While this study draws on issues specific to 21st century contexts of migration, many of the linguistic phenomena observed in the community of As Rocas have not deviated from the conclusions drawn from mid 20th century research. During my time in the field, as well as conducting interviews and non-participant classrooms observation, I observed people’s language practices in daily encounters. As Miguel, a Galician teacher and local language activist, was the primary gatekeeper to this community, I spent most of my time in As Rocas speaking Galician. Galician was the language I used to initiate
conversations. Having spent ten years living in Galicia, and having undertaken a Galician language course in 2012, I have a high level of competence speaking Galician across a range of topics. However, despite what I perceive to be my proficiency in spoken Galician, and my enthusiasm to speak it, many people in the community in As Rocas addressed me in Spanish. For some people with whom I spoke, the initial formalities in the conversation were in Galician but then, a shift would take place and they would start speaking to me in Spanish. At times it was as if there was a gravitational pull making them speak Spanish to me, despite the fact that I was speaking Galician, and despite the fact that they themselves were habitual users of Galician. I raised this issue with some of the teachers whom I interviewed, many of whom laughed and acknowledged this as a familiar phenomenon. Many of them, Miguel included, explained that the practice of speaking Spanish to somebody who was considered
‘foreign’ stemmed from a desire to appear welcoming and respectful. A similar phenomenon has been documented in other minority language contexts. In the case of Wales, both Trosset (1986), and Crowe (1988, p.88) touch on these issues, with Crowe noting that the challenge for new speakers who wish to speak Welsh is not “drowning in Welsh […] but finding a puddle of it in which to dip their feet”. This has also been found in the case of 'edutourists' in Galicia (students who travel to Galicia to attend Galician language courses) and their struggles to access Galician linguistic and cultural groups (O’Rourke and DePalma, 2016).
Similar issues related to the use of minority and dominant languages with people from outside the local community have been identified in the Catalan context (Pujolar, 2010).
In Catalonia, although language revitalisation efforts that took place during and after the Spanish transition to democracy led to Catalan being the medium of instruction for most schools by the end of the 20th century (Woolard and Frekko, 2012), the practices of the local community still reflect those of many other minority language contexts, where speaking the minority language is seen only as appropriate with other ‘natives’ or members of the in-group (Pujolar, 2010). Pujolar argues that the language practices of many local Catalans are at odds with the objectives outlined in Catalan language policy, which increasingly aim to promote Catalan as a public language that can be accessed by all. The subsequent effect of these practices, both in Catalonia and Galicia, where locals tend to limit their use of the minority language to exchanges with other locals, and use Spanish as a lingua franca for use with other members of the community, is that immigrants show a preference for learning Spanish when they arrive as it is the
language they perceive to have the most communicative value. Furthermore, based on the language practices of the local community in As Rocas, it can be inferred that although Galician is the primary language of most of the population of As Rocas, diglossic practices and ideologies still exist, with Spanish maintaining the top position in the language hierarchy.
The example below is taken from a conversation I had with Miguel. In the excerpt Miguel is addressing me, explaining how ‘ao ser extranxeira’ (as a foreigner), I will see how many people speak to me in Spanish, despite my attempts to have a conversation in Galician. In the excerpt, Miguel questions why people from the local community, who are native speakers of Galician and use the language in their daily life, choose to speak Spanish with ‘foreigners’. Miguel proposes that the reasons for these language practices are rooted in ideologies about the superiority of the Spanish language and the corresponding inferiority of Galician. He says that people continue to see the use of Spanish as the best way to appear ‘educado, respetuoso e acolledor’ (educated, respectful and welcoming) when speaking to somebody from outside the community.
Example 8.3 - Showing respect
M: entón e: ao ser estranxeira / observarás como: en moitos casos / aínda que tú fales en galego a persoa responderache en castelán sendo habitualmente galego falante entón / que pode pasar para que unha persoa galego falante habitual espontáneo e: (3”) falándolle tú en galego che responda en castelán?
porque es estranxeira e ten que mostrarse e: educado respetuoso e acolledor contigo entón a millor maneira de mostrarse acolledor contigo é falándoche en castelán
M: As a foreigner, you will often see that when you speak to a person in Galician they will reply to you in Spanish even though they are Galician speakers. So why would a person who always speaks Galician answer you in Spanish when you speak to them in Galician? Because you are foreign they feel they have to show you that they are educated, respectful and welcoming.
Therefore, the best way to do that is to speak to you in Spanish.
If what Miguel and other teachers say regarding the motivation for these practices is to be taken at face value, it implicitly indicates a lack of value for the Galician language, even amongst its native speakers. Moreover, this scenario is not unique to the Galician context, and has been documented in other language contexts, notably in the Irish context (O’Rourke, 2011c; O’Rourke and Walsh, 2015). The low prestige awarded to Galician by its speakers acts as a hindrance to the sustainability of the language (Ramallo, 2012; Lorenzo Suárez, 2005; Rei Doval, 2007). Language revitalisation has done much to increase the status of Galician, at least in official domains such as education and politics (Lorenzo Suárez, 2008). Most significant for those working the education system in As Rocas is the heightened status of Galician in school settings.
However, despite these changes, and the improved support for Galician at the institutional level, the ideologies of some members of the community are still anchored in diglossic ideas whereby Spanish in the dominant language of prestige and Galician is the colloquial, low-value, language of the home.
Pujolar (2009) explains the practice of speaking Catalan to immigrants in the Catalan contexts as “socially incongruent”. He found that
speaking Catalan to recent immigrants who obviously lack locally sanctioned forms of cultural capital is inconsistent with the position of this language in the local linguistic market. Therefore, speaking Catalan to immigrants does not entail so much communication problems, but is somehow socially incongruent (Pujolar, 2009, p.96).
Furthermore, drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Pujolar explains how the deeply engrained ideologies of the local population make it difficult for them to change their linguistic practices, where they gravitate towards speaking the majority language to the non-local population: “The ‘habit’ or ‘habitus’ to speak Spanish to strangers is much more than a convention. It is an embodied disposition that is difficult for locals to change even if they wish to” (Pujolar, 2009, p.96).
In keeping with what I observed in As Rocas, it has been found that speakers make and vary “their choices of language in accordance with the identity of the addressee, regardless of the setting and topic” (Wei, 1994, p.10). In the case of As Rocas, I found that the identity of the addressee was a key factor in determining language choice. As
discussed above, whether or not the addressee was considered an insider or an outsider was influential over whether the speaker employed Galician or Spanish. Issues relating to the language choices made by members of the community were something I discussed at length with Miguel. He had many anecdotal examples of the language practices that took place in Galicia due to the historically complex sociolinguistic situation. Elaborating on the explanations Miguel provided in the above passage (where he attributed people’s decision to speak Spanish to outsiders to a desire to seem respectful), in the example below he discusses the ‘universality’ that Spanish is perceived to have. Jokingly, Miguel says that people in As Rocas will speak Spanish to a Japanese person ‘because they are Japanese’. The logic followed here is that, even though the Japanese person may only speak Japanese, people in the community instinctively think they will be better able to understand Spanish, as it is a global and
‘universal’ language.
Example 8.4 - Spanish is universal
M: ao non ser autóctono / hai algo na mentalidade colectiva / que que leva / a dirixirse a el en castellano porque non é de aquí porque teñen esa idea de que de que o castellano é universal entón un xaponés fálalle castellano porque é xaponés
M: Because they are not locals, there is something in the collective mentality that makes the locals address the immigrants in Spanish. The locals have this idea that Spanish is universal. Therefore, speak Spanish to a Japanese person because they’re Japanese.
Miguel’s view about people in As Rocas seeing Spanish as universal is supported by the practices that I observed and by the responses given by students in interviews. Indeed, many people (who considered me a foreigner) spoke to me in Spanish, and the students with whom I spoke frequently mentioned the value of Spanish at a national level and its communicative value as an international lingua franca. To draw on a marketing metaphor, it could be inferred from the data presented in this study that Spanish has been branded as an international product with global value, while Galician has been branded as an ‘authentic’ marker of local identity (Heller and Duchêne, 2012).