Linguistic mudes: how to become a new speaker in Catalonia

Abstract

New speakers of Catalan have come to represent, from a demolinguistic perspective, a substantial part of the community of speakers. Of those who presently speak Catalan as an “habitual language”, 41.6 percent are native speakers of Spanish. In this article, we shall follow up the various ways in which native Castilian speakers incorporate Catalan into their lives. This happens, as we will show, in specific biographical junctures that we call mudes, a Catalan term referring to (often reversible) variations in social performance. Our analysis is based on a qualitative study that included 24 interviews and 15 focus groups covering a total of 105 people of different sexes and linguistic, educational, social and residential backgrounds. We shall give a general overview of these mudes as we typified them: when subjects entered primary school, secondary school, the university, the job market, when creating a new family and when they had children (if they did). The study of linguistic mudes provides, in our view, a new and productive perspective on how people develop their linguistic repertoire, their attachment to specific languages and the significance of these aspects for social identity. It facilitates a processual, time-sensitive analysis that allows to contextualise and critique ethnonationalist discourses that have often saturated our understanding of language use.

Why Do Adults Decide to Learn a Minority Language? A Study of the Motivation(S) of Potential New Speakers of West Frisian

“…In other words, a new speaker is a person who successfully acquires a foreign language, a 'successful learner'. This label applies especially-though not exclusively-to those who adopt the minority language as part of their multilingual repertoire (see Pujolar & Puigdevall, 2015), and they are "construed as the desired outcome of language and education policies that aim at sustaining their usage" (Costa, 2015, p. 128). In fact, in many minority contexts, new speakers have become a significant sociolinguistic group, often even found to be more positive towards the language than 'native speakers' themselves (see O'Rourke & Ramallo, 2013) and characterised as a militant group, as they frequently staunchly defend their choice/right to learn-and use-the language (McLeod & O'Rourke, 2015, p. 260-285).…”

“…The learners in Jaffe's study lived in Corsica and were surrounded by the language in their everyday lives, which makes it more likely for them to not only integrate in the community, but also to need the language in a practical sense. Similarly, learners of Catalan have also been found to have instrumental motivation, since they feel the need to adopt this language when they enter the labour market, and because the use of Catalan is related to the pursuit of educational qualifications from secondary school to university (Pujolar & Puigdevall, 2015).…”

“…The number of speakers of West Frisian is estimated at around 480,000, up to 27% of whom are new speakers of the language (Belmar, 2018). Even though the percentage of new speakers is smaller than that of other minority language contexts-for instance, it is reported at around 42% for Catalan in Catalonia (see Pujolar & Puigdevall, 2015)-, this new profile of speaker should be taken into account when designing, for example, language promotion campaigns, and it is therefore essential to study their characteristics.…”

Towards a parental muda for new Basque speakers: Assessing emotional factors and language ideologies

“…Pujolar and Puigdevall (: 169) note that, as fluid processes, mudas are “open to (re)negotiation by subjects and their multiple interlocutors.” In other words, muda s should be understood as situated within and constrained by relational factors. Eva's case demonstrates how her own Basque language choices were mediated by her son's newly developed and expanding repertoire.…”

Authentic language and legitimate speakers: Language management in Catalonia and Provence

“…Authentic speakers, in a variety of settings, Woolard states, ‘have all been described as sharing the aura of authenticity and its familiar traits: rough, gritty, physical, sexual, earthy; in short, “real” ’ (p. 24). Pujolar and Puigdevall () have described how new speakers of Catalan respectively take decisions to incorporate their chosen language into their lives, using the concept of mudes, ‘a Catalan term referring to (often reversible) variations in social performance’ (Pujolar and Puigdevall : 167); a major factor in experiencing a ‘successful’ muda would appear to hinge on how well new speakers can effectively assimilate some or all of these features in order to sound ‘real’ or a legitimate speaker for other Catalan speakers. A number of research participants in Woolard's data reveal how difficult this has proved to attain, with some of them recalling ‘the pain and snubs they had experienced as youngsters because of their ethnolinguistic identification’ (p. 294) as Castilian speakers.…”