Intergenerational: the Case of Children in Castelló who Refuse to Use the Valencian Handed down to them by their Parents

Interruption in the transmission of Catalan as a family language has been studied by sociolinguistics as a phenomenon in the context of Catalan-speaking parents who bring up their children in Spanish or in another language. However, there are cases in which it is the children who turn their backs on the family language and who do not use it in any context, not even within the family, notwithstanding the fact that the parents continue to speak to them in Catalan. These are what are referred to as ‘interruptive children’. This work focusses on the study of eight of these cases in the city of Castelló de la Plana. The aim was to analyse the sociolinguistic phenomenon and discover the factors that influence it. Using personal interviews, we researched the characteristics of interruptive children in four aspects: family environment, social context, personal assessments and the current linguistic situation. The results have made it possible to establish a relationship between the causes behind the interruptions by the children and those caused by parent