Linguistic attitudes, ideologies, and behaviors of Latin American and Chinese immigrants in public secondary schools in Catalonia (original) (raw)
The study uses focus group interviews with secondary-school students and teachers and ethnographic participant observation to explore the linguistic attitudes, ideologies, and behaviors of Spanish-speaking Latin American and Chinese of immigrants in four Barcelona-area secondary schools. Latino participants mostly expressed negative feelings towards Catalan corroborating quantitative findings (Huguet & Janés 2009, Newman Trenchs, & Ng. 2009). This negativity was, however, narrowly focused on Catalan as an obstacle as language of instruction. Objections diminished with increased receptive proficiency in particular when students expressed a sense of cultural acceptance and personal concern by teachers. This trend was strongest at the only school that used a structured immersion model as linguistic support; for some students there Catalan proficiency actually came to be reframed as a marker of successful adaptation and academic achievement. By contrast, local varieties of Spanish received considerable rejection as an identity threat at all sites even years after immigration. Overall, Chinese participants showed equal difficulties in everyday use of either of both official languages. Participants’ lack of previous knowledge of any Romance language made teachers shift among a variety of strategies such as switching among Catalan, Chinese, and Spanish to facilitate language learning and integration. However, individuals’ language practices and attitudes seemed more associated with relationships outside the classroom than educators’ actions, as immigrants reflected the linguistic preference of their autochthonous friends or parents. Results show that the macrolinguistic goals of language policies are crucially dependent on varying and idiosyncratic local social and educational contexts and individual factors. Yet support for social and academic integration—as opposed to a discourse that confuses integration with assimilation—appears to be most successful at achieving harmonious active bilingualism.
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