This session will report on results from the state-funded Translinguam Project which aims to investigate communication practices and language attitudes manifested in the sociocultural and linguistic complexity of present-day urban educational contexts. More specifically, it attempts to explore language practices that are co-constructed and negotiated in Catalonia, predominantly in secondary schools. These spaces are understood as both socializing agents and socializing contexts in which young people from diverse origins interact, put into practice multilingual repertories and co-construct adult identities with new language practices and attitudes. The research is articulated as a case study in two secondary schools in the Barcelona-area and includes researchers’ ethnographic observations in two high schools, audio recordings in in-class small-group activities and interviews with high school and post-high school students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The analysis reveals coherent, though not exclusive, manifestations of cosmopolitan stances and translingual communicative practices that can only be interpreted when situated in the context of Catalonia’s current educational model, the official language policy, local national-identity tensions, recent and past family trajectories of migration and the emergence of flexible ethnolinguistic identities.

Mireia Trenchs-Parera (Ed. D.)
Associate Professor, Departament d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Free and open to public
Reception to follow