TY - JOUR AU - Ferrer, Raquel Casesnoves PY - 2011/12/31 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The effect of prestige in language maintenance: The case of Catalan in Valencia JF - Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics JA - ESUKA-JEFUL VL - 2 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.12697/jeful.2011.2.1.04 UR - https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/jeful/article/view/jeful.2011.2.1.04 SP - 57-74 AB - <p><span style="left: 218.761px; top: 229.82px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.988081);">The fact of speaking a language instead of another at a </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 249.86px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.00651);">specific moment in a person’s life depends on many and diverse </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 269.779px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.987336);">factors such as immigration, the language acquired and spoken at </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 289.819px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.970248);">home, and what the dominant and official language is. In addition, </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 309.859px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.97374);">in situations where it is possible to choose, speaking one language </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 329.778px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.971764);">instead of another is not a neutral choice, in that the values associ</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 349.819px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.920049);">ated with languages have a lot to do with that choice. In the Valencian </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 369.859px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.988458);">Community, in Spain, two languages officially coexist: Castilian, </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 389.778px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.978511);">the official language within the whole Spanish State, and Catalan, </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 409.818px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.962609);">the historical language of the territory, which is undergoing a proc</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 429.858px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.95547);">ess of revitalization since the beginnings of the 1980s. At that time,</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 449.777px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.986113);">Catalan was perceived as a second-rate language, associated with </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 469.818px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.00486);">peasantry, with the rural context and uncultured people from the </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 489.858px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.987386);">lower social classes. The technique employed to reveal these val</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 509.777px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.944566);">ues or stereotypes, namely the matched-guise technique (Ros 1984),</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 529.817px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.979859);">was used again during the 90s (Blas Arroyo 1995, Gómez Molina</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 549.857px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.979649);">1998) for evaluating the effects of the revitalization program. The </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 569.776px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.02661);">results of this work showed that Catalan was gaining more and </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 589.817px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.957526);">more prestige, i.e., it was increasingly associated with modern peo</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 609.857px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.988308);">ple, city life, learning and social progress. An underlying, though </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 629.776px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.00438);">never proved, assumption was that the remarkable improvement </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 649.816px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.971646);">in the image of Catalan would be reflected in its use, which would </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 669.856px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.998979);">also be more frequent and more widespread. At the beginning of</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 689.775px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.941533);">the new millennium the matched-guise technique was applied again,</span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 709.816px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.978004);">with one new twist: to assess the real extent of prestige associated </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 729.856px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.985388);">with speaking Catalan (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2003). Ten years </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 749.775px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.979972);">later that study was replicated in order to observe the evolution of </span><span style="left: 141.72px; top: 769.815px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.938932);">linguistic attitudes as well as the progress of the linguistic revitali</span>za<span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 89.8998px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.982097);">tion process. In this presentation, we compare the two data sets to </span><span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 109.819px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.01743);">evaluate the effects of linguistic attitudes on the use of Catalan.</span><span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 129.859px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.01872);">Has Catalan gained prestige throughout the years? If so, does it </span><span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 149.899px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(1.02067);">have an influence on language use or, on the contrary, are there </span><span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 169.819px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.95856);">any other factors such as identity that play a more important role in </span><span style="left: 94.5067px; top: 189.859px; font-size: 18.3333px; font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.964547);">influencing the choice of speaking Catalan?</span></p> ER -