Why do we switch languages without realizing it?

How many of you have started a conversation in Catalan and, after a short while, ended up speaking in Spanish? Perhaps the other person had answered you in Spanish but understood you perfectly. Perhaps you didn't know if they spoke Catalan. Perhaps it was someone you had just met and didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable, or perhaps, quite simply, it just came out that way.

However, it is possible that none of these answers fully explain what happened. In reality, before deciding which language we will speak, we already have many ideas about the languages we use. We consider that one is more useful, that another is more typical of a place, that a certain way of speaking is more cultured or refined, that one accent is more pleasant than another, or that there are languages that are useful for everything and others that are not useful for certain things.

Linguistic ideologies

These ideas may seem like personal opinions, but they are part of a set of beliefs that in sociolinguistics are called ‘linguistic ideologies’. The concept, developed and studied by authors such as the linguistic anthropologist Kathryn Woolard, refers to the ideas we have about languages and the relationship they have with the people who speak them. These ideas can relate to identity, usefulness, correctness, or what we consider ‘normal’. Often, however, we do not perceive them as ideas: they simply seem like evidence.

For example, if we say that one language is ‘more international’ than another, we are probably not thinking that we are making any assessment of that language. It seems to us that we are simply describing a reality: it has more speakers, it is spoken in more territories, or it is more common to find it outside the territory where it is native. However, this label can also lead us to perceive it as a more ‘useful’, more ‘necessary’, or even more ‘modern’ language.

Something different can happen with the languages we consider ‘local’. We can more easily associate them with a territory, a way of life, or a specific identity. In this sense, Woolard, based on the work of sociolinguist Susan Gal, speaks of two ways of valuing languages that can help us understand many everyday situations: authenticity and anonymity.

A language is perceived as ‘authentic’ when we relate it to a place or a group of people. It is the language that seems to identify ‘the locals’, the one we associate with a specific community. On the other hand, a language is perceived as 'anonymous' when it seems to belong to no one in particular: it is the general language, the one that everyone can use and which, precisely because of this, seems less marked.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, various studies have observed this difference in the way Catalan and Spanish are perceived. Catalan tends to be more easily associated with a specific community, while Spanish can appear as a more general language, shared by everyone. In other words, Catalan can be used to identify someone as a member of a group, while Spanish can appear as the language that does not require such identification.

This brings us back to that conversation we started in Catalan. If we consider Catalan to be the language of a specific group, it is possible that, before using it with a stranger, we want to know if that person is part of the group. Is she from here? Does she speak Catalan? Does she have an accent? Do we know her? If we don't know, Spanish might seem like a 'safer' option.

However, this does not always happen because the other person speaks it better (how many times have we heard conversations in Spanish between people who are clearly initial Catalan speakers?). It can simply happen because we have learned to perceive Spanish as a language that does not require explanations.

Here, however, a paradox arises. If we only use Catalan when we know the other person is a Catalan speaker, it is difficult for us to discover that people who 'don't seem like it' also speak it. In this case, in fact, the next question would be: what should a person be like for them to 'seem' like a Catalan speaker to us?

Furthermore, this can have particularly important consequences for people learning Catalan. If, when a person we don't consider 'from here' speaks to us in Catalan, we automatically reply in Spanish, they may interpret that Catalan is not a language for them. What for us may be an almost automatic language switch, for the other person it can be a signal indicating what language we expect them to speak.

Practical issues

This does not mean, obviously, that all our linguistic decisions are the consequence of an ideology. There are also practical matters: we can choose a language because it is the one we master best, because it is the one our interlocutor uses, or because it is the one we need at that moment. Linguistic ideologies, therefore, do not explain all our linguistic behavior, but they can help us to understand why, in the same situation, two people may make different decisions.

Therefore, linguistic ideologies are interesting because they condition what, at first glance, might seem like very small decisions: the language we choose with a stranger, the surprise we feel when someone 'from outside' speaks Catalan, the accent we consider most elegant, or that word that seems 'very ours', among many other issues.

Many times we don't think about it at all: we arrive at a place, start a conversation, someone answers us in another language, and we, almost without realizing it, change it. We have done it before and we will probably do it again. From now on, however, we can try to pay attention to it, not so much to decide which language we should speak, but to ask ourselves what made us choose it.