Language in context seminar

Speaker: Dr Anik Nandi (Leiden University)

Title: Countering government’s low-intensity language policies on the ground: Family language policies in Castilian-Spanish dominated Galicia

Abstract: The pressure of dominant languages on minority languages is relentless in the era of neoliberal economy, partly because many speakers of minoritized languages can see more opportunities if they shift to a dominant one. Despite these pressures, however, many minority language speakers (both indigenous minorities and in the context of migration) continue to maintain or reclaim their languages as active agents through everyday interactions and the transmission of the language within the home. Contemporary research on language policy underscores how top-down policymakers tend to endorse the interests of dominant social groups, marginalize minority languages and attempt to perpetuate systems of socio-lingual inequity. In the Castilian-Spanish dominated sociolinguistic terrains of Galicia, this lecture examines the rise of grassroots level actors or agents in form of parents who have decided to contest the government’s low-intensity language policy models through various bottom-up efforts. Drawing on ethnographic research data before and during the pandemic, I investigate how these parents exercise their agency and become policymakers in their homes and the community. The endeavour is also to understand the dynamics of Galician language speaking families during the pandemic and whether the confinement caused by COVID-19 is affecting (or not) their grassroots-level practices.