European Journal of Language Policy

Meeting language-in-education policy aims: Catalonia in the twenty-first century

European Journal of Language Policy (2014), 6, (1), 5–21.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3828/ejlp.2014.3
Language
English
Pages
17

Abstract

This article focuses on the language-in-education policy of the region of Catalonia, examining some specific effects of the shift in medium-of-instruction (MOI) from exclusively Spanish to largely Catalan-medium education, by means of an innovative fieldwork experiment. The new MOI resulted from several important pieces of legislature, including the 1983 Llei de Normalització Lingüística, which had the aim of "extending knowledge of Catalan". The present article aims to test whether this objective has been met. Testing (such as the nivell de suficiència de català examination) and decrees (Catalunya 2002) indicate that a key aspect of Catalan linguistic knowledge is the ability to identify non-standard language use, which is often manifested as interference with Spanish. For my fieldwork experiment, 50 participants were asked to identify non-standard language use in both Catalan and Spanish. The participants belonged to two generations: one educated in Spanish, and the other in Catalan (under the current language immersion programme). Comparing the results of the two age groups shows that subjects educated through the medium of Catalan are significantly more adept at identifying non-standard language use in Catalan. This specific language skill has thus been extended to the population of Catalonia. While the identification of non-standard language was not explicitly targeted in the 1983 LNL, it can still be argued that the objective of extending knowledge of Catalan has been at least partly fulfilled.

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Hawkey, James