Ideologies on multilingual practices at a rural Catalan school

Authors

  • Maria Sabaté Dalmau Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v3i1.37

Keywords:

Minority Language Schooling, Catalan, Ideologies of Language, Globalisation, Multilingualism

Abstract

This ethnographic study analyses ideologies on multilingualism and attitudes toward cultural diversity in a rural Catalan school located in a semirural locality which is undergoing a series of changes linked to the dynamics of globalisation. Firstly, it describes the demolinguistic processes that are affecting this small school dedicated to the teaching of and in Catalan at the turn of the century. Secondly, the study links these processes to the current linguistic and social orders of the school by looking at both the local and global social values indexed by the languages that now circulate within the institution. Thirdly, it examines the ideologies on multilingualism of the educational agents involved in the schooling process (teachers, students, parents), and attempts to understand where the historically-informed institutional stance of the school comes from. Finally, it examines how the defence of the teaching in a minority language-only and the investment in depicting the school as a Catalan monolingual monocultural space is legitimised in a largely unexplored arena: the rural Catalan schooling of the global era.

Author Biography

  • Maria Sabaté Dalmau, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
    Maria Sabaté Dalmau is a PhD candidate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She conducts research on intercultural communication and language uses and ideologies in multilingual and migration contexts, within the field of linguistic anthropology. She has completed her Masters in Applied Linguistics at the UAB and her postgraduate education in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She has been a junior lecturer at the UAB and has published her research internationally.

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Published

2009-07-06

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Sabaté Dalmau, M. (2009). Ideologies on multilingual practices at a rural Catalan school. Sociolinguistic Studies, 3(1), 37-60. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v3i1.37