The Valencian revival: Why usage lags behind competence

Abstract

This study of bilingual competence, linguistic attitudes, and language choice among secondary students in Valencia explores the effects of linguistic normalization since the removal of Franco's repressive measures against the Valencian language variety. The introduction of Valencian into the educational system and other measures have substantially reversed the decline of levels of competence and expanded its domains of usage but have only marginally decreased the dominance of Castilian. A survey of attitudes toward Valencian, Catalan (Barcelona variety) and Castilian reveals two distinct groups of patterns. One ascribes status and integrative value chiefly to Castilian, the other to Valencian and Catalan. Identifying the students manifesting the variants of these patterns according to socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral factors shows how the current political dynamic between progressive nationalist forces and anti-Catalanist, Castilian-speaking forces is reflected in ongoing attitudinal divergence.Research was supported in part by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Sankoff is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and holds the Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Genomics.

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