
(d) Castilian orientation: This scale was constructed from
questions about identity (by taking the difference between the degree
of identification with Castilians and with Valencians), from questions
about preferences in mass media (the difference in frequency with which
they tune in to Spanish national public or private television channels
versus Valencian ones), and from the difference in the number of books
they read and amount of music they listen to in Castilian versus
Valencian. Note that this scale has more components than the Catalanist
one because of the clear distinction between Castilian and Valencian
cultural genres, whereas in these contexts Valencian and Catalan
essentially coincide. The above-average group was labeled the
“Castilianists” and the below-average one the
“non-Castilianists.”
(e) Use: The questionnaire on behavior in context estimates
use of Valencian and Castilian in various domains by indirect means. As
discussed above, instead of asking directly what language they would
use in a concrete situation, it requested the students to write what
they might say in this context. The answers enabled the
construction of a scale that measured the overall use of Valencian
versus Castilian. The ends of this scale correspond to the exclusive
use of Castilian (the “Castilian speakers”) and to the
exclusive use of Valencian (the “Valencian speakers,”
keeping in mind that the truly exclusive use of the Valencian is
practically impossible, especially for students in the city, who can
all speak Castilian also). The intermediate groups include those
students who use Valencian in one context only (whom we call
“bilingual Castilian speakers”) and those who would use it
in diverse situations (the “bilingual” speakers).
The first column of Table 6 (below) shows
the distribution of our sample of 180 students among these categories
and other categories constructed directly from questionnaire responses:
gender, social class (according to father's occupation),
parents' educational level, origin (birthplace of parents in the
Community or outside), residence, studies entirely in Valencian or not,
political orientation, marks in Valencian language courses, and
membership in organizations outside of school.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GROUPINGS OF EVALUATORS
To avoid prejudging the kinds of attitude patterns prevalent among
the students, and what socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral
variables characterize the group of students manifesting each pattern,
we undertook a heuristic investigation of the attitude results,
simultaneously taking into account as many dimensions of the data as
possible, and retaining as many of the distinctions within each
variable as could be justified by the amount of data available. Three
considerations guided this design
- Because both Castilian and Catalan are key references for these
students, to investigate the structure of the attitudinal diversity
among them we must make a three-way comparison among the responses to
three language varieties in the subjective reaction test. A three-way
comparison is harder to display than a standard two-way comparison,
where a single linear scale suffices.
- To characterize each attitudinal group as fully as possible, and to
avoid the pitfalls of assuming universally linear responses, we must
treat all 37 socio-demographic, behavioral, and ideological categories
on the same initial footing, without any prior linear
dimension-reduction procedure such as principle components or factor
analysis.
- Because each of the questionnaire items on the subjective reaction
test represents a different expression of perceived prestige or
integrative value, each of these 11 components must be examined
separately to obtain a clear idea of what “status” and
“solidarity” really mean in this context.
These considerations leave us with a 3 × 37 × 11 array of
average responses to the three linguistic varieties, according to 11
criteria in the 37 crosscutting socio-demographic, behavioral, and
ideological categories, with three tests of significance within each
cell of the array. This amount of material is not easily visualized,
mostly because of its size and dimensionality, and partly because the
11 criteria do not elicit comparable ranges of response; thus, the
total array is not conducive to a heuristic search for patterns. To
reduce the material somewhat, without losing the essential contrasts,
for each pair of languages within each cell we extract only which one
scored higher, and whether the difference was statistically significant
according to a two-tailed t-test. This is illustrated in Figure 3 for the behavioral categories of
“Valencian-speakers” and “Castilian-speakers”
and the test item measuring how likely it is that the speaker could be
a friend of the evaluator.
Reduction of quantitative results within cells to summary scheme. s =
Castilian, v = Valencian, t = Catalan. Bold upper case indicates
significant difference.
The arrow in Figure 3 leads from the full
display of the results to a summary scheme. In the scheme, in the
Valencian-speakers' cell, the boldface, upper case V in
the first position indicates that the score for Valencian is
significantly higher than the score for Castilian; the lower-case
t in the second position indicates that the score for Catalan
is higher than the score for Valencian, but not significantly so; and
the T in the third position indicates that Catalan is also
significantly higher than Castilian. In the Castilian-speakers'
cell, the two S indicators in the first and third positions
show that the score for Castilian is significantly higher than those
for Valencian and Catalan, and the V that Valencian is
significantly higher than Catalan. A – at a position
would mean there are equal ratings for the two varieties being
compared. (The inclusion of both significant and nonsignificant
differences in Table 6 is justified in the
discussion of Table 7 below.) Table 6 contains the summary cells for all seven
“status” items, all four “integrative value”
items, and all 37 categories of speakers. The first row of data
summarizes the aggregate judgments of the whole sample.
Categories displaying the “strongly centralist”
pattern.
In these data, two status items are relatively invariant no matter
how the sample is subdivided. The item “professor” clearly
evokes an association with Catalan for all categories of evaluators,
while “ability to find work in the EU” is equally clearly
associated with Castilian. The other items show considerably more
variability, allowing us to compare and contrast the various
categories.
The first row shows that, for the sample as a whole, Castilian is
rated better than the other two for all status items except
“professor,” significantly better than the other two for
the status items “responsible,” “refined,” and
“ability to find work in the EU,” and significantly better
than Valencian for “boss.” Catalan is rated higher than the
other two for “professor.” With respect to integrative
value, however, Valencian is rated significantly better than the other
two varieties for all four items, with little to choose between Catalan
and Castilian.
In examining the other rows (categories), we searched for clear
patterns of differences that departed from the overall tendency. One
such pattern is exemplified by the Castilian-speakers, who rated the
Castilian guise significantly higher than Catalan on two additional
status items, “educated” and “intelligent,” and
also rated Castilian higher, Valencian lower, and Catalan much lower
for integrative value items. Essentially the same pattern is manifested
by the evaluators “less competent in Valencian,” which is
not surprising since this group overlaps substantially with the
“Castilian-speakers.” Focusing on the integrative value
items, this pattern also occurs, although with less statistical
significance, for the “immigrants” (who are almost
exclusively from Castilian-speaking regions) and the politically
“right” categories, as summarized in Table 7. We will call this pattern “strongly
centralist.”
Note that lack of statistical significance in these cases is a
consequence more of subsample size than of the size of the difference
between two scores. Indeed, for both the “immigrants” and
the political “right,” the fact that Castilian scores
higher than Valencian on all four integrative value items is
significant at the p < (0.5)4 < 0.07 level,
even if none of the differences for the individual items is
significant. The possibility of detecting such consistent patterning
across a range of items is a justification for including both
significant and nonsignificant differences in displays like Tables
6 and 7.
A quite different pattern is found for the “Catalanists”
(see Table 8). For these speakers, Castilian
is no longer the unequivocal language of prestige. For three of the six
items where it is rated highest for the whole sample, it is surpassed
by either or both Catalan and Valencian; and for two other items,
Castilian still leads but the difference has lost statistical
significance. At the same time, Catalan has replaced Valencian with the
highest ratings for most integrative value items, while Castilian is
rated significantly lower. We will call this pattern “strongly
nationalist,” and we also detect it, with some variations, among
residents of Xàtiva, evaluators “competent in
Valencian,” those who actually speak it, and evaluators on the
political left.
Categories displaying the “strongly nationalist”
pattern.
Along with the strong centralists in Table
7, we find a number of categories in Table
9 that we can characterize as “moderately
centralist.” These categories downrate Catalan as much as the
strong centralists do with respect to both status and integrative value
items, but they contrast with the strong centralists in not having a
strong preference for either Castilian or Valencian on the integrative
value items. These categories include “studies in
Castilian,” “Castilianists,”
“non-Catalanists,” and the political center.
Subgroups displaying the “moderately centralist”
pattern.
Still another centralist pattern, the “weakly centralist”
pattern shown in Table 10, differs from the
“moderately centralist” pattern in that Castilian, though
still rated higher than Catalan for all integrative value items, is not
statistically higher for most of them, and indeed tends to be rated
somewhat lower than Valencian in this area (though not with the
statistical significance found in the whole sample). In addition, these
categories do not downrate Catalan with respect to status items any
more than does the whole sample of evaluators. This pattern pertains to
residents of the city of Valencia (the bulk of the sample), and more
specifically to the “uncultured” evaluators, the
politically “undefined,” “passing” students,
and those whose parents had primary education, but also to the
“upper” class.
Categories displaying the “weakly centralist”
pattern.
Finally, we can identify a second nationalist pattern, which we
characterize as “moderately nationalist.” Students in these
categories (Table 11) still rate Catalan
higher than Castilian for the integrative value items, but the
difference is generally not significant. Indeed, it is Valencian that
unequivocally rates highest on these items. In addition, students in
these categories tend to rate either Valencian or Catalan, or both,
higher than Castilian on one of the status items,
“intelligent,” in contrast to the whole sample. Recall,
however, that the strong nationalists downrated Castilian with respect
to almost all of the status items.
Categories displaying the “moderately nationalist”
pattern.
What of the remaining categories in Table
6? The male and female students have higher ratings of Catalan
and Castilian, respectively, for the integrative value items, but none
of these differences are significant. Moreover, the male evaluators do
not manifest other aspects of the “moderately nationalist”
pattern, such as the downrating of Castilian on the
“intelligent” item, or its significant downrating on the
integrative value items. Similarly, the female group shows a downrating
of Castilian compared to Valencian for the integrative value items that
is too consistent to warrant inclusion in the “weakly
centralist” pattern.
Similar observations preclude us from including
“memberships” and “no memberships” in the
“moderately nationalist” and “weakly
centralist” patterns, or for assigning “less competent in
Castilian” and “competent in Castilian” to these same
patterns. The “lower” class also shows no significant
differences permitting us to assign it to the “weakly
centralist” pattern.
Parents' secondary education and “mixed” origin both
manifested patterns closer to the full sample than to any centralist or
nationalist pattern.
VALIDATION OF THE PATTERNS
In Table 6, we presented a profile for each
category of each independent variable, consisting of summary cells for
seven indices of status and four indices of integrative value across
all the students in this category. There are 37 such profiles in all.
We then noted that most (26 out of 37) of these profiles can be grouped
into five general attitudinal patterns. For example, the category of
“Castilian speakers” has much higher (>>) average
values for several indicators of status of Castilian compared to
Catalan, and higher or equal values (≥) for Castilian compared to
Valencian. Students in this category also assign far higher values
(>>) to indicators of the integrative value of Castilian than to
those for Valencian, and higher (>) for Valencian than for Catalan.
This “strongly centralist” pattern is found to a lesser
degree for “immigrants” and for some other categories
identified on the basis on socio-demographic, ideological, and
behavioral variables.
Before interpreting this set of patterns, we should establish that
they summarize or reflect attitudes of individual students. The fact
that the patterns were detected on the basis of averages within the
categories is no guarantee that individuals manifest them; a pattern
might merely reflect a compromise among the very heterogeneous
attitudes in a category.
To validate the patterns then, we should see to what extent the
individuals in each socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral
category manifest attitudes in accord with the pattern associated with
that category in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. The procedure
for doing this is as follows:
- Formalize the definition of the five patterns.
- Verify whether each student's responses satisfy the definition
of one or more of the patterns.
- See what proportion of the students in each category fits the
pattern associated with that category in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.
The original identification of the patterns relied less on particular
items in the subjective reactions than on overall comparisons between
languages on the ensemble of status items and the ensemble of
integrative value items. Thus, in the first step of our procedure, the
formalizing of the pattern definitions, we used a single index of
status, calculated as the average of the seven status scores, and a
single index of integrative value, the average of the four integration
scores, all measured on a scale of zero to 100. The conversion to a
common scale was necessitated by the fact that the responses to the
items were originally scored variously on 5-, 7-, or 11-point scales.
In terms of these indices, the above description of the five patterns
is summarized in formal notation in Table
12.
Definition of the five patterns in terms of the relative values of
indices of status and integration for the three standard varieties.
Note that the definitions of A, B, and C are implicationally related
(A⇒B⇒C), but scores satisfying A are classed only as such,
and those remaining scores satisfying B are classed as
such.
Before we can carry out the second step, associating individuals with
patterns, we must specify what is meant by the symbols, ≥, >, and
>>, namely numerical values chosen to balance two criteria: (i)
to maximize the number of informants allocated to one or another
pattern; and (ii) to allocate roughly comparable proportions to the
different patterns. In addition, to take into account methodological
and statistical fluctuations in informant scores, we should allow a
certain deviation, or “error,” from the fixed threshold for
each criterion before excluding an informant from a pattern. While this
helps satisfy both criteria above, the value chosen should be low
enough (iii) to minimize overlapping membership (informants in two or
several patterns).
To look for optimal values for the contrasts symbolized by ≥,
>, and >>, as well as the error parameter, we heuristically
searched the space of possible values, changing one or other of the
values by 1 wherever this improved the allocation of students according
to the three criteria. The final stages in the search, partly
summarized in Table 13, settled on values of
0, 7, and 17 for ≥, >, and >>, respectively. For example,
to strictly satisfy S>>T, an informant must have a score for
Castilian that exceeds his score for Catalan by 17 or more.
Results of optimal classification of informants into the five
patterns, for different values of >, >>, and permitted error.
A = strong centralist, B = moderate centralist, C = weak centralist, D
= strong nationalist, E = moderate nationalist. Eleven informants
missing data on one or several indices of status or integration were
set aside.
The value of the error parameter is 6. (For example, to satisfy
S>> T, it is only necessary that an informant have a score of 17
− 6 = 11 more for S than for T.) Allowing greater error values
has the advantage of classifying more of the informants into patterns,
but the disadvantage of including a larger number of informants in two
patterns simultaneously. On the other hand, a smaller error value will
exclude more individuals from all patterns, but it will also result in
less overlap.
The choice of values for >, >>, and the error is validated
in Table 13, where it can be seen that a
small decrease in > or a small increase in permitted error allocates
more informants into two patterns. An increase in > or decrease in
permitted error excludes more informants from all five patterns.
Changes of >> affect only the distribution of informants among
the three centralist patterns.
Note that the five patterns formalized in Table
13 represent but a small fraction of the hundreds of possible
patterns using various comparisons of S, V, and T based on the three
relations ≥, >, and >>. The fact that 118 out of the 169
informants (70%) fall in the five categories, even taking into account
that we allowed a margin of error, testifies to the pertinence of these
patterns for individual informants.
More important, however, is the relationship between the pattern
membership of the individuals and that of the socio-demographic,
ideological, and behavioral categories they belong to, and evaluating
this is the final step in the validation of the patterns. It would not
be astonishing to find a close correspondence, since the patterns are
based, albeit very indirectly, on averages of the individual scores
within the categories, but neither would it be surprising if such a
correspondence was very weak or undetectable, given three factors:
- the great heterogeneity within the categories;
- the reduction of the 11 item scores to summary status and
integrative value indices; and
- the 30% of unclassified informants.
Table 14 shows the correspondence between
the patterns and the socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral
variables. Excluded are variables that provoked no clear-cut
differentiations in attitude: sex, the degree of competence in
Castilian, and membership in associations. In Table
14, percentages are calculated from the number of category
members classified in each pattern, out of the total number of
informants classified in that pattern. Informants classified in two
patterns simultaneously have been counted twice during the calculation
of percentages, once in each of the two patterns. The column entitled
“highest” indicates the pattern for which the highest
percentage of its informants is in the category in question. The
essential comparison for the validation procedure is between this and
the last column (“original pattern”), which indicates the
pattern found for the category in the preceding section, based on the
summary cell comparisons of averages for individual indices of status
and integration.
Percentage of individuals classified into each pattern who belong to
indicated category defined by a socio-demographic, ideological, or
behavioral variable
Note first that for 15 of the 26 categories defined by these
variables, the pattern associated with the category, previously
identified through the averages for the seven status variables and the
four variables of integration, is identical to the pattern to which the
largest proportion of informants belongs, according to criteria
displayed in Table 13 (first row). In a
further seven of the eleven remaining categories, the difference is
small between the highest membership percentage and that of the pattern
which the category was identified as displaying in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, and the two patterns are on the same side of
the centralist/nationalist divide. In only two cases – the
“uncultured” and the “undefined” – are
the differences large, and in two other cases, the
“cultured” and the “upper” class, the
difference is between a moderate or weak centralist assignment and a
moderate nationalist one.
Given the rather intricate and heuristic way patterns A, B, C, D, and
E were proposed on the basis of three-way comparisons of the language
varieties on all eleven indices, followed by the recognition of common
trends in various categories, it is gratifying that a simplified
definition of these patterns based on individuals' average scores
succeeds in classifying a substantial majority of the speakers in one
or another of the patterns. Moreover, in most cases, if a category
comprises a larger proportion of the speakers in one pattern than in
any other pattern, then that category was one of those that motivated
the characterization of the pattern in the first place. Where this does
not hold, at least the category is generally associated with closely
related patterns in the two analyses. These results are not intuitively
surprising, but from a methodological viewpoint, it was not logically
necessary that such a large proportion of speakers should fall into one
and only one of the patterns; more of them could well have fallen
outside all of the patterns. Nor was it mathematically necessary that
so many of the categories be identified with the same pattern in both
analyses; it could well have been the case that most of the categories
originally identified as centralist would turn out to be most closely
associated with one of the nationalist patterns, and vice versa. That
these contrary possibilities were not realized attests to the
consistency and coherence of our definitions and procedures, and to the
“reality” of the patterns we identified.
INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
What have been the effects of linguistic normalization in Valencia?
It is clear that the introduction of Valencian into the educational
system has arrested the decline of competence in this language, and it
has actually reversed it substantially in the younger generation.8
We must remember, however, that this takes
place against a background of universal competence in Castilian. The
increased competence in Valencian is an increase in bilingualism; there
is no increasing population of Valencian monolinguals.
Paradoxically, however, the contrast highlighted in the title of this
article – that between usage and competence patterns – is
most apparent in this generation. The numerical predominance of
Castilian speakers in the city of Valencia and the prestige of
Castilian among all but the most nationalist students make it the
language of choice in public interactions, particularly outside of
school and other government-associated contexts. Indeed, among all age
groups, the apparent revitalization is not immediately reflected in
levels of usage. Official statistics show a slow increase in usage over
the past 10 to 12 years, but the family environment remains the primary
locus for Valencian.
Our more detailed examination of context-specific tendencies does
reveal another dimension of revitalization. The implicational scale
analysis suggests that normalization policies have had a distinct
effect in expanding the domains of usage of Valencian. This scale can
be seen as dividing the students into three groups: those who report
never using Valencian (about half), those reporting the use of
Valencian in all contexts (about an eighth), and a transitional group.
Within the transitional group, there is increased use of Valencian as
the contexts become more familiar, with two exceptions. The most
favorable context for Valencian is in Barcelona, where many students
who do not otherwise use Valencian respond positively to
communicational needs and local norms by communicating in their own
variety of Catalan. This indicates the potential, under the right
conditions, for translating increased competence in Valencian into
increased usage. The second exception, and the more important one, is
that in certain public contexts (those with some connection with some
direct or indirect government connection) use of Valencian increases,
compared even with communications among friends and neighbors. Examples
of such contexts are the secretariats of the high schools and the
Valencian Institute of Youth. Were normalization to advance, this would
require not only that more students learn Valencian, as is presently
the case, but also that some individuals competent in Valencian begin
to favor it outside the family context, and not only on trips to
Catalonia. The official contexts mentioned here appear to facilitate
this process.
The question remains: What are the prospects for expanding the
transitional group of speakers by inducing competent speakers to use
Valencian, especially in the city of Valencia, where Castilian
predominates heavily? Our attitudinal study reveals details about the
crosscutting forces at play in language choice. We showed that there is
a substantial segment of our sample, almost half, who can be classified
as “nationalist.” The strong nationalists tend to be more
competent in Valencian, politically progressive, and positively
oriented toward Catalan. They evaluate Castilian negatively on the
measures of integration and evaluate Catalan relatively highly, even on
measures of status. Many of these will already be among the most
consistent users of Valencian. The moderate nationalists, on the other
hand, retain much of the traditional image of Castilian as having the
highest status, though solidarity is expressed more with Valencian and
Catalan. It is these middle-class, cultured children of
university-educated Valencians, achieving excellent grades in Valencian
and often electing to study in Valencian, who represent the greatest
potential for the expanded use of this variety in the city of
Valencia.
In contrast, those students whom we classified in the centralist
patterns – even those who are weakly centralist – show
little prospect for entering the “transitional” group of
speakers. The large majority of them do not come from
Valencian-speaking families and thus will not even use Valencian in
this context. And though the weak and moderate centralists show
solidarity with Valencian, the status scores indicate that it remains
stigmatized compared to Castilian and thus has little prospect of being
used in public situations, except perhaps in contexts with a majority
of Valencian speakers, such as in Xàtiva.
Thus, the attitude study demonstrates that conditions are favorable
for further advancement of Valencian, especially among informants
exhibiting the nationalist attitude patterns. It seems clear, however,
that Valencian will make few inroads as far as the centralist students
are concerned.
Our analysis assumes the continuation of the current
socio-demographic situation. A strengthening of recent immigration
trends from Castilian-speaking regions will disfavor linguistic
normalization in the city of Valencia, but any increase in migration
from towns and villages like Xàtiva will work in the opposite
direction and could have a decisive effect on expanding contexts of
usage of Valencian.
