Language use in a bilingual setting: a Catalan immersion school

This paper is based on a questionnaire about language attitudes, which was administered to the students of level 8 in Prat de la Manta school, last year, in L'Hospitalet, a town in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, one of several on the outskirts of the city where most of the immigration from other parts of the Spanish state is concentrated. This school was one of the first in Catalonia to apply the immersion programme. The pupils are 14 years old and all of them were born in Catalonia. This test is only a small sample, but, nevertheless, I think it is a paradigm of the situation in other Catalan immersion schools in urban areas. As Siguan, Woolard and other authors point out, the speed with which immigrants acquire Catalan depends, among other things, on where immigrants settle; a factor which, as is shown in the results of this test, has a decisive influence in second-generation immigrants. The questionnaire was divided into two parts: the first one aimed to discover the linguistic and social background of the students and their families, and the second investigated the choice of language in their social contexts and other kinds of activities (watching television, reading comics, books, etc.) taking into account the frequency and occasions in which Catalan and Castilian languages are used. Vie test has a total of 35 questions. The research raises points concerning the prevailing language used by mixed couples, second-generation immigrants, and language and social class. Results from the test show the negative influence of Franco, during whose dictatorship Catalan was forbidden in education and official use. In this respect, it is interesting to note the difference in language attitudes between the immigrants of the late 1920s and the period of the Spanish Second Republic, and those who moved to Catalonia in the Francoist period. In conclusion, this paper notes the limitations of education and language planning policies, in relation to what the Catalan sociolinguist Xavier Lamuela calls 'social strengths' in Catalonia.