In Galicia the linguistic hegemony of Spanish has historically triggered language shift from Galician to Spanish, which has significantly impacted the region’s language policy and planning. In the Spanish Constitution of 1978, Galician status was elevated from that of “dialect” to “language”, and was given co-official standing within the territorial confines of the region of Galicia. The institutionalization of the autochthonous language in Galicia resulted in the development of a regional language planning, the implementation of a bilingual education (Spanish/Galician) system, and the creation of a standardized norm. Together, these measures should restore the prestige lost to Galician and, most importantly, attract new speakers. However, recent research shows that Galician is losing speakers among the younger generations (Seminario de Sociolingüística: 1994, 1995, 1996) and, although values towards the autochthonous language are increasingly more positive (del Valle 2000; Monteagudo-Romero 2000; Ramallo 2000; Beswick 2002; Bouzada-Fernández 2002; Rodríguez-Neira 2002), certain deep-seated stigmas persist (Roseman 1995; Hermida 2001; O’Rourke 2003).

In this dissertation, I look at Galician adolescents’ values and attitudes towards local dialects of Galician, standard Galician, and (Castilian) Spanish, using quantitative data provided by a survey and a matched-guise test, and qualitative data provided by an open-ended written questionnaire and verbal interviews. My research subjects consist of 408 high school students (248 females and 160 males), with ages ranging from 12 to 18 years old. I chose high schools in an urban and a rural setting to observe whether the traditional association Galician/rural/lower class and Spanish/urban/higher class is still operating.

Findings reveal that the institutionalized bilingualism and the implementation of standard Galician have unexpected repercussions on adolescents’ language attitudes. Data analysis shows that sociolinguistic conflict arises from the confrontation of different linguistic varieties and the overlapping of new and traditional values, as well as old-deep stigmas, attached to standard Galician and dialectal Galician. In this language conflict, ‘female/male’ and ‘urban/rural’ variables proved to be highly significant. This dissertation will help understand the reasons behind adolescents’ language choice and will shed some light on the current loss of Galician speakers among the younger generations.