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, Josep Maria Cots Caimon (dir. tes.) , Guzmán Macho Barés (secret.) , John Gray (voc.) In recent years, research on English language learning and social class matters in Spain has focused on the place where it is most readily identifiable: primary and secondary school education. Research exploring the relationship between social class and English learning outside the education system is sparse. Equally, little research explores attitudes among adults to social class and class inequalities in education in the Spanish context. The present qualitative thesis contributes to addressing this gap, exploring life stories, experiences, and attitudes relating to both social class and English learning among three different adult participant groups (a total of twenty-three participants) in the context of Barcelona, Spain.
Participant groups are categorized according to Robert Reich (1992) broad occupational groupings of in-person servers (those who do simple and repetitive tasks for hourly pay) and symbols analysts (professionals skilled in problem-solving, identifying, and brokering). In this study, symbols analysts, with a total of six, included lawyers, one mechanical engineer, and a risk manager in investment banking, while in-person servers, also six in total, included mostly restaurant staff, a restaurant owner, and a hotel receptionist. A third participant group consisted of eleven first-year business students at a private university in Barcelona (here considered future symbols analysts). A life story interview approach was taken to data collection among the in-person server and symbols analyst groups, while a focus group was held with the private university students. The methodological framework adopted for data analysis was van Langenhove and Harré (1999) Positioning Theory (PT), while the epistemological approach underpinning the overall study design was that of critical realism (e.g., Bhaskar, 2014). Research questions explore three main areas, looking at how participants make sense of their experiences and position both themselves and others in terms of (1) social class dimensions and privilege, (2) the role of English in their lives and the world around them, and (3) the influence of social class dimensions and self-responsibility in English language learning.
Findings show that while all participants today lead middle-class lives, only the two participants who self-identify as having working-class family backgrounds explicitly mention their (past) class status, corroborating previous research which suggests that middle classness is rarely celebrated (e.g., Friedman et al., 2021). Also corroborating existing research, participants who were highly proficient in English for the most part described their language proficiency as self-cultivated, coupled with denial of parental investment and ordinary middle-class privilege. Nationality was found to have important bearings on class mobility for participants born outside Europe (from South America and North Africa), whose middle-class resources and capital had been devalued upon moving to Spain.
English language emerged as a marker of social prestige and global citizenship. English learning was widely perceived by participants as a career investment, while lack of English competence was found to represent a burden for some younger participants, as well as a source of shaming the self and others in Spain. In terms of the influence of class dimensions and self-responsibility, a small number of participants deny the possibility of inequality in English language education in Spain. On the other hand, some adopt what I call a 'sociologist-like stance' displaying an understanding of inequality in education, convinced of the importance of economic capital to successful English learning. Other participants acknowledge the existence of inequality in English language education, while at the same time verbalizing common platitudes about the importance of motivation and character. It is argued here that reproduction of such neoliberal tropes erases any true understanding of inequality in education.
