Legitimacy and social class in Catalan language education for adults

Abstract

Adult students of Catalan are worthy of study because they reveal complexities underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. Far from fitting into neat bundles aligning language of origin, social class, and national orientation, the students in this study exemplify the breakdown of boundaries traditionally assumed to exist between Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. These findings point to a disjuncture between public discourse and the lived experience of language users. Close examination of actual speakers' motivations, classroom performance, and national orientations reveals much more nuance; in this classroom, the fault lines run along social class divisions, which are themselves contrary to stereotypes. This finding advances studies of linguistic authority, suggesting that native speakers may be positioned differently in different sociolinguistic contexts, depending on their social class and whether the language in question is an institutionalized code or a minoritized one.