A report prepared by Ethos Insight for the Nexe Foundation warns that the linguistic inequality between knowledge of Valencian and its social use will increase in the coming years. And it will do so in five of the six sociolinguistic regions of the Valencian Community (province of Alicante - only the Valencian-speaking regions - province of Castelló, Alcoi-Gandia and province of Valencia). This inequality would only decrease, in 2025, in the city of Valencia and its metropolitan area, given that, as those responsible for the report explained yesterday, inequality had already reached such a high ceiling that it could hardly increase.
To calculate this inequality index, Ethos Insight has studied the series of the Enquestes de Coneixement i Ús del Valencià as well as a prediction of the results through Artificial Intelligence that allows us to conclude that there is a "notable growing trend of linguistic inequality in the regions where these differences are now smaller.
For this reason, they warn that if effective language policy measures are not taken, there will be an increase in the gap between people who have proven ability to speak Valencian and those who actually speak it on a daily basis. Therefore, they claim that measures to promote the minority language should take these parameters into account.
To calculate this existing inequality, researchers have used an adaptation of the Gini Index, the standard for evaluating socioeconomic inequality by most institutions. "It is the first time it has been used in sociolinguistics," clarified Marc Hernàndez of Ethos Insight during the presentation of the report yesterday.
Both he and Susanna Pardines, linguist and coordinator of the Lab d'Identitat i Cultura of the Nexe Foundation, expressed their fear that the new authorities will not continue with the studies on the situation of Valencian because if these surveys are interrupted (it already happened during the last years of the PP) it will be difficult to make a good diagnosis.
Pardines, for his part, points out that the figures demonstrate "structural social and political pressures against the public use of Valencian", because despite the fact that there are more and more people capable of speaking it, its use continues to decline. For this reason, he warns that an idealization of the situation of one's own language can be created if one looks only at the increase in linguistic competence, which, he reiterates, is "false" since "without use there is no language."
Although they admit that messages such as the one launched on Tuesday by the president of Les Corts denying the legitimacy of the AVL and opening linguistic battles do not benefit Valencians, the Nexe Foundation wants to be optimistic about the future. To this end, they ask for the application of public powers to "favor the use" of a language that, they remember, "is as official as Spanish."
Along these lines, given the possible change in the multilingualism law, Pardines points out that a key issue in sociolinguistics is that "the less exposed you are to a language, the less you know it."
