Language awareness, affect and linguistic justice: educators’ role in the activation of Basque in multilingual contexts

This study examines the role of language awareness, affect, and linguistic justice in the practices of educators engaged in the revitalisation of Basque across formal and non-formal educational contexts. Adopting a qualitative and interpretative approach, the study draws on twenty-four semi-structured interviews with teachers, social educators, and leisure-time educators. The analysis explores how professional language awareness, understood as educators’ situated sensitivity to language use and its social implications, is constructed across contexts and relates to motivation, linguistic attachment, and everyday decisions regarding the use of Basque in multilingual environments shaped by sociolinguistic inequality and the hegemonic presence of Spanish. The findings identify context-specific configurations of language awareness. Formal education is characterised by more declarative orientations, socio-educational and residential contexts by relational but constrained practices, and organised educational leisure by a more integrated approach. From a decolonial and intersectional perspective, the study concludes that language revitalisation requires socially just and affectively grounded educational conditions that strengthen legitimacy, emotional security, and everyday opportunities for language use, while highlighting the need for context-sensitive professional development in language awareness and multilingual pedagogies.