ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the affective parameter of language awareness, that is, the attitudes speakers harbour towards a particular minority language. The education system becomes a key player when it comes to analysing the relationship between language awareness and the minority language, since the latter is surrounded by two international languages (Spanish and English), with millions of speakers the world over. Language attitudes are strongly linked to institutional support, namely the incumbent language policy and the actual possibility of using the language concerned in different social spheres such as education, the government or the media. Despite being a small speaking community, Basque speakers thus show a very intricate attitudinal picture in which the language status, the language policy and the educational policy play a paramount role. The heterogeneous language policy makes the Basque-speaking community a very interesting case study, since in a limited region which straddles the national border between France and Spain along the Pyrenees Mountains.