Abstract

The link between language and identity is undeniable: language can both be a salient element of our identity, and a tool to perform and negotiate it. For multilingual speakers, this relationship becomes less straightforward as they have multiple languages (and therefore, identities) available to choose from. Said choice is particularly difficult in conflictual multilingual contexts, where the sociopolitical tensions often make language choice become a political statement. This study focuses on one of such contexts, Catalonia, with the aim to explore the language identities, attitudes and daily use of the adolescents that grew up with the sociopolitical turmoil of Catalonia’s independence attempt of 2017.
Participants included 45 high-school students from two schools located in the Barcelona metropolitan area. All participants completed ethnolinguistic questionnaires (capturing the role of language in identity, as well as their attitudes toward both Catalan and Spanish), and language use and social network surveys (measuring language entropy in different daily settings, as well as network size and intimacy in both languages).
Results revealed the expected pattern regarding the identity–language links, whereby a stronger sense of either ethnic identity was associated with greater support for that language in various social contexts. However, the strongest identity was bilingual, and it appeared to co-exist with Spanish and Catalan ethnic beliefs. Findings suggest the existence of a complex multifaceted multilingual identity in which languages are not in competition with each other.