This paper discusses the experiences and the negotiation of the social image "I'm the best in English", of three primary school girls of Catalan background, in their immediate environment (home, school, and peer group). Unlike what is expected in this region, these girls have been raised in English at home. The Spanish and Catalan-speaking parents decided to socialise their daughters in English owing to various reasons discussed widely in the literature on Family Language Policy (King & Fogle (2006). In this particular case, the parents reproduce the various tropes around English as the language of the future, and the discourses around the commodification of English. However, the parents' histories, family stories, and the decisions that they make reveal much more complex processes. English is constructed as a clear mark of how they want to present themselves socially as "a family". The parents' past life experiences, and their engagement with English seem to play an important role in their present courses of action regarding their daughters' socialisation, and their imagined future (Bryant and Knight 2019). As a result, the girls, aged 10 at the time of the fieldwork, position themselves as, and embody the social image of, "being the best" English-speakers in their social environments. In addition, we analyse certain chronotopes (Bakthin 1981, De Fina 2022) that might help explain this desired personhood, as well as the processes that it triggers and shapes within Catalan society. This case reveals ongoing social transformations in Spanish society, where learning English is constructed as a high-priority skill that can be converted into (inter)cultural and economic capital. The girls' practices and views were collected ethnographically, by two researchers. We observed them in an online after-school drama club over the course of 3 months during the pandemic, and conducted several in-depth virtual family conversations. The online environment favoured the participation of the researchers' children as spontaneous participants (Mansfield 2022). This allowed us to create a safe space to share children's experiences and views, the methodological implications of which will be discussed during the presentation.
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bryant, R. and D. Knight (2019) The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (New Departures in Anthropology).
De Fina, A. (2022). 'I especially loved the little Nana dancing on the balcony': The emergence, formation, and circulation of chronotopes in mass-mediated communication. Language in Society, 1-2
King, K. & L. Fogle (2006) Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents' Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9:6, 695-712
Mansfield, M.A. (2022) Socializing for Success: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of High Socio-Economic Status Multilingual Families in the UK Brexit Context. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Southampton.
