Language choice in bilingual couples as habit (excerpt from Piller, 2002, p. 137)

In my research with bilingual couples, habit emerged as one of the main reasons for a couple’s language choice. Partners from different language backgrounds met through the medium of a particular language and fell in love through a particular language. Once they had established a relationship through that language, it became a relatively fixed habit.

This means that entering a couple relationship was a moment of linguistic habit formation. At the same time, it was also a moment of drastic linguistic habit change, at least for one partner. At least one partner had to change their habitual language from one language (usually their native language) to another (usually an additional language).

The question of habit formation is an important one in language learning research. Around the world, education systems invest enormous sums of money into language teaching but the outcomes in terms of getting students to actually speak the language(s) they are learning outside the classroom are often unclear.

Efforts to revive Irish Gaelic provide a well-known example. In the Republic of Ireland, Gaelic is part of the compulsory curriculum of primary and secondary school students. Even so, only around 40% of the population reported in the 2016 census that they could speak Irish. However, when asked whether they actually did so, only 1.7% of the population reported that they regularly used Irish. So, knowing Gaelic and using Gaelic are clearly two different things.

The explanation for this pattern is simple: habit. Studying a language gives learners a new tool. But to actually use that tool on a regular basis outside the classroom requires a change of linguistic habit. In other words, language knowledge needs to be activated.

For the native German speakers in my bilingual couples research, falling in love and establishing a couple relationship with a native English speaker provided such a transformative moment that allowed them to activate the English they had studied throughout their schooling. (The converse pattern was much rarer as native English speakers rarely had studied German and so no basis for a linguistic change of habit existed).

Other than linguistic intermarriage, what transformative moments are there across the life course when people might change from one habitual language to another?

Professor Maite Puigdevall during her guest lecture at Macquarie University

This is the question Professor Maite Puigdevall (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain) addressed in her inaugural lecture in linguistic diversity at Macquarie University. Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues use the Catalan word muda (“change, transformation”) to refer to such biographical junctures where a linguistic change of habit is likely. They have identified six such transformative junctures across the life course:

• Primary school
• High school
• University
• Workplace entry
• Couple formation
• Becoming a parent

At each such juncture, a person starts to move in new circles, make new friends and establish new networks. Establishing oneself in such a new way may lead to all kinds of changes and new habits and a switch in the habitual language may be one such transformation.

Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues have used the muda concept particularly in relation to minoritized languages such as Catalan, Basque or Gaelic. At each juncture, such languages acquire “new speakers” (as opposed to the ever-shrinking number of heritage speakers). However, the life-course approach they propose has at least two implications for language policy elsewhere, too, including Australia.

First, language learning is a long-term investment. Results should not be expected immediately but are more likely to accrue later in life. A good reminder that the old adage non scolae sed vitae discimus (“we learn not for school but for life”) holds for language learning, too, and that we should vigorously contest the “languages are useless” argument that we so often hear, particularly in the Anglosphere.

Second, an investment in language education in school will pay off most when it is complemented by other policy interventions in favor of a particular language. For instance, in comparative research related to Catalan, Basque and Gaelic, Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues found that a significant inducement to turn Catalan into a habitual language was constituted by the bilingual (Catalan, Spanish) language requirement present for employment in the civil service in Catalonia.

Professor Puigdevall’s lecture inspired us to focus on moments in the life-course where bilingual proficiencies may be turned into bilingual habits. What new things will we learn in our next lecture in linguistic diversity when Dr Sabine Little (Sheffield University, UK) asks what we inherit when we inherit a language?

References

Piller, I. (2002). Bilingual couples talk: the discursive construction of hybridity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Puigdevall, M., Walsh, J., Amorrortu, E., & Ortega, A. (2018). ‘I’ll be one of them’: linguistic mudes and new speakers in three minority language contexts. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 39(5), 445-457. doi:10.1080/01434632.2018.1429453
Pujolar, J., & Puigdevall, M. (2015). Linguistic mudes: How to become a new speaker in Catalonia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 231, 167-187.

Actress Noemí Busquets as the wise yet naughty Esperanceta Gassia at the Ecomuseu de les Valls d’Àneu during the theatrical night visit to the ethnographic museum of Esterri d’ Àneu in Pallarès

When thinking of promoting tourism in a mountainous area of the Catalan Pyrenees it might seem as if using Pallarès, the local dialect of the Western Catalan type, with very specific vocabulary that visitors from other Catalan-speaking areas are not familiar with and which has been traditionally linked to rural and traditional lifestyles, would make little sense.

Nevertheless, much is to be gained by resorting to this local variety of the Catalan language in touristic activities in the area of Pallars Sobirà… why is that? Well, surprisingly, globalization is the answer.

One of the things that happen in the globalized touristic use of languages, according to authors such as Jaworski and Thurlow (2011) is the “commodification” and “recontextualization” of language. That means, language becomes a commodity in tourism … Aloha in Hawaii and Namaste in Nepal add authenticity to cultural visits, which is always a key asset in tourism. Beyond greetings and occasional language-learning through touristic “grazing” and “gazing”, though, tourism naturally creates new contexts for cultural phenomena and it currently values (oral) intangible heritage greatly. In fact, intangible heritage becomes visible precisely thanks to tourism. Pallarès is, in this sense, an intangible heritage of great value due to its connection to the authentic culture and territory of the Pyrenees.

According to dialectologists (Veny, 1993), Pallarès displays the marks of languages that were spoken before Catalan in the Pyrenees; mainly Basque, which vanished around the 8^th century AD due to the Romanization process, but which endured in “isolated” mountain valleys of the Pallars until the 10^th century, leaving a strong imprint on place names specially.

Mountain regions are ambivalent: either mountains and valleys “isolate”, or they “link” populations, villages, and cultures. So, when researching in order to assess the potential value of Pallarès in the promotion of the rich touristic offer of the Pallars Sobirà region (a land with prime adventure sports environment and unique cultural offers from Romanesque art to gastronomy) I asked cultural anthropologist and director of the Ecomuseu de les Valls d’Àneu Jordi Abella about this. Mr. Abella told me that “the villages of the Pyrenees in the 19^th century were already connected to European capital cities such as Madrid, Paris and Barcelona” and that too long a “good savage myth à la Rousseau had lived on to give a false romantic image of the Pyrenees” based on cultural purity due to isolation.

In a way, both isolation and globalization are forces at play here: isolation is evidenced by the fact that Basque lived on for 200 years in the Pallars; and globalization is evidenced by the fact that people changed to a common language – Catalan – which they could use at fairs and for trading.

Poster of the theater and dance festival “Esbaiola’t” in Esterri d’Àneu. The verb “esbaiolar-se” is unknown in other varieties of Catalan and means “to clear one’s mind” as well as “to clear up the mists (weather)”

Catalonia as a whole is going through what some have called a “thirst for history” (Toledano Gonzàlez, 2004). Catalans are more inclined to consume and discover more about their own culture at the current history-defining moment in which a Catalan vote for self-determination is being discussed. This creates a context that naturally invites greater use of Pallarès as Actress Noemí Busquets (who plays the role of a Pallarès-speaking witch-like wise and wacky lady that confronts local and global values during the night visits to the Eco Museum of the village of Esterri d’Àneu) emphasises: “now I feel that it (Pallarès) is better appreciated by visitors”.  And the fact is that 63% of the visitors coming to the Pallars region are from Catalonia (Boyra & Fusté, 2013), and mostly from the metropolitan area of Barcelona. What is it that Pallarès can offer them?

When in 1913, the philologist Pompeu Fabra wrote the Orthographic Rules of Catalan and later on the General Dictionary of Catalan Language (1931), he based them on the Eastern Catalan dialect – the one spoken in Barcelona – and left aside most vocabulary of other dialects and almost completely ignored Pallarès. Now, as a consequence of this, people coming to the Pallars get surprised by Pallarès. While queuing up at a grocery shop in the beautiful village of Esterri d’Àneu, a spontaneous conversation on dialectology started: a woman shared that when she got married to her Pallarès husband and moved to his village, her mother-in-law once asked her to fetch the “llosa”. “Llosa” in Catalan means “stone slab”; so, she continued “I was hoping that the stone slab wouldn’t be too heavy”. To her relief she later found out that “llosa” in Pallarès means “ladle”.

Pallarès brings back to Catalan-speaking visitors, a richness of vocabulary that they would otherwise ignore. When I asked Yolanda Mas, tourism specialist of the city hall of Sort (the capital of the Pallars Sobirà) what she thought of promoting Pallarès through tourism, she said that “it is an endangered resource that we should definitely invest in”. Nowadays, the visitors to the Pallars Sobirà are very diverse; from French and English to Spanish, Israeli and Russians; so the linguascape of the Pallars might become even more complex soon, and while offering touristic activities in Hebrew or Russian may respond to the economic need of the moment, offering activities in Pallarès Catalan in addition to activities in Standard Catalan and other languages, will be proof that “identity sells” while being at the same time a necessary expression of authentic identity.

References
Boyra, J. & Fusté, F. (2013). Anàlisi dels instruments d’ordenació i dels recursos territorials i l’activitat turística a la comarca del Pallars Sobirà GREPAT/ Escola Universitària Formatic Barna, Barcelona

Fabra, P. (1913). Normes ortogràfiques. Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona.

Fabra, P. (1931). Diccionari general de la llengua catalana. Llibreria Catalònia, Barcelona.

Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2010). Language and the Globalizing Habitus of Tourism: Towards a sociolingüístics of Fleeting Relationships (From: Handbook of Language and Globalization, edited by Coupland, N.) Wiley- Blackwell Publishing ltd. West Sussex, UK.

Toledano Gonzàlez, L. (2004). Atles del Turisme a Catalunya mapa nacional dels recursos turísitics intangibles. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona- Grup de Recerca Consolidat Manuscrits / Generalitat de Catalunya.

Torrents, A. (2014). La variant dialectal pallaresa com a bé immaterial de la marca de turisme cultural “Pallars”. Creació i comercialització de productes turístics. Quaderns de recerca Escola Universitària Formatic Barna, Barcelona.

Veny, J. (1993). Els parlars catalans (Síntesi de dialectologia) Editorial Moll, Mallorca.