Language policy and practice between urban and rural schools in Galicia, Spain

Bilingual communities face many obstacles when considering the legal and applied aspects of language use in schools. Many bilingual countries exhibit the following linguistic spatial pattern: Prestigious state language is predominately spoken in cities and familial regional language is predominately spoken in the countryside. This study seeks to gauge language norms between urban and rural schools in Galicia, Spain by collecting self-reported classroom language use from Galician teachers and students across three urban and three rural school sites. Rural teachers and students reported more code switching behavior than those in urban schools. Furthermore, Galician subject teachers reported code switching more frequently than Castilian subject teachers regardless of locale. These findings show the common practice of code switching in Galicia is more prevalent in spaces of Galician speakership, and that Castilian is more readily utilized across locales despite sentiments directed at the need to preserve the Galician language.