Lacroix, Isabelle <br/><br/>
The Symbolic Value of Language in the French Basque Country and Linguistically Mixed Couples' Choice of School for their Children 

 -  2014.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 7 
<br/><br/> Certain mixed couples wish to uphold and transmit Basque by registering their children in an ikastola, the Basque speaking school where kindergarten and first grade are exclusively in Basque and French only comes in at age 7. Based on empirical material collected between 2000 and 2009 (biographical interviews with parents, observing fetes, private and public gatherings, and archives), the study questions the linguistic choices parents make for their children, both in family and in school. The method of analysis developed by Demazičre and Dubar allowed isolating three typical parental logics underlying those choices : a militant Basque logic, an identity logic among parents who during their own childhood or adolescence experienced the loss or non-transmission of Basque in their family, and an integration logic among newcomers to the Basque country. The study also draws upon ethnographic observations over an eight-year period of pupils and their parents. Resorting to the ikastola marks a turn-about in family language practices and questions the transmission from parents to children. Despite the many difficulties mixed couples encounter in assuring a continuity between a Basque-speaking school and a home where speaking Basque is a complex proposition, new speakers of the language are constantly emerging. Immersive language schools play a considerable part in « language revitalization » but also in « reversed transmission » between a child and his or her non-Basque speaking parent.