Parochial Linguistic Education: Patterns of an Enduring Friction within a Divided Catalonia

Abstract

Amid the tensions created by the secession push in Catalonia (Spain), an important conflicting issue has been the “immersion linguistic educational system”, in which the Catalan language has precedence throughout all of the primary and secondary school curricula. Here, we present an analysis of a survey (n = 1002) addressing features of linguistic and political opinion profiles with reference to the mother language and feelings of national identity. The results show that the mother language is a factor that differentiated the participants in terms of common linguistic uses and opinions about the “immersion educational system”. These results were confirmed when segmenting respondents via their feelings of national self-identification. The most distinctive political opinions consisted of either asserting or denying the damage to social harmony produced by the secession campaign. Overall, the findings show that a major fraction of the Catalonian citizenry is subjected to an education system that does not meet their linguistic preferences. We discuss these findings, connecting them to an ethnolinguistic divide based mainly on mother language (Catalan vs. Spanish) and family origin—a complex frontier that has become the main factor determining alignment during the ongoing political conflict.

Hibernation of Secession Tensions in Catalonia: Attenuation Trends on Antagonistic Alignments

“…Voters of unionist parties typically recognized and regretted the social division, while voters of secessionist parties denied it (Tobeña 2021). The same distinction appeared comparing the opinions of citizens with family language Spanish and those with family language Catalan (Oller et al 2021). This peculiar gap disclosed the existence of a large social distance that has been corroborated using polarization measures.…”

Application of the research approach to teaching future translators in higher educational institutions

“…Researchers focus on simulating the pedagogical conditions of professional development of future translators in addition to solving methodological and didactic problems of translation training. A broad problem field is making future translators ready for translation activities (Oller et al, 2021). A number of studies have elaborated methods for the development of qualities related to cognitive activity and interest (O'Mathúna et al, 2020).…”

The effects of linguistic immersion on cognitive competencies

“…Its detractors, on the other hand, maintain that the conditions that arose in the early 1980s, in which the Catalan language found itself in a position of clear inferiority, have changed, and that parents have the right to school their children in the language of their preference (UNESCO, 2016;Coll, 2018); that immersion prevents students from being schooled in their mother tongue, which could affect their academic performance (AEB, 2017); that immersion is being used for political reasons in order to promote the Catalan national identity and to the detriment of the feeling of belonging to Spain (Oller et al, 2021); and that there is no updated and comparable evidence about the level of Spanish language of Catalan students (Convivencia Cívica Catalana, 2016). Moreover, Oller et al (2021) show that the immersion policy clashes with the preferences of the Catalan society, where a bilingual (Spanish-Catalan balanced) or even trilingual (incorporating subjects in English) education system is preferred to the current monolingual system. As Clua (2017: 41) describes, "to teach in Catalan or in Spanish is a sensitive political issue that goes far beyond considerations about linguistic competencies in a bilingual context".…”

“…The third point of interest of the linguistic immersion in Catalonia as an object of study is the existence of a hot debate over the advisability of maintaining this model. The immersion system is frequently presented from Catalan nationalist positions as an example of a successful policy that promotes social cohesion and has no negative side-effects (Oller et al, 2021). However, three decades after its implementation, there is no evidence as to whether the policy affects student performance differently based on their mother tongue (Woolard, 2016;Oller et al, 2020).…”