This study of bilingual competence, linguistic attitudes, and
language choice among secondary students in Valencia explores the
effects of linguistic normalization since the removal of Franco's
repressive measures against the Valencian language variety. The
introduction of Valencian into the educational system and other
measures have substantially reversed the decline of levels of
competence and expanded its domains of usage but have only marginally
decreased the dominance of Castilian. A survey of attitudes toward
Valencian, Catalan (Barcelona variety) and Castilian reveals two
distinct groups of patterns. One ascribes status and integrative value
chiefly to Castilian, the other to Valencian and Catalan. Identifying
the students manifesting the variants of these patterns according to
socio-demographic, ideological, and behavioral factors shows how the
current political dynamic between progressive nationalist forces and
anti-Catalanist, Castilian-speaking forces is reflected in ongoing
attitudinal divergence.Research was
supported in part by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada. Sankoff is a Fellow of the Canadian
Institute for Advanced Research and holds the Canada Research Chair in
Mathematical Genomics.