This paper explores language ideologies in Catalan families that have (partially) abandoned intergenerational transmission in favour of English as a choice. This parental language investment (Duchêne, 2016) in the home is partly grounded in the English deficit discourses that decry the low standards of foreign language teaching in Catalonia (Castanyer, 2016). Socioeconomic background shapes the potential investment in English outside school, through not only extracurricular and leisure activities but also family language choice, making English "the most unequal subject" in Catalan schools (Rodríguez, 2015). As a relatively recent phenomenon, speaking English to children for their future mobility, study and professional opportunities has not been explored from the children's viewpoints. From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, I will examine the strategies that children use to navigate this family language policy, the values they attach to the different languages in their lives and the family's positioning in the Catalan sociolinguistic context. This paper will focus on selected families in the Barcelona province and will analyse data obtained through observations of English-language leisure activities, children's language portraits (Busch, 2018) and interviews with parents and other adult relatives.
Through ethnographic participant observation, I will examine how children make sense of a multilingual environment in which parents plan family and leisure activities in English along the lines of immersion ideologies. How do children comply with, resist and adapt this family language policy in leisure activities such as playgroups and games? In parallel, I will analyse the biographical narratives that they tell to explain their language portraits, in which children reflect on and represent their linguistic repertoire by colouring a body silhouette. These situated language portraits provide a window onto the children's experiential perspectives, subject positioning and affective stances to the different language varieties in their repertoires (Busch, 2018). The analysis will also draw on the parents' and other adult relatives' discourses in order to gauge the social positioning of families in the local language ideological debates. As Sunyol (2021) claimed in relation to an elite school, plurilingual policies with English can index a neutral stance towards the ongoing political struggles over Catalan immersion education. In addition, English might complement or even replace Catalan as a traditional means for social mobility for Castilian-speaking families. In line with the symposium goals, this paper will illuminate the articulation of parental future aspirations and kids' views of language as socially produced and distributed in upwardly mobile families.
Busch, Brigitta (2018). The language portrait in multilingualism research: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 236, 1-13.
Castanyer, Gemma (2016, 19 November). Parlar-los en anglès. Ara Criatures. URL: https://criatures.ara.cat/familia/parlar-angles-als-fills-no-llengua-materna_1_1467822.html
Duchêne, A. (2016). Investissement langagier et économie politique [Language investment and political economy]. Langage et Société, 157,73–96.
Rodríguez, Pau (2015, 18 June). L'angès s'erigeix com l'assignatura més desigual. El Diari de l'Educació. URL: https://diarieducacio.cat/langles-serigeix-com-lassignatura-mes-desigual/
Sunyol, Andrea (2021). Now it's "on demand": The Catalan language in an elite international school. Journal of Language and Law, 75, 126-143.
