Bilingualism and Identity: Spanish at the Crossroads with Other Languages (Studies in Bilingualism, Volume 37)

Bilingualism and Identity

Studies in Bilingualism (SiBil) The focus of this series is on psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of bilingualism. This entails topics such as childhood bilingualism, psychological models of bilingual language users, language contact and bilingualism, maintenance and shift of minority languages, and sociopolitical aspects of bilingualism.

Editors Kees de Bot

University of Groningen

Dalila Ayoun

University of Arizona

Editorial Board Michael Clyne

University of Melbourne

Kathryn A. Davis

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Joshua A. Fishman Yeshiva University

Francois Grosjean

Université de Neuchâtel

Thom Huebner

San José State University

Georges Luedi

University of Basel

Christina Bratt Paulston University of Pittsburgh

Suzanne Romaine

Merton College, Oxford

Merrill Swain

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

G. Richard Tucker

Carnegie Mellon University

Wolfgang Klein

Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik

Volume 37 Bilingualism and Identity. Spanish at the crossroads with other languages Edited by Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman

Bilingualism and Identity Spanish at the crossroads with other languages

Edited by

Mercedes Niño-Murcia Jason Rothman The University of Iowa

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bilingualism and identity : spanish at the crossroads with other languages / edited by Mercedes Niño-Murcia, Jason Rothman. p. cm. (Studies in Bilingualism, issn 0928-1533 ; v. 37) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Bilingualism. 2. Group identity. 3. Ethnicity. 4. Spanish language--Social aspects. 5. Languages in contact. I. Niño-Murcia, Mercedes II. Rothman, Jason. P115.B5429    2008 306.44'6--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 4148 1 (Hb; alk. paper)

2007051082

© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents Acknowledgements

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Part 1.  Theoretical background Preface Ana Celia Zentella

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1. Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman

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Part 2.  Spanish in contact with autonomous languages in Spain 2. Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi 3. Conflicting values at a conflicting age: Linguistic ideologies in Galician adolescents Verónica Loureiro-Rodríguez 4. Language and identity in Catalonia Emili Boix-Fuster and Cristina Sanz

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Part 3.  Spanish in contact with Creole and Amerindian languages in Latin America 5. Literacy and the expression of social identity in a dominant language: A description of “mi familia” by Quechua-Spanish bilingual children Liliana Sánchez 6. Maya ethnolinguistic identity: Violence and cultural rights in bilingual Kaqchikel communities Brigittine M. French

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7. “Enra kopiai, non kopiai.”: Gender, ethnicity and language use in a Shipibo community in lima Virginia Zavala and Nino Bariola

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8. Kreyol incursions into Dominican Spanish: The perception of Haitianized speech among Dominicans Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio

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Part 4.  Spanish in contact with English in the United States 9. “I was raised talking like my mom”: The influence of mothers in the development of MexiRicans’ phonological and lexical features Kim Potowski 10. Choosing Spanish: Dual language immersion and familial ideologies* Elaine Shenk 11. Whose Spanish?: The tension between linguistic correctness and cultural identity Bonnie Urciuoli

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12. Constructing linguistic identity in Southern California Isabel Bustamante-López

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13. Multilingualism and Identity: All in the Family Jason Rothman and Mercedes Niño-Murcia

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Part 5.  Conclusion Afterword: Indicators of bilingualism and identity: Samples from the Spanish-speaking world Margarita Hidalgo

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Author index

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Subject index

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Acknowledgements The realization of an edited volume is always the product of successful collaborations, often on many fronts. First and foremost, we are extremely grateful to the authors of the individual chapters whose interesting work made this project a reality and from whom we learned a great deal. We are grateful to Ana Celia Zentella and Margarita Hidalgo for their support of this project and their gracious collegiality in writing the preface and afterword, respectively. We are indebted to Dalila Ayoun and Kees de Bot for their very helpful comments on the manuscript as a whole and to Kees Vaes and his staff at John Benjamins for all of their support. We would also like to express our most sincere appreciation to the peer reviewers for the chapters in this volume, whose comments improved the quality of each individual chapter and the volume as a whole: José Luis Blas Arroyo (Universitat Juame), David Beck (University of Alberta), Jasone Cenoz (Universidad del País Vasco), Anna De Fina (Georgetown University), Anna María Escobar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Brenda Farnell (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Brigittine French (Grinnell College), Ofelia García (Columbia University), Juan Carlos Godenzzi (Université de Montreal), Laura Graham (University of Iowa), Alexandra Jaffe (State University of California, Long Beach), Paula Kempchinsky (University of Iowa), Carol Klee (University of Minnesota), Judith Liskin-Gasparro (University of Iowa), John Lispki (Pennsylvania State University), Gillian Lord (University of Florida), Sara Mills (Sheffield Hallman University), Rachel Moran (University of California, Berkeley), Lynn Pearson (Bowling Green University), Kim Potowski (University of Illinois at Chicago), Fernando Ramallo (Universidad de Vigo), Suzanne Romaine (Oxford University), Teresa Satterfield (University of Michigan), Guadalupe Valdés (Stanford University) and Virginia Zavala (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú). In addition, we express our gratitude for the University of Iowa Arts and Humanities Initiative (AHI) grant, to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Iowa for their support. We would especially like to thank our research assistants Sarah Dow, Michael Iverson and Tiffany Judy whose collaboration was instrumental during the compilation of materials and the editing process.

part 1

Theoretical background

Preface Ana Celia Zentella

University of California, San Diego

What do we know about bi/multilingualism and identity, and what more do we need to know? What has been the contribution of scholars studying bi/multilinguals throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and what are our hopes for the future of their research? This ambitious and groundbreaking volume encourages the asking of these questions, offering analyses of Spanish in contact with a variety of languages and language families. As a starting point, I encourage the authors and their readers to consider the theoretical perspectives and methodological practices that will help us to arrive at the most informed and useful answers. Because in the end, or perhaps to begin with, we must ask ourselves why we want – or need – to know anything about bilingualism and identity. Isn’t the current mass marketing of globalized identities and the spread of ‘killer English’ (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000) making the investigation of bilingualism and identity a ‘small subject,’ especially in the post 9–11 era of terror and violence? Many of us respond that it is precisely because many individuals and communities are facing linguistic discrimination, even annihilation, that we need to understand the price they pay, and the repercussions for political, social and religious intolerance. Others believe it is not our job to tackle such weighty issues, insisting instead that “in this changing world, the task of the linguist is to lay out the facts concerning a given linguistic situation” (Ladefoged 1992: 811). While the difference in these perspectives appears to be rooted in radical or conservative politics, it may have more to do with distinct frameworks for understanding language. The study of multilingualism has been a fertile ground for these conflicting perspectives and, depending on the lens, the focus on identity is either blurred or sharpened. These lenses, or frameworks, need to be examined because they have political and social implications for how multilingualism and multilinguals are seen and treated, which is why I advocate an anthro-political approach. In the investigation of child bilingualism, for example, many researchers concentrate on the linguistic/psycholinguistic analysis of lexicon, phonology and syntax acquired in each language, while others take an anthropological approach,

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focusing on the relationship between the individual or community’s languages and the cultural practices that define group membership (Zentella in press). A few scholars adopt a third approach, one I have called the anthro-political linguistic perspective (Zentella 1995, 1997), to incorporate the ideologies and sociopolitical structures that determine the value of specific languages and the status of their speakers. This tri-partite scenario has also been identified, independently and with some variations, in an overview of the ideologies that have shaped Mexican-American bilingualism: Martinez (2006) notes the conflict between the linguistic perspective, the sociolinguistic perspective and the critical linguistic perspective. The linguistic perspective analyzes language as a formal grammatical system and seeks to determine a bi/multilingual’s control over the components in his/her repertoire. Martinez contrasts Bloomfield’s 1930s definition of bilingualism from the linguistic perspective as “native-like control of two or more languages” with Weinreich’s ‘sociolinguistic’ approach in the 1950s. However, I think the emphasis on control is also at the heart of Uriel Weinreich’s classic definition of the “ideal bilingual” as one who “switches from one language to the other according to the appropriate changes in the speech situation (interlocutors, topic, etc.), but not in unchanged speech situations, and certainly not within a single sentence” (Weinreich 1968: 73). The centrality of use is highlighted, as in most sociolinguistic research, but there is a one to one correspondence between shifts in settings and speakers on the one hand, and shifts in the linguistic components required by/for them on the other. The message is that identities or roles can be multiple, but not at the same time, and an ideal bilingual is expected to patrol those borders. Those, like me, who mix their languages, are viewed as incompetent Spanglish speakers or dangerous border crossers. Still, the attention to the social setting of bilingualism that characterizes the ‘sociolinguistic perspective’ is a constructive departure from the purely linguistic approach and puts identity in clearer focus. Hymes (1974) argued that both approaches were indispensable and inextricably linked because competent speakers necessarily displayed a knowledge of the linguistic and social rules for the conduct of speech. This made sense to me because it corroborated what I had learned as the daughter of a Mexican father and Puerto Rican mother, for example, that it was not only knowledge of the difference between ‘frijoles’ and ‘habichuelas’ in the lexicon or the presence or absence of syllable final-s in the phonology that I had to display in Mexican or Puerto Rican settings, but ways of answering, greeting, leave-taking, praying and being. The early contribution of ‘sociolinguists’ like Ferguson and Fishman identified high (formal) and low (informal) domains that helped shape a bilingual’s choice of what to speak where, when and to whom, but the diglossic domains turned out not to be as stable or as air tight as predicted; the leakage in most bilingual communities proved too messy. If US Latinos were expected to speak English with teachers in



Preface

school and Spanish with elders at home, bilingual schools and multi-generational households where Spanish and English were spoken interchangeably challenged a compartmentalized language model. The distinction between high and low domains, which appropriately recognized the defining role of institutional power in determining a language’s status, was echoed by the ‘we-they’ dichotomy that linked a speaker’s or community’s home/heritage language with insider intimacy and nurturing roles, while the dominant society’s language was linked to outsider status and power. But this dichotomy ignored the generational shifts that could take place. In many communities – whether in the US, where Spanish and English function as the ‘we-they’ languages respectively, or in parts of Spain and Latin America, where a regional or indigenous language is the language of the home and Spanish is the language with national power – children may reverse the insider-outsider roles. Those who become fluent in the dominant language feel more at ease and intimate in it and communicate with difficulty in their weakened heritage language, even distancing themselves from it. For this reason, it is unwise to assume that a bilingual’s choice of, or switch to, the dominant language is necessarily an invocation of and identification with its power, and the choice of, or switch to, the heritage language a sign of solidarity. Even when the scales against the traditional in-group language have not been tipped by weakened proficiency, a bilingual’s alternations between the languages in his/her repertoire are not predictable moves to or away from authority. As Valdés (1982) pointed out, the direction of the language switch in the conversation of bilinguals can be less significant than the fact of the switch itself, which signals membership in a bilingual community. This does not negate the symbolic domination of languages that rule, but it cautions against a mechanistic link between linguistic codes and social roles or identities. Another school of sociolinguistics relies on quantification to correlate specific linguistic variables with particular social and stylistic variables. Beginning in the 1960s, Labov and other variationists have made significant contributions by specifying the phonetic and syntactic features that vary in the formal and informal styles of distinct classes, genders and ethnicities. When, for example, similar types and rates of syntactic patterns characteristic of what was then called Black English turned up in New York Puerto Rican English, it offered statistically valid evidence of the impact of close contact between New York Puerto Ricans and African Americans; outsider wannabes who try to adopt a Black identity by imitating the speech of rappers cannot be as accurate. Intuitions about the identities of core or fringe members of groups could be verified mathematically. Quantification allowed us to be precise about the hierarchy of standard vs. non-standard pronunciations and grammatical structures that reflected prestigious or low status class, gender and ethnic identities. But assigning membership to pre-determined groups such as

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‘lower’ or ‘upper’ middle class could be difficult, especially when immigrants who had been professionals in their home country had lower working class jobs in the new land. Also, aggregate numbers could obscure in-group variation. For example, even in a small circle of girls of the same class and ethnicity who were raised in the same neighborhood, bilingual code switching patterns and rates varied, depending on their ages, personalities and other aspects of their social identities (Zentella 1997). Unlike quantitative sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists take a constructivist approach to bilingualism, focusing on the co-constructed practices critical in the production of bilingual repertoires of identity and the centrality of language: “Language and communication are critical aspects of the production of a wide variety of identities expressed at many levels of social organization” (Kroskrity 2001: 106). Bilinguals display their gender, class, racial, ethnic and other identities by following the social and linguistic rules for the ways of speaking that reflect those identities in their homes and primary networks. Young bilingual children function like junior ethnographers, ascertaining what language to speak to whom, when and how, even chastising adults who break the local rules (Fantini 1985). As they grow older, they learn the art of ‘doing being bilingual’ (Auer 1984), which acknowledges agency in performing “acts of identity” (Le Page and Tabouret Keller 1985), sometimes instantiated simultaneously. Because bilinguals are not passive recipients of cultural models, but active agents who exploit both traditional and new ways of ‘doing being an X,’ bilingual repertoires of identity may incorporate diverse rules and include hybrid linguistic and cultural practices that defy narrow classification. For bilinguals who are accustomed to switching to accommodate monolinguals, switching with other bilinguals may come to symbolize their identification with two speech communities, i.e., they ‘speak both’ because they ‘are both.’ And speaking both can also accomplish a myriad of communicative strategies, including emphasis, clarification, aggravation and mitigation of requests as well as topic and role shifting. But, borrowing and mixing are often frowned upon, leading some insiders and outsiders to patrol their respective language borders against what they consider a linguistic deformation. Disparaging labels reflect the despised mixture, e.g., Spanglish, Quechuañol, Catañol, etc. The authenticity of the national and/or ethnic identity of code switching bilinguals can be as suspect as their linguistic practices, but charging them with corrupting the heritage language and culture prove counterproductive. Instead of encouraging bilinguals to develop their languages, guilt may lead them to abandon one of them, usually the less widely esteemed code. Some bilinguals, including su servidora, do claim the labels like Spanglish that reflect their combinations of languages and cultures with pride and, with poets and other wordsmiths in the vanguard, they adopt new labels to reflect their blended



Preface

identities, e.g., Nuyorican, Dominican York. In the US, the pendulum against code switching has swung to the other extreme, with defenders like Stavans (2003) who distorts both the practice and the principles of Spanglish in an overzealous attempt to stop Spanglish bashing. Despite his laudable goals, Stavans’ creation of an inflated Spanglish dictionary – which includes traditional Spanish words, multiple spellings of anglicisms, and infrequent or unknown items – paints an inaccurate picture of a purported ‘new American language.’ And the anachronistic translation of El Quixote violates the in-group nature of Spanglish. With friends like these, as the old joke goes, who needs enemies? While it is true that bilinguals should not be held to monolingual standards, as if they were two monolinguals stuck together at the tong, it is also true that proclaiming a code switching style as a new language distorts the linguistic facts and masks the nature of linguistic prejudice. Many code switchers are on their way to language loss, not the creation of a new language. And, as the Oakland School Board learned when they sought respect for the rulegoverned linguistic code spoken by their African American students, defending the maligned way of speaking of a racialized minority is no easy task and cannot be accomplished merely by declaring it a language. Accordingly, we need a critical or anthro-political linguistics to unmask linguistic ideologies that perpetuate inequality, undermining a bilingual’s willingness to maintain and develop his/her bilingualism. Research on bilingualism and identity must repudiate “the illusion of linguistic communism” (Bourdieu 1991: 43), the notion that everyone is equally able to acquire the code of power and prestige in their society if they want it and work for it, ignoring the role of linguistic capital in the marketplace, which determines the status of languages and dialects, and the symbolic domination that the language of privilege exerts. We must ask ourselves who benefits and who suffers from the view that some languages or dialects are more correct than others and from the idea that bilingualism promotes cognitive confusion on the individual level and political schism on the community level. We must challenge educational policies that encourage multilingualism for the elite but monolingualism for the masses, and national language policies that marginalize language minorities. In the US for example, the Census Bureau classifies all members of families as ‘linguistically isolated’ if no one in the home over the age of 14 speaks English very well, even if younger children are monolingual in English. Yet no one who lives in a family where only English is spoken is considered linguistically isolated. Fears of English under threat by the less than 20% who speak a language other than English at home – most of whom speak English well or very well – have resulted in a surge of English-only laws passed by 19 states since 1981, bringing the total to 30. These laws, passed in the name of unity, reinforce the ‘naturalized’ connection between English-only, ‘real American’ and good citizen, and foment linguistic intolerance.

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This brings us back to our opening questions: Why do we want – or need – to know anything about bilingualism and identity, and what are our hopes for future research in this field? From an anthro-political perspective, it is not enough to lay out the linguistic facts, as Ladefoged insists. In fact, idealistic notions of bilingualism combine with discriminatory policies to construct unequal identities, with damaging social, educational, and economic repercussions for the lives of many. As Nancy Dorian (1993) reminds us, in response to Ladefoged’s insistence that “we must be wary of arguments based on political considerations,” there are no apolitical positions where languages and cultures are threatened. An anthro-political linguistics makes this plain, and reminds us of our responsibility to avoid complicity in the ‘misrecognition’ of bilinguals and their identities, heeding Bourdieu’s warning: …the language of authority never governs without the collaboration of those it governs, without the help of the social mechanisms capable of producing this complicity, based on misrecognition, which is the basis of all authority (Bourdieu 1991: 113).

One caveat: we cannot assume that recognizing the multiple identities of bilinguals will necessarily challenge traditionally rigid linguistic and national borders that reproduce inequality. Given the worldwide emphasis on consumerism and the crucial role of linguistic capital, bilingualism is not immune to commodification. The result is the marketing of multiple identities and a multilingual linguistic capital that mimics Weinreich’s ideal bilingual. Based on her research with FrenchEnglish bilingual students in Ontario, Heller fears the lines drawn by a new bilingual elite: …because of the nature of the new economy, the ability to cross boundaries is important….what is valued is a multilingualism as a set of parallel monolingualisms, not a hybrid system.... This [new bilingual] elite builds a position which marginalizes both those bilinguals whose linguistic resources do not conform to the new norms, and those who are, simply, monolingual (Heller 1999: 5).

Fortunately, the research in this volume on bilingualism and identity in diverse parts of the Spanish-speaking world, so theoretically sound and methodologically rigorous, contributes to a more democratic vision of the future, one that rejects rigid linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries. It is heartening to note that studies in Hispanic settings are in the vanguard of defying “multilingualism as a set of parallel monolingualisms” by providing convincing evidence that “different types of identity are neither exclusive nor singular” (Kroskrity 2001: 107).



Preface

References Auer, J.P.C. 1984. Bilingual Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Dorian, N. 1993. A response to Ladefoged’s other view of endangered languages. Language 69(3): 575–579. Fantini, A. 1985. Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. San Diego: College Hill Press. Heller, M. 1999. Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. London, New York: Longman. Hymes, D. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kroskrity, P. 2001. Identity. In Key Terms in Language and Culture, A. Duranti, (ed), 106–109. Oxford: Blackwell. Ladefoged, P. 1992. Another view of endangered languages. Language 68: 809–811. Le Page, R.B. and Tabouret-Keller. A. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Ethnicity and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martinez, G. 2006. Mexican Americans and language: Del dicho al hecho. University of Arizona Press. Stavans, I. 2003. Spanglish: The making of a new American language. New York: Rayo. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education – or Worldwide Diversity and Human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Valdés, G. 1982. Social interaction and code-switching patterns: a case study of Spanish/English alternation. In Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects, J. Amastae and L. EliasOlivares (eds), 209–229. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Weinreich, U. 1968. Languages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton. Zentella, A.C. in press. Bilingualism. In The Chicago Companion to the Child, Richard Shweder, (ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zentella, A.C. 1995. The ‘chiquita-fication’ of U.S. Latinos and their languages, or Why we need an anthro-political linguistics. SALSA III: the Proceedings of the Symposium about Language and Society at Austin. Austin, TX: Department of Linguistics, 1–18. Zentella, A.C. 1997. Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell.

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chapter 1

Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman University of Iowa

Contemporary sociolinguistic literature is concerned with undertanding the construction of linguistic identity. Spanish-contact situations across the globe present a particularly fruitful background against which linguistic identity can be studied. Since Spanish comes in contact with many languages and dialects in different geographic areas and because Spanish has a range of different social statuses in these situations, comparing and contrasting the sociolinguistic realities of bilingualisms in different Spanish-contact cases can inform theories of language and idenity as well as disentangle variables that are otherwise difficult to properly identify. The present chapter serves as a resourse to the reader of this volume in that it (a) reviews the sociolinguist literature pertinent to the concepts and argumentation discussed/offered in each chapter and (b) highlights the collective impact the individual studies in this volume have for current theorizing.

1. Introduction The chapters in this book explore the relationship between language and identity as it develops in multilingual environments where Spanish comes in contact with other languages or even with other varieties that are stigmatized.1 In the latter case, even if there is no bilingualism per se (see Bullock and Toribio this volume) there are ‘acts of identity’ based on linguistic performances (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). As a result of the language contact situation, bilingualism constitutes a fertile ground to study identity manifestations. The dynamic nature of bilingualism has long been acknowledged and reflected in the multifarious approaches to investigating it. As a result, there is no shortage of serious scholarship dealing with bilingualism at the societal and individual level (e.g., Haugen 1953, 1956; Grosjean 1982; Appel and Muysken 1987; Hammers and Blanc 1989; Milroy and Muysken 1. As Romaine (2004: 385) suggests, we also use the terms “bilingual” and “multilingual” interchangeably to refer to the use of two or more languages in a community as something necessary in every day interactions.

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1995; Myers-Scotton 2006; Romaine 1995, 2004b; Zentella 1997). Today more than ever before, we understand a great deal about the process, outcomes, impacts, politics and social milieu of bilingualism in a broad sense. However, there is much to be discovered. As linguistic and social theories evolve, so too must the study of bilingualism. The principle that language use is key in the process of negotiating identity(ies), and not a mere artifact of the speakers’ membership in social entities, constitutes the basis of the research presented in this volume. Its leitmotif is how identity is constructed in discourse in bilingual or multilingual contexts and what indexical functions language choice marks or delimits (Cameron 2001; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). Thus, identity is viewed as the result of processes of self-presentation, which emerge socially in the course of a person’s encounters with others. In recent years, the sociolinguistic study of language and identity2 has emphasized the notion of identity construction and as such is mostly seen as a negotiation that changes throughout time and is in a constant state of renegotiation (see Hidalgo this volume for previous and current competing perspectives). However, we are keenly aware that language is not by itself the exclusive determiner of social grouping since language gets entangled with other indicators of group membership. One must take into account that even categorical identities that seem solidly established such as the concepts of ‘woman,’ ‘man,’ ‘Latino,’ ‘Basque,’ ‘Spaniard,’ ‘Indian’ or ‘working-class’ are, in fact, not all-encompassing, monolithic descriptors. While they serve to make general classifications that entail minimum requirements for inclusion, they camouflage important recursive negotiations of meaning and make identity an ever-shifting process. We are thus reminded that “[t]he shared worlds that emerge from dialogues are in a continuous state of creation and recreation, negotiation and renegotiation” (Mannheim and Tedlock 1995b: 3). Keeping in mind that people do not belong to homogenous groups such as ‘Catalonians,’ ‘Mayas,’ ‘Quechua speakers,’ ‘Galician’ or ‘Latinos,’ whose group members rigidly share the same attitudes and ideologies, the data presented here are analyzed in relation to the individual history of the subjects and their network of relationships. Their cases defy simple reductive categories (De Sousa Santos 1998: 161; Cameron 2001: 161,170). As Romaine states, “simple labels hide complex realities” (2004a: 387) and thus, analyzing processes of identity construction and their linguistic manifestation is far from simple. Even the very category of identity itself is problematic. In a world of dissolving boundaries and disrupted continuities, the notions of groupness and stability of identity are not only being questioned but 2. Bucholtz and Hall (2005:586) propose the term sociocultural linguistics to refer to the interdisciplinary field that investigates language, culture and society. The authors list as subfields, among others, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and certain forms of discourse analysis.



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity

problematized, as are the notions of group making, identity as a field of competing values, and collectivity-blurred boundaries (Brubaker 1994, 2004). Keeping one of the languages constant, Spanish, the chapters in this volume compare and contrast the spectrum of resources in regards to linguistic identity construction specifically in the Hispanic bilingual or trilingual individual, family and/or ‘community of practice.’ Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999: 490) define a community of practice as “an aggregate of people who come together around some common endeavor” which channel identity to social practice and speech. Likewise, since Spanish serves as both the prestigious as well as the socially lowerranking language depending on the environment, these divergent societal ideologies bring much to bear on the construction of linguistic identity. As a result, it is extremely interesting and fruitful to juxtapose the reality of linguistic identity construction by bilinguals in Spain and Latin America and by Hispanic bilinguals in the United States where speakers are positioned asymmetrically in different ways as minority groups. Within a nation, the notion of which language socially subsumes the others is often established and unwavering, but not exclusively so. The term minority language, frequently, is a euphemism for the language of the non-hegemonic, nonelite or subaltern groups within a particular context (Romaine 2004a: 389). However, any given language can be a minority language in one context and still the hegemonic language in another, as is the case with Spanish across the globe. As we will see in many chapters of this volume, Spanish is decidedly a socially subordinate language in the United States and equally the socially dominant language in most of Hispanic-Latin America. However, we will also see that Spanish and the autonomic languages share the co-official status in Spain, at least on paper (see Azurmendi et al.; Boix-Fuster and Sanz; Loureriro-Rodríguez this volume). In Catalanonia, for example, as discussed by Boix-Fuster and Sanz (this volume), Castilian, the majority language of Spain, is largely considered to be a minoritylanguage in Catalonia, where Catalan is the majority-spoken language. From a purely nationalistic perspective, Castilian (or Spanish) is decidedly the hegemonic language, however, from a provincial perspective within Catalonia it is the language socially dominated by Catalan and is thus effectively reduced to a minoritylanguage there. And so, while Basque, Catalan and Galician are autochthonous, non-unique languages, Spanish is non-adjoining throughout Spain and the Americas (Edwards 1994; Romaine 2004a). Most of the literature on the topic of minority language denotes a difference between indigenous and non-indigenous (immigrant) minorities depending on how long the population has been established in their homeland. An indigenous or autochthonous representation, according to the audience or social context (Blom and Gumperz 1972), community has been in a place for centuries. Conversely, the

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recent arrival of immigrants is often seen as an imposition of a non-indigenous presence on the local community and by extension its linguistic history.3 This has immediate implications for multilingual contexts, which are explored throughout the present collection of chapters. A holistic reading of this volume highlights such a reality and underscores the mutable social currency that a single language can have depending on its different ‘markets’ in the Bourdieuian sense. In monolingual interactions speakers can use a different register or style; in multilingual exchanges the linguistic repertoire increases. In such exchanges language choice is indexical through the accentuation of dialect features or the selection of a different language for self-identification. Thus, multilingualism presents particular conditions in which identity can be expressed. There are several volumes dedicated to the study of linguistic identity (Benwell and Stokoe 2006; Butler 1990; De Fina, Schiffrin and Bamberg 2006; Gumperz 1982) and to identity and agency (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain 1998). However, this is the first volume dedicated specifically to an examination of the effects that multilingualism has on identity formation where one of the languages is kept constant, comes in contact with a multitude of others and has such a range of different social statuses as Spanish. And so, this volume attempts to contribute to studies on the emergence of identity in multilingual contexts in Europe and in the Americas. The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the current sociolinguistic literature pertinent to the discussions throughout this volume. In doing so, we contextualize its chapters, highlighting common themes as well as the value of each contribution. 2. Theoretical background The concept of identity has long informed sociolinguistic research. Starting with the first variationist studies, to the most recent analytical studies that approach identity as a relational and sociocultural phenomenon. The notion of “acts of identity”, introduced by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985) in their study of Pidgin- and Creole-speaking communities in Belize, London and St. Lucia, made an impactful contribution to the anaylisis of identiy. Their findings regarding the linguistic behavior of their subjects revealed multiple instances where their perception of norms, standards and stereotypes was intertwined differently according to context. The authors called our attention to this “linguistic 3. This raises other dichotomies such as state-wide minority language or a local-only minority language, unique or non-unique language in the state and cohesive/ non-cohesive, according to the level of the spatial cohesion and adjoining/ non-adjoining communities.



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity

behavior as a series of acts of identity in which people reveal both their personal identity and their search of social roles” (1985: 14, emphasis in the original) as a relational phenomenon rather than a fixed category. In the last two decades, new directions in social theory have also shifted attention from a “structuralist” theoretical position that viewed collectivities as stable components of the social scaffolding to a more “constructivist” position. The individual, through acts of identity, do the “social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 586) in the collectivity. Thus, the notion of identity has moved from the unproblematic view of category membership to a more problematized positional view. The shift to view collectivities more as entities in constant flux, and therefore negotiation and renegotiation of membership, does not impede members of a group from deploying an essentialist argument in order to advance a political agenda. It is not to say that an essentialist ideology that imagines the ‘Other’ as homo­ genous and static has been replaced by the constructivist one. Today, essentialism is even used in appeals for recognition of rights, particularly to structure claims for demographic reforms and at times, for opposing projects (French in this volume). Poststructuralist and postmodernist theories suggest that a person’s identity (as member of certain social entities) is neither stable nor immutable. As such, identity, as a form of “doing” or “performing,”4 can be negotiated, constructed, altered, renewed, recreated, challenged and contested. The notion of ‘performativity’ goes back to Austin (1975) and his speech-act theory. Recent social and critical theory treats language as part of the notion of “performativity” of identity (with this or a different label) (e.g., Butler 1998; Cameron 2001, 2005; Irvine and Gal 2000; Heller 1999, 2003; Jaffe 1999, 2007; Mannheim and Tedlock 1995b; Mühlhäusler and Harré 1990; Romaine 1999, 2000, 2004a; Urciuoli 1996). They account for the role that linguistic exchanges play in the construction of identity and the social importance of language use in its construction: For many contemporary theorists, then, gender, and other kinds of identity, involve continuous work: failure to do this work, or to do it in socially acceptable ways, can have a strong negative impact on social interaction (making people feel confused, uncomfortable or threatened) (Cameron 2001: 171).

The notion of performativity5 challenges “the notion that our behavior flows ‘naturally’ from some core or essence inside us, that we do A, B and C because we ‘are’ 4. Different theoretical terminologies use particular terms to express the idea of evolving identity notion: ‘doing’ or ‘accomplishing’ (Cameron 2001; West and Zimerman 1991; Piller 2002; Romaine 1999), ‘constructing’ or ‘performing’ (Butler 1990). 5. We do not assume that every speech act is performative, but that a speech act becomes performative when it evokes some type of change. We thank Brenda Farnell for pointing this out to us.

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X, Y and Z. Some theorists would argue that what happens is actually the reverse – it is in doing X, Y and Z that we become or construct ourselves as A, B and C” (Cameron 2001: 170 emphasis in the original). Butler (1990) argues that even gender (as a social construct, based on a natural condition, sex) and gender identity, considered one of the most firm identities, is an illusion because it is the repetition of certain acts (dress, gesture and speech) within social regulations that produce “the appearance of substance” when social actors perform them (1990: 33). For Butler, repetition is what sustains identity; it is by doing something over and over that behavior is internalized so identity does not feel like a performance to the actor but a ‘natural’ way of behaving (Cameron 2001: 171). As Austin pointed out, some illocutions like “I declare you husband and wife” bring something into being, Butler believes that ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are not what we are but what we do (Cameron 1998: 271–272). Cameron (2005: 489) links Butler’s theory of identity and performativity, partially carried out through language, to the concept of ‘community of practice’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999). As Cameron points out, the relevance of the community of practice theory to sociolinguistic theory of performative identity is that the relationship between language and the practice of some identity is defined by the social structure and practices of a certain community to which the speaker feels they belong (2005: 489). Bourdieu (1991) focuses on the relationship between linguistic forms and the symbolic capital they represent. This notion is also applicable to the identity the speakers construct in different contexts. When a speaker chooses to perform his/ her identity through a specific language or linguistic forms, it is because s/he attaches particular meanings to those resources. Therefore, the significance of Bourdieu’s view is that certain discourse forms legitimate semantic and social meanings in a given speech community and determine the value as symbolic capital when used in the linguistic market. Consequently, social capital is continually reproduced for that market precisely because it has symbolic value (Bourdieu 1991). 3. Language and the construction of identity As language becomes the conduit for constructing an identity, there are countless social contexts in which to analyze not only language choice and code-switching but also to observe linguistic exchanges as conditions “for ‘meta’ discussions about aspects of identity” (Cameron 2001: 171 emphasis in the original). Each of the chapters in this volume provides such an opportunity to the reader.



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3.1

Relational identities negotiation

People construct different identities to project an image or to renegotiate a sense of self. Without ignoring that some individuals deviate from societal norms and produce ‘deviant’ identities (Cameron 1995: 16), social competence demands different performances in different situations. These social expectations are linguistically realized, although obviously not exclusively so (see Urciuoli in this volume). In the case of multilinguals, one may choose another language or code-switch to let the interlocutor know that “not only am I X, but I am also Y” (Myers-Scotton 1988: 170). Switching between languages, when each language is associated with particular sets of rights and obligations, occurs when one is talking with others one considers similar to oneself (Myers-Scotton 2000: 146). Switching has semiotic value, conveying a sense of solidarity by indexing identity and in-group membership (Valdés 1982; Gal 1987; Romaine 1994, 2000; Rothman and Rell 2005). Moreover, switches can symbolically mark the identity we want to project at any given particular time within that particular group. 3.2

Identity and representation Consciously or unconsciously, speakers use speech to signal their sense of themselves as belonging to a group A and being different from group B. In both accounts, it is implicitly assumed that the relevant categories and identities exist prior to language, and simply “marked” or “reflected” when people come to use it (Cameron 1995: 15).

The main challenge of research into language and the assertion of identities is the resources used (linguistic or otherwise) to distinguish oneself from others who are perceived as different. As Irvine and Gal (2000: 39) put it, “By focusing on linguistic differences, we attempt to draw attention to some semiotic properties of those processes of identity formation that depend on defining the self against some imagined ‘Other.’” The essentializing of the ‘Other’ (imagined as homogenous and static) is a well-known issue questioned in the current related literature. Another aspect explored in various chapters of this volume (e.g., Azurmendi et al.; French; Loureiro-Rodriguez; Zavala and Bariola) is the linguistic representation formed under specific historical conditions in which the different groups live or have lived; such representations may serve – Irvine and Gal continue – to interpret linguistic differences that have arisen through drift or long-term separation. But they may also serve to influence or even generate linguistic differences in those cases where some sociological contrast (in presumed essential attributes of persons and activities) seems to require display.

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4. Globalization and identity politics The globalized economy has provoked deep transformation of language and identity in several ways. Identity under the conditions of a postmodern geography has changed people’s experience of the world (or the placelessness in it) with the result of diasporic communities. This fact has added complexity to cultural and linguistic identities which require reconstruction and renegotiation for contemporary demands (Morley and Robins 1995; Heller 2003). Part of the logic of globalization is to push toward a greater homogeneity in industrial markets and to remove a market from the local characteristics of its context. But, there is also a contrary force at work challenging that logic: a resurgent interest in the local and regional pride (see for example Azurmendi et al; Boix-Fuster and Sanz; Loureiro-Rodrí­ guez; Zavala and Bariola this volume). Interestingly, this has opened up spaces for local communities in the areas where ethnic minorities have some control. The Otavalo indigenous community in Ecuador, for example, has built up its consciousness through political resistance; Kichwa revitalization is in place and they have also acquired more control over their own resources. This produces tension with the state but the local community is flourishing thanks to transnational commerce. So there are “tensions between local, national, and supra-national identities and language practices, and between hybridity and uniformity” (Heller 2003). According to De Sousa Santos (1998: 348) there is not a single globalization, but rather globalizations – a set of social relations that provoke conflict, winners and losers. This definition poses two issues: (1) what we call globalization is the successful globalization of a given localism (348) and (2) globalization provokes localization (Niño-Murcia et al. 2008). We could give many examples of how globalization provokes localization; one case is the spread of English in the World, which has resulted in the localization of French as the international language. However, the process called globalization has provoked a resistance by means of an emergence of regionalisms and enhancement of local languages and identity (De Sousa Santos 1998: 348). Spanish has been considered one of the Lingua Franca languages in the world (Godenzzi 2006). What does it mean for Spanish to serve as a lingua franca? It means that its sphere of influence is not limited to Spain and the American ex-colonies as well as that it is been used for people for whom it is not the native language (McGroarty 2006). This fact has linguistic and social implications, establishing asymmetric relations among its users too. In Hispanic Latin America, Spanish is in the hegemonic position and dominates other languages; on the contrary, in the United States it is in a subordinate position. In the United States, the presence of Spanish speakers has drastically increased, but this fact has also provoked a negative attitude on the part



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of some English speakers to ban the language in the country (e.g. Niño-Murcia et al. 2008, Hidalgo this volume) 4.1

National and ethnic identities

Nationalism and ethnicity share the sense of ‘groupness’ or ‘people-hood.’ On the other hand, viewing nations as communities requires a great amount of abstraction since national and community citizenship are imagined and a nation does not rely on the day-to-day interactions of its citizens (Romaine 2004a: 387, 389). During the early nineteenth century, language was linked to nationalism and identity by the philosophers of German romanticism such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and the French Ernest Renan (1823–1892) and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780). For example, Humboldt stressed that linguistic communication is the “spiritual exhalation of a language” and nothing was more crucial for a nation than the possession of a common language. As Condillac (1746) had identified language with “the genius of the people” and that “each language expresses the character of the people that speaks it,” by the time national histories were written, the nation had an instrument with which identity was maintained: language. In 1807, Ficht advanced the idea that the loss of a language was equivalent to loss of identity (Bauman and Briggs 2000; Olender 1992; Edwards 1985). As Bauman and Briggs (2000: 142) point out, “Locke and Herder promoted ideologies of language that emphasized shared identity while at the same time generating means of creating hierarchical rankings of discourses and modes of producing and receiving them,” an issue that is the matrix for the analysis of the cases presented in this volume. Nationalism, on the other hand, has been seen “as an extension of ethnicity” in which nation is self-defined and an ethnic group is other-defined (Edwards 1985: 5). Ethnic groups are generally equated with minority groups, particularly in the contexts of immigration or an indigenous population, despite the fact that as Edwards (6) continues, the Greek word ethnos means nation (a common descent group) and thus includes all people, which is to say, a super-set of all and not subsets of some. Nonetheless, dominant groups do not define themselves as ethnicities proper and group boundaries become relevant in identity formation processes. When boundaries that demarcate so-called ethnic groups disappear, it is because members became integrated into the majority group (European immigrants in the United States, for example). Thus, the term “ethnic” can be used in processes of commodification of culture of the previously marked groups (Heller 2003). Ethnicity becomes a “symbolic ethnicity” (Gans 1979) in which the native language no longer plays a role because its members have mainly (and sometimes exclusively)

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become speakers of the majority language. Not surprisingly, this discussion will bring much to bear on Bustamante-López, Potowski, Rothman and Niño-Murcia, Shenk and Urciuoli’s chapters in this volume, which discuss the reality of Hispanic bilingualism in different contexts in the United States. Since ethnicity is not a voluntary membership (whether people identify themselves or are identified by others as members of the group) the construction of identity makes ethnicity a fertile ground to appreciate its dynamics within heterogeneous societies. 4.2

Language contact

The role of language contact, co-existence with typologically unrelated languages and bilingualism produce hybrid linguistic forms and therefore, adds options to the construction of a multiplex identity. Examples of this principle include Euskera (Basque) in Spain, as discussed in Azurmendi et al., and the Amerindian languages in Latin America (Quechua, Shipibo in Peru, and Kaqchikel in Guatemala) as discussed by French, Sánchez, Zavala and Bariola and with Haitianized Kreyol in the Dominican Republic as discussed by Bullock and Toribio. In contexts where an indigenous language is involved, language choices may or not emphasize “Indianness,” but what concerns us here is the importance of language choice in indigenous self-representation and the ways in which Indians deploy language to negotiate identity (Graham 2002). Shipibo, Quechua and K’aqchikel communities (any indigenous community for that matter) have traditionally not been acknowledged as “bilingual” but as people “doubly disabled, lacking both the language of culture and the language of wider communication” (Jaffe 2007: 54). Currently, we are witnessing the contestation of those misconceptions. Five centuries after the first contact with the Spanish-speaking world, Mayan peoples have not only survived the transformations of indigenous Central America, but their culture has flourished and has in fact entered, a period of great ethnic reaffirmation. Not surprisingly, language is central to this endeavor. In addition, when gender identities are also being enacted, language choice acquires more relevance as Zavala and Bariola analyze in this volume. Migration from the Amazonian rainforest to Lima is provoking some changes in Shipibo women’s use of their vernacular language. By using the Shipibo language, they are not only maintaining the link with their ethnic identity as city dwellers but also redefining gender relations. Shipibo women are undergoing an empowerment process and language choice is acquiring new social meanings by which they are constructing an identity as mothers not only by contrast with men but also with other versions of women. It illustrates how relational identities are being



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity 

renegotiated all the time and the indigenous culture and discourse, like in any other group, are constantly changing in a globalized world (Graham 2002). 5. Bilingualism Is bilingualism an individual phenomenon or a societal one? It is not always possible to maintain a strict boundary between the two. However, being aware that there is not a unique typology of bilingual communities nor of bilingual individuals, we are more concerned with multilingualism as a societal phenomenon. That is to say, when using more than one language is “a normal and unremarkable necessity” (Edwards 1994: 1). On the other hand, bilingual individuals belong to different “communities of practice,” as we mentioned earlier, thus they interact regularly, with a shared repertoire of communal resources as ways of communicating, including the use of one or more languages (Romaine 2004a: 387). Membership in bilingual communities does not imply active use of two or more languages, since membership sometimes entails passive competence, but shared norms of understanding. Equally, not being in a society that overtly supports particular instances of bi/multilingualism does not a priori mean that minority language loss is inevitable (see Rothman and Niño-Murcia this volume). In any case, linguistic choices become a medium to construct an identity since the interlocutor may have a receptive competence and understand the speaker even if his/her own productive skills are not developed (Romaine 2004a: 385–387). 5.1

Indexicality and human agency

Finally, we would like to focus on indexicality and human agency in these processes. Indexicality connects formal elements of language to extra-linguistic conditions, things people do by means of the property of linguistic signs to indicate aspects of the social context (Silverstein 1976). People respond to discourse by constructing and reconstructing meaning through complex social interactions and indexicality. As De Fina et al. (2006) put it, “[t]he concept of indexicality helps us understand how connections are established not only between language (as well as other modes of communications) and local identities, but also between language and global identities.” On the other hand, since “[it] is ‘the social’ as a patterned action rather than the ‘social system’ as social structures that determine the patterning of action” (Varela 1999: 385), agency is another concern in some of the chapters (See Zavala and Bariola this volume). How much control do speakers have over language? The assignment of agency belongs to peoples in social relations. It is people who use

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linguistic conventions to perform identities and not the other way around. Rather, all human actions that reproduce social practices and transform them within social, cultural and linguistic co-constructed group patterns are agentic (Mannheim 1995). 6. Volume organization The above discussions are not meant to be exhaustive, but to serve to orient the reader since these themes are echoed, to a greater or lesser extent, in the individual chapters that comprise this volume. Although the spatial reality of the situations examined in this volume are, by design, different, they are not at all mutually exclusive. Besides the obvious link of Hispanic bilingualism, they all consider societal, individual, humanistic and linguistic factors to necessarily be intertwined and deterministic in the process of identity construction. This fact makes these chapters not only complementary, but mutually inclusive. Moreover, the discussions they provide consider original data from written and spoken language, which is to say, data from complementary types of contexts. They examine lexical and language choice, phonological and syntactic productions, differences and judgments, code-switches and code-mixing and interview data that are introspective and reflective among other features. In doing so, they take ethnic, geographic, societalparticular, socioeconomic and individual factors into consideration. Joining the most current discussions in sociolinguistic theorizing about language and identity, each chapter explicitly or implicitly challenges the notions that simple labels and visual cues (e.g., food, dress and appearances) are not adequate to define the reality of linguistic identity at the group, much less at the individual levels. Each chapter adds to our understanding that linguistic identity is a dynamic concept in every sense and that linguistic identity is shaped by internal and external factors that are mutable and constantly renegotiated at the macro and micro levels. In particular, these chapters remind us that the process of identity construction is perhaps even more elaborate and multifaceted in the case of multilingualism, where the increased linguistic repertoire of multilingual people adds another dimension of complexity to an already involved process. This book is a collection of twelve chapters in which the linguistic practices of multilingual and cross-cultural speakers are explored in varied contexts. A quick survey of the linguistic diversity and language contact situations in the Hispanic world renders obvious the countless resources one has to investigate bilingual identity construction (and for different, yet complementary perspectives see Hidalgo this volume), and the chapters in this volume exemplify this nicely. Instead of viewing countries individually, we consider the larger international



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Spanish-language community of which Basque, Catalan, Galician, Quechua, Shipibo, Kaqchikel, Haitian Creole-speaking and Latinos in the US communities have been long-time members. The chapters in this collection are grouped together in three chronologically (in terms of the diffusion of Spanish) and geographically motivated subdivisions: (1) Spanish in contact with autonomous languages in Spain, (2) Spanish in contact with Creole and Amerindian languages in Latin America and (3) Spanish in contact with English in the United States. Common to all these situations is that Spanish bilingualism either at the super-societal or subsocietal level of the larger society is the expected norm. While the status of Spanish is different in many of these contexts, the fact that Spanish is held constant in these situations allows the reader to draw meaningful parallels across the situations. However, the fact that there are important differences highlighted by a holistic reading of these case studies despite the consistency of Spanish invites the reader to transcend linguistic common ground and appreciate the uniqueness of each situation with regard to the complexity of identity construction and manifestation, at the individual, societal and supra-societal levels. 6.1

Hispanic bilingualism in Spain

The chapters in section II examine cases of Spanish contact with autonomous languages in Spain such as Basque, Catalan and Galician. In Spain, Spanish has a unique relationship in that it is simultaneously the hegemonic and the socially subordinate language depending on the geographic context. Although the autonomous languages share co-official status with Spanish, at some autonomic level such as in Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country its hegemonic status is contested. As we will see, this situation makes for fruitful and distinctive investigations into issues of bilingual linguistic identity. Furthermore, these individual cases juxtapose with each other as well as the reality of Hispanic bilingualism in the United States, where Spanish is ubiquitously considered socially subsidiary, and Latin America where Spanish is decisively the language of power. Azurmendi, Larrañaga and Apaletegi analyze the process of the administrative and cultural attempt to “revive” the use of Basque with respect to its policies and results in each of the three Basque territories: the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) and Navarre (both in Spain) and Iparralde (in France). Their analysis is realized through a statistical examination of various forms: censuses, academic enrollment data and (primarily) linguistic/identity questionnaires of Basque and/ or Spanish/French speaking populations. The authors argue that the revival process of Basque has been a success in the BAC, generally positive in Navarre, and poor to nonexistent in Iparralde, France. However, they note that in spite of the statistical growth, Basque’s use outside of an educational setting is limited, which

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hinders the process of “normalization.” The authors partially attribute this fact to the lack of “instrumental” motivation (necessity in the work force), the lack of “integral” motivation (functioning within the Basque culture) and the (recent) disassociation between speaking Basque and being considered Basque (in a 2003 survey, only 18% of those who responded said that speaking the language is necessary for viewing oneself as a member of the culture). Loureiro-Rodríguez’s chapter was inspired by the lack of current qualitative studies evaluating language choice and attitudes in Galicia, particularly among adolescents. Historically, the linguistic hegemony of Spanish in Galicia has triggered language shift to Spanish, which has had a significant impact on the language policy and planning in Galicia. While Spanish has always enjoyed high status, Galician has been considered a non-standard and much stigmatized dialect since the 15th century through Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975). Loureiro-Rodríguez shares her findings from a study conducted in Galicia in order to determine the linguistic ideologies that determine adolescents’ language choice in Galicia. She also explores the repercussions of the institutionalized bilingualism in the linguistic ideologies and identity formation among the younger generation of Galicians. Her data consist of recorded informal interviews and sociolinguistic open-ended questionnaires. Loureiro-Rodríguez’s collected data reveal that while speakers whose pronunciation differs from the institutionalized standard Galician may be stigmatized, speakers of standard Galician may be regarded as socially privileged or as of greater intellectual and personal worth. The data also suggest that standard Galician is still linked to a nationalist ideology and consequently may be misrecognized as being symbolically linked to nationalists’ political or intellectual nature. Interviews also suggest that standard Galician is, in fact, the most prestigious and valuable variety and that several adolescents recognize the practical value and advantages of learning it, which is essential to be able to obtain a job in Galicia. Individuals also seem to recognize the importance of the homogeneity function of the standard variation. However, she suggests that bilingual education may be interfering with children’s right to use their mother tongue (regardless of what that may be) and the developing of their own identity. Boix-Fuster and Sanz discuss the history, current linguistic and social reality of Catalonia. Employing complementary forms of data from different sources “along a continuum from more public to more private” they solidly demonstrate how identity can be negotiated, indexed and performed through language. They dispense of three types of data sources: (1) language from the recent electoral campaign in Catalonia, (2) the speech of a choir conductor in Barcelona and (3) data from several elicited narratives. Their data show a clear link between language and identity, especially ethnic identity in Catalan society; however, they also demonstrate that such a link has become problematized in recent years due in large part



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to immigration and the importance at the political level of the first and second generation of immigrants from other regions in Spain. They argue that contemporary shifts in the social structure have favored the expansion and proliferation of bilingual varieties of both Spanish and Catalan in Catalonia. For an ethnic group such as Catalans that depend on their language as a marker of identity, such a linguistic situation is understandably problematic and will inevitably force a reassessment of the criteria that determine what it means to have a Catalan identity. Such a reality provides evidence for a constructivist notion of identity beyond the individual level, but at the societal level as well. 6.2

Hispanic bilingualism in Latin America

The chapters in section III largely deal with cases of Spanish/indigenous language contact in Latin America. Although the contact languages, social environments and the populations studied are quite different from one another, Spanish is the hegemonic language of the larger national community in all situations and is thus of prestigious and desirable value. This fact makes these situations quite different from the cases of Hispanic bilingualism in the United States and in Spain. Sánchez examines writing patterns in L1 Quechua/L2 Spanish bilingual and Spanish monolingual children in Peru, focusing on the acquisition of text structure and semantic content of a given topic in classroom compositions. The acquisition of L2 literacy by children in diglossic societies poses a problem for the development of writing skills. Bilingual children acquire text structure in the L2 at the time they are completing the acquisition of sentence structure and lexicon in their L1, something monolinguals have been able to do earlier. There may also be bilingual/ monolingual discrepancies in what constitutes culturally appropriate content for a given composition topic. Her analysis of the semantic content in writing samples about families yielded significant differences between the two groups. Bilingual children described extended family members and even their domestic animals in their compositions. The family was described solely in terms of their daily activities and function within the family as a productive, working unit. Monolinguals, on the other hand, focused on immediate family members. They described the positive qualities of the person and the relationships between family members. Sánchez proposes that these differences in semantic content as well as use of nonnative structures by bilinguals are both important factors that contribute to the perception of these two groups as having different identities as academic writers. French examines the case of the Mayan languages in Guatemala. Following an unsuccessful attempt to declare all twenty-one Mayan languages official national languages in 1999, the Guatemalan government – in contrast to their previous stance – passed the Ley de Idiomas Nacionales ‘Law of National Languages.’ While

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during La Violencia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government attempted to portray the twenty-one Mayan languages, and their correlated cultures, as a threat to national unity, recently, in an effort to revive the culture that was suppressed by the state, academicians, linguists, and the Mayan people now utilize the Mayan languages as a unifying tool. French shows that these two groups, the Guatemalan government of the late twentieth century and the Mayan community of the twenty-first century, invoked the same political/social/linguistic strategy in order to achieve their opposing ends, i.e., suppression of the Mayan people in the former, rebirth and unification in the latter. In order to reverse the effects of the Guatemalan government’s linguistic genocide, present-day Mayan scholars, and Mayan speakers in general, initiated a program to standardize each of the languages, update its lexicon and revive its use in hopes of furthering the understanding of their culture. In this way, French completes her parallel: by equating the Mayan languages with the Mayan culture, she is able to show how two different groups with two contrasting purposes were able to use the same principle to carry out their respective intents. The Guatemalan state used the intrinsic relation between the Mayan culture and language to show that speaking Mayan was detrimental to a unified nation, whereas the Mayan scholars and activists took the same approach in order to restore the culture and linguistic rights of their people. Zavala and Bariola analyze the effects of migrating to the city have on the sense of the ethnic community and the power and gender relations for the Shipibo people. Living in Lima has provoked a renegotiation of identities. Since women are now making more money than men, a new agentive identity is surfacing in the group in Canta Gallo. In their communities of origin, women are considered as assistants of men in the agro-chores while they perform domestic duties, but in Lima the opposite has been observed. Women’s handicraft production is reversing the roles as the breadwinners for their family. The use of the Shipibo language in communal meeting is the symbolic resource deployed to assert their identity as Indians and as empowered women and they themselves are portrayed as agentive in the social change. How language choice becomes indexical is illustrated by the Shipibo women discussed by Zavala and Bariola: women use more Shipibo than men in the communal meetings, but not due to lack of Spanish proficiency. Women as well as men are fluent speakers of Spanish but choose the Shipibo language as a defining feature of identity construction. But as always, in transcultural and multilingual encounters the political ramifications of language use in public arenas is infinitely more complex. Bullock and Toribio examine the Spanish spoken by fronterizos, Dominicans living along the Haitian border, which is often characterized as ‘Haitianized’ by other Dominicans. This study is unique in that there is no bilingualism proper despite the potential for bilingualism (i.e., Spanish-Haitian Creole contact) which



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity 

has implications for linguistic identity theorizing. They are concerned with whether the negative characterization of so-called “Haitianized” Spanish speech that emerges from this language contact is based on salient creoloid features in Dominican Spanish or whether it is the result of wide-spread anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic. It seeks to determine whether even in a monolingual context Dominicans discern ‘Haitianized Spanish’ from other cibaeño dialects (those in the northwest region of Cibao), and whether a lower prestige is conferred on this speech. It also seeks to identify the linguistic properties that are characteristic of this variety. The authors note that Dominicans have negative social attitudes with respect to the varying Spanish dialects, with the capitaleño speech having more prestige than cibaeño speech and how other dialects such as the castellano of Spain have more social prestige than any Dominican dialect. Given that judgments about a language variety are assessments of how its speakers are perceived in society, it seems to follow that fronterizo speech, being ‘Haitianized,’ reflects social attitudes of Dominicans towards fronterizos, that is, that they are of Haitian descent, black and poor. This chapter wonderfully demonstrates how linguistic identity is shaped and negotiated not only internally by individuals, but is conditioned on external factors at the societal level. Moreover, it demonstrates how prevailing attitudes can resist the development of societal bilingualism even in close language contact situations. 6.3

Hispanic bilingualism in the United States

The chapters in section IV treat the case of Spanish as it comes in contact with English in the United States where Spanish is largely considered a socially subordinate language to English. It also discusses common themes and similar issues inherent to language contact contexts. Although these chapters are complementary they are decisively unique, touching upon a range of important issues and highlighting differences in various communities/instances of Hispanic bilingualism in the United States (from rural to urban settings and across socioeconomic instances). Kim Potowski’s chapter explores aspects of ethnolinguistic identity via the examination of individuals who have one Puerto Rican (PR) and one Mexican (MX) parent, which she labels MexiRicans (MXPR), in Chicago. This study is of particular interest for the compilation and analysis of sociolinguistic facts of Chicago, a place where the effects of Spanish dialectal contact/leveling combine with the influence of the majority language, English, to affect the Spanish and linguistic identity of Hispanic heritage learners. She aims to determine the degree to which phonological and lexical traits from the mother’s dialect were transmitted to the Spanish spoken by their adult MexiRican children and explains the presence or absence of these dialectal features through examining the content of interview



Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman

data. Potowski draws the conclusion that the data support the idea that MXPRs leaned toward the dialect of their mothers. However, this is not always the case and dialectal influence can come from other family members and other external entities such as social groups, communities or context. Elaine Shenk’s chapter provides excellent examples on the discourse of language and identity use by bilingual children in a small community in the Midwestern region of the United States. She discusses data from a longitudinal study conducted in a dual immersion school (English/Spanish) in rural Iowa in a community that is over 40% Latino, which compares sharply to the 4% average Latino population in the rest of Iowa. Shenk demonstrates that dual identities are negotiated and performed, with linguistic and cultural competence, as the students can access the world of the majority language and culture as well as that of the secondary language. By retaining the use of Spanish as much as possible, some students hold on to both worlds. They can integrate with existing family and community networks and also merge into English speaking cultural circles, sometimes even being intermediaries. They utilize both languages appropriately and understand the social and cultural settings of each. Urciuoli argues that the Spanish language, as a social phenomenon, is often (mistakenly) correlated with culture by inheritance, i.e., monolinguals in the United States tend to categorize cultures based on quantified components such as food, music, dance, language, etc. She examines the societal – and, to an extent, personal – ramifications of oversimplifying the view of culture in this way. Urciuoli proposes that one’s “culture” is defined by experience and self-classifications (e.g., “Latino/a” versus Dominican, Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc.), which indeed change over time, specifically when a student who comes from a bilingual working class culture enters a liberal arts college in which he or she faces judgments and stereotypes due to his or her linguistic background. Urciuoli argues that one’s racial, socioeconomic and geographic factors must be considered in order to fully understand an individual’s bilingualism. Urciuoli draws these conclusions from nine personal interviews that she conducted between 1995 and 2005 with bilingual students from liberal arts colleges. She also uses excerpts of interviews with similar circumstances from a senior thesis of one of her students. The concern, she argues, is that academicians and pedagogues at the college level devalue the individualism that coincides with one’s bilingualism, principally, the self-defined racial component and the dialectal aspect. Bustamante-López examines the situation of Mexican-descended individuals from a variety of backgrounds in southern California, demonstrating how linguistic identities are constructed and maintained through various social circumstances. Bustamante argues and supports the notion that ideas of identity, as who one is within specific social and linguistic worlds, vary greatly, depending on both the



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity 

social context and with whom one is speaking. She shows a facet of constantly shifting identity through the perspective of bilinguals, who must make use of many differing linguistic identities. The way in which bilinguals perceive themselves is at the center of this piece including their perceptions amongst varying groups and the identity/identities they attempt to claim. The group from which data were collected represents very distinct individuals with various backgrounds, such as some who spent most of their childhood within the US and others in Mexico. She discusses the fact that California has been consistently bilingual for centuries, though the social circumstances of such bilingualism have been in constant flux, especially between groups. Rothman and Niño-Murcia discuss data from an on-going longitudinal case study on simultaneous Hispanic trilingualism in an affluent family of three young boys in the San Francisco, California area. Examining the pattern of language choice between the boys and their parents as well as among themselves, the data presented exemplify the principle that language choice is a social act and that identity is not only constructed, in part, linguistically, but that such a construction is in a constant state of flux and reevaluation. The authors demonstrate that the boys are very linguistically aware and are in tune to their interlocutors, knowing what the linguistic expectations are with whom in all situations. However, the boys are testing the linguistic waters so to speak more and more as the majority language of the society, English, becomes a more prominent source via schooling and social connections being made outside of the family unit. This chapter suggests issues for the future with regard to language shift and linguistic identity as the boys continue to mature and make meaningful connections in the English world that subsumes them. How these multifarious realities interplay with the negotiation and performance of identity is treated differently throughout this volume, but is its overall focus. The sum total of all the chapters herein reveals the dynamic nature of identity seen linguistically in multilingual contexts and highlights the fact that the social status of the languages in question is a determinative variable. Since many languages are cited in this volume, it is worth mentioning that unless otherwise indicated, the authors of each chapter have translated quotes into English. References Appel, R. & Muysken, P. 1987. Language Contact and Bilingualism. London: Arnold. Austin, J.L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. J.O. Urmson & M. Sbisà (eds). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Bauman, R. & Briggs, C.L. 2000. Language philosophy as language ideology: John Locke and Johann Gottfried Herder. In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, P.V. Kroskrity (ed.), 139–204. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press.

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Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman Benwell, B. & Stokoe, E. 2006. Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Blom, J.P. & Gumperz, J.J. 1972. Social meaning in linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, J.J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (eds). New York NY: Holt. Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brubaker, R. 1994. Rethinking nationhood: Nation as institutionalized form, practical category, contingent event. Contention 4(1): 3–14. Brubaker, R. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: CUP. Brubaker, R. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. In Discourse Studies 7(4–5): 585–614. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler, J. 1998. Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–531. Cameron, D. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge. Cameron, D. 1998. Performing gender identity: Young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Language and Gender: A reader, J. Coates (ed.), 270–284. Oxford: Blackwell. Cameron, D. 2001. Working with Spoken Discourse. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Cameron, D. 2005. Language, gender, and sexuality: Current issues and new directions. Applied Linguistics 26(4): 482–502. De Fina, A., Schiffrin, D. & Bamberg, M., 2006. Introduction. In Discourse and Identity, A. De Fina, D. Schiffrin & M. Bamberg (eds), 1–23. Cambridge: CUP. De Sousa Santos, B. 1998. De la Mano de Alicia: Lo Social y lo Político en la Postmodernidad. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes. Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S. 1999. New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28: 185–201. Edwards, J. 1985. Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Edwards, J. 1994. Multilingualism. London: Routledge. Fuss, D. 1989. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. London: Routledge. Gal, S. 1987. Codeswitching and consciousness in the European periphery. American Ethnologist 14(3–4): 637–653. Gans, H. 1979. Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. In Ethnic and Racial Studies 2: 1–20. Godenzzi, J.C. 2006. Spanish as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26: 100–122. Graham, L.R. 2002. How should an Indian speak? In Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America, K. Warren & J. Jackson (eds), 181–228. Austin TX: University of Texas Press. Grosjean, F. 1982. Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Gumperz. J.J. (ed.) 1982. Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: CUP. Hammers, J.F. & Blanc, M. 1989. Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge: CUP. Haugen, E. 1953. The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Reprinted in 1969, Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press).



Chapter 1.  Spanish-contact bilingualism and identity Haugen, E. 1956. Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide. Alabama AL: American Dialect Society. Heller, M. 1999. Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. London: Longman. Heller, M. 2003. Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4): 473–492. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D. & Cain, C. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Irvine, J. & Gal, S. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, P.V. Kroskrity (ed.), 35–83. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press. Jaffe, A.M. 1999. Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jaffe, A.M. 2007. Minority language movements. In Bilingualism: A Social Approach, M. Heller (ed), 55–70. London: Palgrave. Le Page, R.B. & Tabouret-Keller, A. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: CUP. Mannheim, B. 1995. Agency, grammar, and pragmatics. Paper read at the Linguistic Anthropology Laboratory at the University of Michigan, Fall 1995. Mannheim, B. & Tedlock, D. 1995. Introduction. In The Dialogic Emergence of Culture, D. Tedlock & B. Mannheim (eds), 1–32. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press. McGroarty, M. 2006. Editor’s Introduction: Lingua franca languages. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26: vii-xi. Milroy, L. & Muysken, P. (eds.). 1995. One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching. Cambridge: CUP. Morley, D. & Robins, K. 1995. Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge. Mühlhäusler, P. & Harré, R. 1990. Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Myers-Scotton, C. 1988. Codeswitching as indexical of social negotiations. In Code-Switching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, M. Heller (ed), 151–186. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Myers-Scotton, C. 2000. Code-switching as indexical of social negotiations. In The Bilingual Reader, L. Wei (ed), 137–165. London: Routledge. Myers-Scotton, C. 2006. Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Malden MA: Blackwell. Niño-Murcia, M. Godenzzi, J.C. & Rothman, J. 2008. Spanish as a world language: The interplay of globalized localization and localized globalization. International Multilingual Research Journal. 2(1): 1–19. Olender, M. 1992. The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Piller, I. 2002. Bilingual Couples Talk:  The Discursive Construction of Hybridity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Romaine, S. 1995. Bilingualism, 2nd edn. Malden MA: Blackwell. Romaine, S. 1999. Communicating Gender. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Romaine, S. 2000. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: OUP. Romaine, S. 2004a. The bilingual and multilingual community. In The Handbook of Bilingualism, T.K. Bhatia & W.C. Ritchie (eds), 385–405. Malden MA: Blackwell. Romaine, S. 2004b. Bilingual language development. In The Child Language Reader, K. Trott, S. Dobbinson & P. Griffiths (eds), 287–303. London: Routledge.

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Mercedes Niño-Murcia and Jason Rothman Rothman, J. & Rell, A. 2005. A linguistic analysis of Spanglish: Relating language to identity. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 1(3): 515–536. Silverstein, M. 1976. Shifters, linguistic categories and cultural description. In Meaning in Anthropology, K. Basso & H. Selby (eds), 11–56. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press. Urciuoli, B. 1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class. Boulder CO: Westview Press. Valdés, G. 1982. Social interaction and code-switching patterns: A case study of Spanish/English alternation. In Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects, J. Amastae & L. EliasOlivares (eds), 209–229. Cambridge: CUP. Varela, C. 1999. Determinism and the recovery of human agency: The embodying of persons. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 29(4): 385–402. West, C. & Zimmerman, D. 1991. Doing gender. Gender and Society 1: 125–151.

part 2

Spanish in contact with autonomous languages in Spain

chapter 2

Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country* Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi University of the Basque Country

This chapter deals with the current situation of bilingualism in Euskal Herria (the Basque Country), being brought about by a process to revive the Basque language and culture. This situation manifests itself differently in each of the Basque Country’s three political-administrative territories: the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) and the Charter Community of Navarre (Navarre) in Spain, and Iparralde (the Basque territories) in France, largely due to the different institutional language policies applied. Interdependence among different processes is shown: re-Basquization and bilingualization, ethnolinguistic identity (linguistic and cultural), acculturation strategies and the psychosocial construction of citizenship and Basque nationalism. The Basque case is of great interest because it presents a dynamic, changing scenario, ideal for studying all the questions raised. It also has far-reaching implications for language and identity in general and in particular in the Spanish-contact contexts. The Basque case highlights nicely the complex and multifarious nature of constructing, performing and negotiating identity at the societal and individual levels.

* We are grateful to the Sub-Ministry for Language Planning of the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) for the funding granted for the presentation of this chapter in English.

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Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

1. Presenting the Basque case1 Euskal Herria (the Basque Country)2 is a small region located in the vertex of the Atlantic Arc on both sides of the Pyrenees mountain range, divided between Spain and France. The seven historical territories or provinces that make up Euskal Herria (hereinafter referred to as Euskal Herria) are currently divided in the following way: (1) Hegoalde or the Southern Basque Country, in the Spanish State: Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa that constitute the Basque Autonomous Community (hereinafter referred to as the BAC) and the Charter Community of Navarre (hereinafter referred to as Navarre) and (2) Iparralde or the Northern Basque Country (hereinafter referred to as Iparralde) in the French State: Lapurdi, Behe Nafarroa and Zuberoa make up part of the département of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (they do not constitute a single, separate administration in France, despite continual demands for the creation of a Basque département). This division largely explains the different situation presented by each of the three Basque political-administrative units, with respect to both bilingualism and Basque identity. The BAC and Navarre are two of the 17 Autonomous Communities within Spain. They are among the most economically dynamic, most industrialized and most modern. This fact has undoubtedly facilitated the great efforts towards the normalization of the Basque language and culture that have been made over the past 25 years, especially in the BAC. By contrast, Iparralde (the Basque territories in the French State) has a more traditional economy, based internally and mainly on agriculture, stockbreeding and on tourism. It is precisely these territories where the decline of Euskara (the Basque language) still persists. The BAC, the most dynamic in the Basque language and culture normalization process, experienced high immigration rates from other Spanish regions, most significantly at the beginning of the 20th century and during the Franco era. As a result, roughly one third of the current population in the BAC (taking only the last three generations into consideration) is the result of this immigration (immigration in the other territories is recent). Notwithstanding, the BAC has been and continues to be the most dynamic community in the Basque language and culture normalization processes. The most important Basque city, Bilbao, located in the BAC, is also one 1. In order to provide an overview of Euskal Herria, the Basque Country and of Euskara, the Basque language, during recent decades and today, some of the aspects that are going to be referred to in this introduction have already appeared in recently published papers (Azurmendi, Bachoc and Zabaleta 2001; Azurmendi and Martínez de Luna 2005, 2006; Gardner 2000). 2. Euskal Herria has (1) a surface area of 20,664 km2 (the BAC 7,234 km2, Navarre 10,392 km2, and Iparralde 3,039 km2) and (2) 2,900,856 inhabitants (2,082,587 in the BAC, 556,263 in Navarre, according to the 2001 census, and 262,440 in Iparralde, according to the 1991 census). So, we are dealing with one speech community and one small, but highly complex nation.



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

of the most important ones in the Atlantic Arc of the EU. This socioeconomic context is important, as it is one of the factors that explains the political-linguistic changes taking place. Euskara is a linguistic isolate in Europe from a genealogical viewpoint, since it is not related to any other European language, and also from a typological viewpoint; it is one of the oldest languages in Europe and predates the arrival of the languages classified as Indo-European. Although its domain was considerably greater in early history than in recent history, it is a truly an autochthonous language in Europe. Perhaps because of all this, Euskal Herria means the Country of Euskara. In addition to its remarkable historical value (could or should it be regarded as the “heritage of humanity?”), it has a tremendous symbolic and pragmatic value for Basque citizens today. As a result, maintaining and defending Euskara is currently the subject of social and political debate and one of the main reasons behind the rallies and social movements widely supported in Euskal Herria. In other words, the interest, attitudes, symbolic as well as pragmatic motivations and ethnolinguistic identification are overwhelmingly in favor of Euskara, at least in the BAC territories, the epicenter of the Basque linguistic normalization process. In order to understand not only the current situation of Euskara (and that of Euskal Herria in general), but also its recent evolution, it is necessary to distinguish between two main periods: (1) the pre-autonomous administrative one, which saw the emergence of many of the current Basque language loyalist groups that made the current revival of Euskara possible and (2) today’s autonomous administrative period, following the enactment of the new Spanish Constitution in 1978, the Statute of Autonomy for the BAC in 1979 and the Charter Statute of Navarre in 1980, which ushered in the change from repression to the recognition and revival of Basqueness and of Euskara (and of Catalan and Galician as well). Both Basque Communities (the BAC and Navarre) were to develop different linguistic and education policies in different ways and to different degrees in connection with bilingualism and Basque identity. In the case of Iparralde in France (Ipar Euskal Herria, or the Northern Basque Country), the three Basque territories (Behe Nafarroa, Lapurdi and Zuberoa) have neither been officially recognized as of yet, nor constitute their own territorial unit despite constant demands, so they have no power for self-determination. The biggest change is taking place right now following the creation of the official Euskararen Erakunde Publikoa (Basque Language Board) in 2004, with the principal aim of facilitating the teaching of Euskara in the education system. Two things have taken place concurrently during the autonomous administrative period in the BAC and Navarre, both of which will be taken into consideration in this chapter: (1) the activity of numerous Basque language loyalist movements and social organizations, which has expanded in a similar way throughout Euskal

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Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

Herria and (2) the activity of different official institutions (e.g., Government and Parliament of the BAC and of Navarre) which extends across the various territories in different ways. 1.1

Bilingualism, I: Language competence development

The most general data with respect to Euskara knowledge and competence throughout Euskal Herria between 1980 and 2001 show that active bilinguals have increased from 20% to approximately 30% and that there is an additional 20% of passive bilinguals. By region, much progress has been made in the BAC, little progress has been made in Navarre and in Iparralde the situation is one of continuing linguistic attrition/language loss. Among the available research, special mention should be made of the Sociolinguistic Surveys of the Basque Country undertaken by the Government of the BAC (on occasions with the collaboration of institutions in Navarre and Iparralde) to study language competence, language transmission, language use and language attitudes throughout Euskal Herria (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco, 2001). As far as the language situation is concerned, among the 16–24 age group in 2001 (1) active bilinguals accounted for 39.6% in Euskal Herria as a whole, with 48.5% in the BAC, (2) passive bilinguals accounted for 17.6% in Euskal Herria with 20.2% in the BAC and (3) the percentage of Spanish-speaking monolinguals had fallen to 42.8% in Euskal Herria and to 31.3% in the BAC (there are no Basque-speaking monolinguals). This increase in the number of Basque speakers is due mainly to the Basquization through the education system, Basquization of adults and the increase in the number of Basque speakers and co-mother tongue bilinguals (through intergenerational transmission, crucial from the point of view of the RLS –Reversing Language Shift– theory of Fishman, 1991). Table 1 below shows how intergenerational transmission among active bilinguals (20% in 1991 and 30% in 2001) has evolved in the space of 10 years (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco, 2001): Table 1.  Evolution in intergenerational transmission of language (Euskara, or Euskara and Spanish/French) (in percentages) BAC Euskara as a first language (L1) Both languages as L1 (co-mother tongue bilinguals)

Navarre

Iparralde

1991

2001

1991

2001

1991

2001

83.7 8.2

86.7 10.2

66.3 20.3

76.8 15.2

73.1 10.3

52.7 24.9



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

In the BAC, the transmission of Euskara as a first language (L1) is very high and is on the increase and the L1 transmission of both languages (co-mother tongue bilinguals) is also on the increase. In Navarre, the L1 transmission of Euskara is also high and on the increase, but the transmission of both languages as L1s is showing a gradual decline. Conversely, in Iparralde, the L1 transmission of Euskara is falling sharply, whereas the L1 transmission of both languages is also increasing sharply. As regards the Basquization of adults, the social organizations throughout Euskal Herria have joined forces with the official institutions in the BAC and the “Euskaltegiak” (Basquization centers for adults: public, private and officially approved private) to Basquize two types of inhabitants: (1) adults in general, (2) specific groups of inhabitants, mainly teachers in the pre-university education system (0–16 years) and employees in the public Administration (Government of the BAC, Provincial Administrations, Town Councils (Azkue et al. 2005)). In regards to the education system, what stands out is teacher Basquization (Gardner 2000; Gardner et al. 2005), which is required to bring about the implementation of the different bilingual teaching Models in the BAC: Model-D (Euskara-medium with Spanish as a subject), Model-A (Spanish-medium with Euskara as a subject) and Model-B (bilingual). The Government of the BAC has facilitated this process through a sophisticated language-retraining program, but this is not the case in Navarre or in Iparralde. The Basquization process of the BAC’s education system is noteworthy. Within the span of 20 years, the percentage of Basquespeaking teachers rose from 5% in 1975 to approximately 80% in the public network and 65% in the private network in the 2005–2006 academic year. Thus, in 2002, it was possible to have 63% of the teachers qualified to teach in Euskara: 68.8% in the public schools network and 56.3% in the private schools network. The Ikastolak (Euskara-medium schools set up by Basque language loyalist groups during the Franco era in the 1960s) have always had a 100% Basque-speaking teaching staff. In short, largely as a result of the different language policies applied, Basquization has been generally successful only in the BAC, limited in the case of Navarre and virtually non-existent in Iparralde. 1.2

Bilingualism, II: Basque in education

The education system is currently the main domain of social functioning for the Basquization and bilingualization of the inhabitants throughout Euskal Herria, principally in the BAC (Azurmendi et al. 2005b; BAT Soziolinguistika Aldizkaria, 60, 2006; Cenoz et al. 2006; Etxeberria 1999; EUSTAT 2004; Gardner 2000; Gardner et al. 2005; Grin et al. 1999; Larrañaga 1996; Luque 2004; Luque et al. 2004; Martínez de Luna et al. 2000).

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Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

The Ikastolak, which were set up during the Franco era at the end of the 1960s by Basque language loyalist organizations and which continue today, constitute an important precedent and reference for understanding the evolution and current situation of the Basquization of the education system. The number of students in these schools rose dramatically from a low of 596 students in the early 1960s to a high of 69,953 in 1981–1982. Bearing in mind the virtual semi-clandestine nature of their existence, made possible mainly by private, religious schools, their positive evolution is particularly noteworthy. The Ikastolak continued to grow after the installation of the autonomous administrations. In the BAC, in the 1992–1993 academic year, the Ikastolak stopped having their own school network since they were required either to join the public network, with 32% taking that option, or the private network, which 68% opted to do. This fact subsequently signified Basquization reinforcement in both the public and private sectors. This did not happen in Navarre or in Iparralde, where the Ikastolak continued to operate within their own school network. In the case of the BAC, the Euskara Use Normalization Act (Ley de Normalización del Uso del Euskara, Parlamento Vasco 1982) established that the statutory education system (currently up to the age of 16) had to guarantee knowledge of the BAC’s two official languages throughout its territory. As a result, different bilingual teaching models were established throughout the school networks (public and private) from which parents could make a choice for their children and which still exist today: Model-D, Model-A and Model-B. Some figures are provided in Table 2 (Erkisia et al. 2006) below. These data show that the increase in the bilingual teaching models are most favorable towards Basquization, in particular Model-D (the one that really guarantees Basquization and Bilingualization), has been steady in the BAC, and this increase becomes sharper mainly in the early education levels. It is also clear that there are significant differences between the two education networks: (a) the main bilingual teaching models are Model-D in the public network and Model-B in the private network (mostly church-run schools) and (b) the minority bilingual education models are Model-A in the public network and Model-D in the private network. Interestingly, a special situation arises with respect to the school population of immigrant origin, which is educated almost exclusively in the public network. As most of these students are educated in Model-A, their chances of integration are thereby reduced. In the case of Navarre, the Basque Language Act (Ley Foral del Vascuence, Parlamento de Navarra 1986) established three sociolinguistic zones: (1) Basquespeaking (with the lowest demographic weight), (2) Spanish-speaking and (3) mixed (this is the most important one, not only because it is the largest demographically, but also because it includes the capital, Pamplona/Iruñea). Different language policies are applied to each zone. Models D and A (similar to the same



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

Table 2.  Distribution of students (in percentages) among the Bilingual Teaching Models in the BAC BAC

Model-D Euskara-medium with Spanish as a subject

Model-B Bilingual

Model-A Spanish-medium with Euskara as a subject

1982–83

13.1

9.2

77.2

2002–03

49.7

22.5

22.6

2004–05 (3–5 age group)

62.8

29.5

7.7

2004–05 Primary Education (6–11 age group)

51.0

28.6

20.4

2004–05 Secondary Education (12–16 age group)

45.0

22.5

32.5

69.2

18.7

12.2

15.4

65.0

28.6

22.8

27.6

49.6

2004–05 Public network Primary Education 51.0% of all students 2004–05 Private network Primary Education 49.0% of all students 2005–06 Immigration in the last 10 years (from Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe)

bilingual teaching Models as in the BAC) exist in the Basque-speaking and mixed zones while Model-G (Spanish-medium teaching only) is the imposed model in the Spanish-speaking zone. Table 3 (Zabaleta 2006) below provides some general data. These data indicate that an increase in the Basquization of education has taken place mainly during the early schooling levels, but to a considerably lesser extent than in the BAC. Furthermore, there are huge differences among the school networks. For example, in the public sector three teaching models exist, although Model-G predominates. In the private/parochial sector Model-G clearly predominates with the exception of the Ikastolak, where Model-D is the only choice.



Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

Table 3.  Distribution of students (in percentages) among the Bilingual Teaching Models in NAVARRE NAVARRE

1988–89 Pre-statutory and primary education (3–11 years) 2004–05 Pre-statutory and primary education (3–11 years 2004–05 Basque-speaking sociolinguistic zone 2004–05 Mixed sociolinguistic zone 2004–05 Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic zone 2005–06 Public network pre-statutory and statutory education (3–16 years) 61.70% of all students 2005–06 Private network pre-statutory and statutory education (3–16 years) 30.67% of all the students 2005–06 Ikastola pre-statutory and statutory education (3–16 years) 7.63% of all the students

Model-D Model-A Model-G Euskara-medium Spanish-medium Spanish-medium with Spanish as a with Euskara as a teaching only subject subject 13.3

5.4

81.1

26.5

27.8

45.6

86.3

13.6

29.2

26.0

44.7

5.9

34.1

59.9

30.5

33.8

34.8

0.1

21.5

78.1

100



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

In Iparralde, it is a very different situation since the institutionalization of the different bilingual teaching models in education is something starting to take place only now under the auspices of the Euskararen Erakunde Publikoa (Basque Language Board) set up in 2004. Using the same Models as in the BAC, the situation of Iparralde during the 2003–2004 academic year is schematized in Table 4 (Erkisia et al. 2006) below: Table 4.  Distribution of students (in percentages) among the Bilingual Teaching Models in IPARRALDE IPARRALDE 2003–04

Pre-statutory and primary education (2–11 years) Secondary education (12–16 years)

Model-D Euskaramedium with French as a subject

Model-A Model-G FrenchFrenchmedium medium with Euskara teaching only as a subject

5.5

16.8

5.5

72.1

3.4

5.8

8.1

82.7

16.15

7.0

76.9

22.7

0.3

74.7

Public network Pre-statutory and Primary (2–11 years) 70% of all the students Private network Pre-statutory and primary (2–11 years) 27% of all the students Ikastola Pre-statutory and primary (2–11 years) 3% of all the students

Model-B Bilingual

100

Somewhat differently from the two previous cases reviewed, these data show that the Basquization process of education is very weak and slow, although it is principally manifested in early levels. Another sharp difference is the fact that only the situation in the public and private networks is very similar, with the exception of the Ikastolak (which comprise only 3% of schools). In view of the importance of the education system, it is prudent to discuss an evaluation of the Basquization process. In the case of the BAC, we can draw from



Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

internal and external evaluations. In 2005, an external evaluation was made as part of a large European Union (EU) educational analysis. The report showed that the average level of knowledge in the BAC is similar to or higher (in certain subjects) than that obtained in Spain as a whole and that what is obtained through Model-D is also similar to or higher than the average for the BAC. The internal evaluation has been taking place from the start, and very early on it was pointed out that the different bilingual teaching models made very different results possible, which is to say that active bilingualism was only guaranteed by Model-D and facilitated by Model-B. These results explain the social debate going on in the BAC right now surrounding the Bilingual Teaching Models. Different proposals have been put forward like that of introducing one single, multilingual model that would guarantee not only widespread Basquization and bilingualization as well as widespread Englishization, but also widespread social cohesion and equality of opportunities. One of the current challenges facing the Basque education system (and the non-Basque one, also facing Spain, France and the EU in general) is how to guarantee a good knowledge of English in a statutory way, in addition to an intermediate level in another optional foreign language by the end of statutory education (at the age of 16). As far as the introduction of English is concerned, there have been a variety of experiences, the most prominent being the one conducted by the Ikastolak mainly in the BAC with the introduction of English at the age of 4 in 1990. This experience of the Ikastolak has been evaluated favorably, since their students end up with a level of competence in English recognized as equivalent to the international “FCE-Cambridge First Certificate” qualification. Thus, the Ikastolak have shown that not only widespread Basquization and bilingualization are possible through Model-D schooling, but also widespread Englishization simultaneously, offering an education model that goes beyond bilingualism to clear multilingualism following EU directives (Garagorri 1998; Cenoz et al. 2000, 2006). All this progress in Basquization in education in the phases prior to university has had repercussions on university education itself. Once again, the situation differs greatly among the various Basque territories and among the different universities. The most interesting example is that offered by the University of the Basque Country (Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea – UPV/EHU), which is the BAC’s public university and the most important one in Euskal Herria (in terms of the number of courses and students). It is the only one in which two teaching tracks – one in Euskara and one in Spanish – have been established. Of the 50,000 students in the UPV/EHU that took the University Entrance Exams during the 2004–2005 academic year, 50.07% took the exams in Euskara and 49.93% took them in Spanish. This number indicates a growing demand being made by students for a University education in Euskara. Available teaching offered in Euskara, at least as far as the compulsory subjects are concerned, is about 80%,



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

but it is low with respect to the optional subjects, made possible by the increase in bilingual teaching staff (roughly 30% of the overall faculty). Today this university is also increasing multilingual offerings, principally in English, and is thus joining the growing EU trends in this respect. 1.3

Bilingualism, III: Basque use development

The real objective of the Euskara normalization process, through the widespread bilingualization of the population, is to bring about normal, widespread Euskara use, not only for the BAC’s official institutions but for the whole of Euskal Herria. So the biggest advances, once again, will be taking place in the BAC. Again, the available bibliography on the subject is broad and touches on many interrelated issues. BAT Soziolinguistika Aldizkaria, 53, 2004. Data on Euskara use in Euskal Herria, as far as the 15+ age group is concerned (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco 2001), offer a typology, according to domains of use, important from the theoretical viewpoint of the RLS model (Reversing Language Shift) put forward by Fishman (1991, 2001) and allows us to see emerging patterns in language choice in particular social environments. In general, the proportion of Basque-speakers using mainly Euskara is small, although it is growing steadily. In 2001, the greatest use was in the BAC: the biggest proportion was with children (23%), in banks and with municipal services (20%); 18% used it with friends and the smallest proportion with the State Administration (7%). This small proportion of majority Euskara use is due to different reasons, such as psycholinguistic reasons of the degree of competence in the two official languages and sociolinguistic reasons since social use norms entail the use of Euskara in cases in which all the interlocutors are Basque speakers, a situation that is not yet very widespread. Thus, the greater, growing proportion of Euskara use exists by territory (in the BAC), by age (among the youngest) and by domain of use (in the closest relationships, such as with family and friends). In Euskal Herria as a whole, adolescents (13–14 years) (Martinez de Luna et al. 2000) display greater Euskara use than the older age groups, although this use continues to be less than their Spanish or French use, even among those schooled in Model-D. There could be an explanation for this because use would depend on a few interrelated factors. Firstly, individual aspects are relevant due to the possibility of lower competence in Euskara coupled with insufficient motivation for using it in some individuals. Also, the social structure of Euskara is of great importance, whereby its normalization and dissemination depend crucially on power mechanisms and the degree of institutionalization of spheres of Euskara use, when the latter facilitate genuine Euskara use. Related to this is the general and specific prestige of Euskara in certain spheres, which also facilitates genuine Euskara use.



Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

It should be noted that 48% of the 13 to 14-year-old adolescents surveyed from Euskal Herria as a whole are Basque speakers. In this population, the biggest differences in Euskara use depend on the bilingual teaching models followed in education, and are linked to the internal and external contexts of the schools. 72% of those taught in Model-D use mostly Euskara at school and 50% of them use it outside school. Those taught in Model-A do not use Euskara in most situation while 31% of those taught in Model-B use mostly Euskara at school and 15% do so outside school. There is a piece of research based on direct observation of genuine Euskara use in the street throughout Euskal Herria and repeated every four years by the Soziolinguistika Klusterra (BAT Soziolinguistika Aldizkaria 43, 2002); it is regarded as a barometer for gauging the advances being made in spontaneous Euskara use. The results indicate that the increase in Basque use in mundane encounters is constant in the case of the BAC, is maintained in the case of Navarre and is falling in the case of Iparralde, a result that is consistent with all data discussed thus far. Some of the figures for 2001 indicate the following situation: (1) by territory: (a) throughout Euskal Herria the average proportion of use is 13.5%, (b) in the BAC it reaches 16.1% (although in the most Basque-speaking territory, Gipuzkoa, it reaches 29.9%), (c) in Navarre it is 6.7%, (d) in Iparralde it is 5.8%; (2) by age, it is the youngest population that uses Euskara to the greatest extent: (a) throughout Euskal Herria: 19% of children, 13.6% of teenagers, and 11.3% of adults (because the increase in Basque speakers tends to take place at increasingly earlier ages); (b) among children: the proportion of use in the BAC is 23.5% (which in the case of Gipuzkoa reaches 43.7%), in Navarre it is 8.7% and in Iparralde 5.2%; (3) the presence of children leads to greater Euskara use: (a) when children are present, 25.1% (in Gipuzkoa 40%), (b) without children present, 11.5% (in Gipuzkoa 19.1%). This is consistent with the results of other pieces of research, which indicate that the adult population encourages children’s Euskara use considerably more than its own. On the other hand, there are Euskara uses not directly linked to communicative interaction. For example, uses connected with the linguistic landscape (street and road signs) or with the publication/production of books, magazines, music and videos. 2. Bilingualism and ethnolinguistic identity The history of Basquization and bilingualization expounded above is largely explained by the great loyalty towards Euskara and Basque matters in general, which can be studied in very different ways. For example, one can take the perspective of the psychosocial processes which have accompanied its history. One of the



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

psychosocial processes much studied in the Basque context has been the favorable/unfavorable attitudes frequently linked to motivations (integrative/instrumental/etc.) towards Euskara, Basque speakers and language promotion. In general, the attitudes tend to be more favorable in the BAC and in Iparralde than in Navarre. By age, the youngest are either the most favorable or the most indifferent. In terms of language competence, the greater the Euskara competence the more favorable one’s attitude towards its maintenance and dissemination, but the attitudes of Spanish or French monolinguals are also broadly favorable as well. Identity has also been widely studied as well. Identification is studied in a complex way, such as national identification, Basqueness in general or the complex configuration of Basque identity, with different components emerging, such as language, culture, national feeling and territoriality. This relates to the degree of conflict, opposition, separation and integration around the Basque/Spanish or French axis, particularly with respect to language and culture, which cannot be disassociated from bilingualism. The bibliography available with respect to this is extensive, primarily as far as the BAC is concerned, and covers not only the institutions (since the 1980s), but also social initiative (since the 1970s). Once again the difficulty is deciding what to choose for this chapter. From the beginning of the autonomous administrative period, the Government of the BAC looked into the objective social situation regarding Euskara (knowledge, use, transmission, etc.) and the subjective one (attitudes, interest, motivation, national feeling, identity, etc.), both in the BAC as well as throughout Euskal Herria. For example, in 1991 (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco 1995), a study demonstrated that 64% of the 16 and older regarded itself as Basque while only 24% did not. In response to the question, “How do you regard yourself, between Basque and Spanish?” there were differences by territory. In the BAC, 35% responded that they regarded themselves as Basque, 11% more Basque than Spanish, 28% Basque and Spanish in equal measure, 4% more Spanish than Basque and 16% Spanish. In Navarre, in response to the question “Do you regard yourself as Basque?” 34% said they did, 13% said they did partly and 51% said they did not; this did not mean that they regarded themselves as Spanish, but rather that they mostly considered themselves to be “Navarrese.” In Iparralde, in response to the question “Do you feel Basque or French?” 13% said they felt Basque, 6% more Basque than French, 29% Basque and French in equal measure, 11% more French than Basque and 35% French. Regarding the conditions for feeling Basque, throughout Euskal Herria the most important distinction for Basque speakers and active bilinguals was “to speak in Euskara,” while that of “having been born in the Basque Country” was the most important factor for passive bilinguals and monolingual Spanish speakers. For 56% of the people surveyed the most important reason for learning Euskara was “because it is our language” a reason more identitary



Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

than instrumental. As far as interest in promoting Euskara was concerned, 91% of those who regarded themselves as Basque were in favor, whereas 48% of those who did not regard themselves as Basque were against it (they regarded themselves as either Spanish or French). Since 1996, the Government of the BAC has periodically conducted research into Basque youth (15–29 years, in order to monitor its evolution closely) with respect to different aspects, including Basque identity. In general, the results of a survey conducted in 2003 (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco 2004) show that among the most important conditions for a person to regard him- or herself as Basque are feeling Basque (69%), living and working in the Basque Country (40%), having been born in the Basque Country (32%), speaking Euskara (only 18%), being of Basque descent (10%) and voting for a Basque nationalist political party (1%). As far as the BAC is concerned, there are numerous pieces of research dealing with identity conducted by social initiative, which is generally conducted by university researchers mainly from sociolinguistic and psychosocial perspectives. This research gives similar results that are consistent with each other, even though very different methodologies have been followed. Our own research has been carried out mainly on university students, because, among other reasons, they constitute a young population (with respect to the future) and an educated one (with respect to future social leadership). This research has emphasized the study of identity on the basis of the hypothesis that it is principally a psychosocial process, both the cause and consequence at the same time of the remaining intergroup, psychosocial processes (linked to cognition, motivation or affectivity). Identity is the defining process of people and groups in their interpersonal and intergroup relations. For this reason, identity construction, performance and negotiation are directly linked to interpersonal and intergroup behavior in relation to the situation of contact languages and cultures. We have followed a complex tradition of study (Azurmendi 2000) through which we examine ethnic and national identity vis-à-vis sociology and sociolinguistics (Conversi 2004; Erize 2001; Fishman 1989, 1999; García et al.  2006; Hornberger et al.  2006), as social identity type in social psychology (Abrams et al. 1990; Lorenzi-Cioldi et al. 1996; Tajfel 1978; Tajfel et al. 1986), as well as ethnolinguistic identity in the social psychology of language (Hecht et al. 2001; Giles 1977; Giles et al. 1987; Gudykunst et al. 1990; Sachdev et al. 2001). As an example of a study into the complex configuration of Basque identity, the following four components were singled out (Azurmendi et al. 2003a): (1) linguistic (Euskara, Spanish, both languages or bilingual), (2) cultural (provincial, of the autonomous community, Basque, Spanish, European), (3) national (Basque, Spanish, Basque-Spanish or bicultural) and (4) territorial (municipality, province, autonomous community –BAC–, Euskal Herria, Spain, Europe). Some of the results display the following identity typology (dimensions in the factorial analysis),



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

incorporating the four identitary components under consideration: (1) Basque identity (accounting for 27.4% of variance), which shows itself to be knowledgeable about the culture of Euskal Herria and participates in it, (2) European-Spanish identity (accounting for 18.1% of variance), which shows itself to be knowledgeable about Spanish and European cultures and participates in them, (3) Spanish identity (accounting for 8.3% of variance), which is in contradiction with and in conflict with the situations of Basque speaker and bilingual in the language component and which shows itself to be knowledgeable about Spanish culture and participates in it and (4) localist identity, incorporating only the territorial and cultural components on the municipal, provincial, and autonomous community levels (accounting for 7.9% of variance). Among these 4 identity types, the Spanish and European-Spanish identities correlate positively with each other (together accounting for 26.4% of variance), so they can be regarded as one single identity type. The Basque and Spanish identities appear orthogonally, in other words, as separate identitary worlds, except with respect to the language component, since those who identify themselves as Spanish correlate positively with the Spanishspeaking situation but negatively with the Basque-speaking and bilingual situations. The localist identity appears as separate and neutral with respect to the main Basque/Spanish identitary axis. On the other hand, no integrative Basque-Spanish identity type is obtained, so that the Basque and Spanish identities continue to manifest themselves as separate from each other, although in conflict as far as Euskara is concerned. Moreover, identification with Europeanness does not function as a supracategorial goal from which to be able to overcome the conflict between the Basque and Spanish identity types (Bourhis et al. 1996). On the other hand, relative identity intensity is different: stronger in Basque identity and weaker in Spanish identity. These identity types display the following discrete psychosociolinguistic profiles: I. Basque identity: (1) according to sociodemographic characteristics: residing in the more Basque-speaking territories (Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia), residing in municipalities with considerable presence of Basque speakers (in any case exceeding 20%), children of natives and natives, students at both the public and private universities (University of the Basque Country and the Jesuit-run University of Deusto, respectively), (2) according to sociolinguistic features: (in the case of both the subjects and their parents) having Euskara, or Euskara and Spanish (co-mother tongue bilinguals) as a first language, having been schooled in Model-D (Basque-medium with Spanish as a subject) or Model-B (bilingual), having chosen to respond to the questionnaire in Euskara, having high linguistic competence in Euskara and (3) according to psychosocial features: displaying a positive attitude towards Euskara as well as towards Basque speakers.



Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi

II. Spanish identity: (1) according to sociodemographic characteristics: residing in the less Basque-speaking provinces (Araba, and Bizkaia), residing in municipalities with a minimal presence of Basque speakers (generally less than 20%), natives are children of parents of whom either one or both are immigrants, students at both the public and private universities, (2) according to sociolinguistic characteristics: (in the case of both the subjects and their parents) having Spanish as the first language, having been schooled in Model-A (Spanish-medium with Basque as a subject), having opted to respond to the questionnaire in Spanish, having low linguistic competence in Euskara and (3) according to psychosocial characteristics: displaying a negative attitude towards Euskara, but a positive one towards Basque speakers. Therefore, the contact languages, Euskara and Spanish, function as an important component in the social or group identification process, and also as the main component in the complex configuration of Basque and Spanish identities from the relational or intergroup point of view. Arratibel et al. (2001) have demonstrated that the factors that have a bearing on adult Basquization, in the processes not only of learning but also of use, are sociolinguistic and psychosocial factors in equal measure and that the sociolinguistic factors refer mainly to the presence of Basque speakers. They have also demonstrated that among the psychosocial factors, Basque ethnolinguistic identity comes to bear on both processes, in motivation for learning and also in attitudes towards use. In other words, ethnolinguistic identity once again occupies a central position in the problems of bilingualism in cases of languages and speech groups in contact, as in the Basque case, and functions simultaneously in relation to bilingualism as a predictor as well as a result. 3. Bilingualism, ethnolinguistic identity and psychosocial construction of citizenship At present, one of the problems of great interest in the social sciences is that of citizenship, both in connection with the traditional interethnic contact situation in the EU (Azurmendi et al. 2003a, 2003b; Nelde et al. 1996) as well as in Spain and in the BAC (Azurmendi et al. 1998a, 2003a). This relates to the emergent interethnic contact situation, due in large part to the importance of the recent, intense immigration into the BAC (Azurmendi et al. 2005a; Etxepeteleku et al. 2006; Larrañaga et al. 2005; Ruiz et al. 2005) through legislation to allow immigrants access to host-country nationality through intergroup psychosocial processes (opinions, attitudes, identities, etc.), mainly through the ‘acculturation theory’ (Berry 2005;



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country

Berry et al. 1992; Bourhis et al. 1997; Sabatier et al. 1996). In view of its importance in connection with bilingualism and ethnolinguistic identity, we are going to show some of the results obtained in the Basque context in the BAC (this aspect has not been studied much in Navarre and not at all in Iparralde). Twenty years after the passing of the Spanish Constitution (1977) and the Statutes of Autonomy (1978 to 1980), research was conducted involving university students in Spain’s bilingual Autonomous Communities (Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarre and Valencia) to find out what influence the new situation involving the revival of autonomous community languages and cultures had had on ethnolinguistic identity (linguistic and cultural) as well as on the psychosocial construction of citizenship in the different bilingual contexts (Azurmendi et al. 1998a). In order to see the evolution, ethnolinguistic identity among university students was studied once again 10 years later (1995–2004), this time in the BAC (Azurmendi et al.  2005a). The results indicate that the identity types obtained can be plotted along an identitary continuum, the poles of which would be occupied by extreme Basque or Spanish ethnolinguistic identities and the central section of which would be occupied by integrative bilingual-bicultural, or Basque-Spanish identity. Within the space of 10 years, the results show the following evolution in the BAC: (1) the Basque identity prototype has gone from being 16.6% to 18.9%, (2) the Spanish identity prototype, from 6% to 4.7% and (3) the bilingual-bicultural, or Basque-Spanish integrative identity prototype, has gone from 12% to 37.7%, which points to the main trend in the evolution. Table 5 summarizes several factorial dimensions or citizenship types among university students in the BAC (Table 5). These results indicate that four main dimensions or types of access to Basque citizenship emerge among university students in the BAC (because these four alone account for 61.4% of the variance), and that these turn out to be similar in intensity even though the cultural citizenship dimension is the predominant one. University students adhere mainly to cultural citizenship (mean=5.1, on a scale of 7 points), then to ethno-civic and civic citizenships (mean=4.2) and finally to political-ethnic citizenship (mean=3.2). This indicates that university students are not in favor of creating intergroup barriers between the two linguisticcultural contact groups (Basque and Spanish) by means of characteristics that cannot be acquired, but prefer to emphasize the characteristics that can be acquired. This is mainly the case among those who identify themselves as Basques (linguistically and culturally). These results coincide with those of other research (Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco, 2005), in which young people (15–29 years) prefer conditions such as (a) the will to be Basque or feel Basque (63%) and to live and work in the Basque Country (52%), conditions that are on the increase and (b) the condition of speaking Euskara (10%) which is gradually decreasing (in apparent contradiction); both are conditions that can be acquired.



.847 .811 .561 .497 .067 .176 -.033 .042 .547 -.047 .398 .400 -.047 .359 .387

Knowing and defending Basque culture Participating in Basque culture Supporting Basque cultural and ethnic diversity Participating in the Basque Country’s association movements Having Basque forebears Having been born and brought up in the Basque Country Living and working in the Basque Country Having a surname of Basque origin Knowing and speaking the Basque language Being a political party sympathizer Being in favour of the Basque Country’s sovereignty Having Euskara as the first acquired language Being a voter in general and regional elections

Respecting and complying with the Basque Country’s laws Adhering to the Basque Country’s democratic values

CULTURAL 19% of variance

.116 .178

.134 .170 -.012 -.016 .742 .712 .586 .572 .569 .074 .098 .453 .144

ETHNO-CIVIC 15% of variance

Factors (or dimensions)

.126 .296

.138 .185 -.204 .396 .368 -.024 -.159 .520 .145 .732 .645 .531 .245

POLITICALETHNIC 14% of variance

.719 .558

.044 .097 .331 .381 .027 .248 .478 .063 -.008 .251 .175 -.025 .730

CIVIC 13.4% of variance

Table 5.  Conditions necessary for someone to regard him- or herself as Basque. University students in the BAC, in 2004 (Factorial analysis)

 Maria-Jose Azurmendi, Nekane Larrañaga and Jokin Apalategi



Chapter 2.  Bilingualism, identity, and citizenship in the Basque Country 

From the point of view of ethnolinguistic identity more specifically, there are significant differences among those who identity themselves as Basque and those who identify themselves as Basque-Spanish (Azurmendi et al. 2005a; Larrañaga et al. 2005). Table 6.  Differences among those who identify themselves as Basque or Basque-Spanish. University students in the BAC, in 2004 (M, on a scale of 7 points) Basque identity

Basque-Spanish identity

Differences

Knowing and speaking Euskara

5.8

5

F=43.11 1.643 p