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Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2012 in Switzerland, Catalonia and different zones of francophone Canada in sites related to heritage and cultural tourism, we argue that tourism, especially in multilingual peripheries, is a key site for a sociolinguistic exploration of the political economy of globalization. We link shifts in the role of language in tourism to shifts in phases of capitalism, focusing on the shift from industrial to late capitalism, and in particular on the effects of the commodification of authenticity. We examine the tensions this shift generates in ideologies and practices of language, concerned especially with defining the nature of the tourism product, its public and market, and the management of the tourism process. This results in an as yet unresolved destabilization of hitherto hegemonic discourses linking languages to cultures, identities, nations and States.Sobre la base del nostre treball de camp realitzat entre 2002 i 2012 en llocs associats al turisme cultural a Su€ ıssa, Catalunya i en diverses zones del Canad a franc ofon, en aquest article argumentem que el turisme, especialment el de les perif eries multiling€ ues, constitueix un context clau per a explorar l'economia pol ıtica de la globalitzaci o en els seus aspectes socioling€ u ıstics. Considerem que els canvis de rol que experimenten les lleng€ ues en el turisme s on indicadors de canvis de fase del capitalisme, en aquest cas del canvi del capitalisme industrial al capitalisme tard a, el qual t e efectes importants en la mercantilitzaci o de l'autenticitat. En aquest article, examinem les tensions que aquests canvis produeixen en les pr actiques i ideologies ling€ u ıstiques a mesure que els actors socials malden per definir la naturalesa del producte tur ıstic, el seu p ublic i mercat, i la gesti o del proc es tur ıstic. Tot plegat comporta una desestabilitzaci o no resolta del que havien estat els discursos hegem onics que han lligat fins ara les lleng€ ues a les cultures, identitats, nacions i estats. [Catalan] A l'appui de recherches de terrain men ees entre 2002 et 2012 sur des sites li es au tourisme patrimonial et culturel en Suisse, en Catalogne et dans diff erents espaces du Canada francophone, nous soutenons que le tourisme, en particulier en milieux p eriph eriques multilingues, constitue un secteur clef pour une exploration sociolinguistique de l' economie politique de la globalisation. En nous concentrant sur le passage du capitalisme industriel au capitalisme tardif, et en particulier sur ses effets sur la commodification Journal of Sociolinguistics 18/4, 2014: 539-566

Catalan speakers have traditionally constructed the Catalan language as the main emblem of their identity even as migration filled the country with substantial numbers of speakers of Castilian . Although Catalan speakers have been bilingual in Catalan and Castilian for generations, sociolinguistic research has shown how speakers' bilingual practices have always been sensitive to keeping a clear sense of the boundaries between the languages and between their communities of speakers. The norms of language choice in everyday life have reflected this as Catalans have tended to use Catalan basically between those considered to "be" Catalan. This paper shows that this situation is gradually changing due to new conditions of mobility and access to language, that is, because most native speakers of Castilian are now bilingual and speak Catalan often in everyday life. On the basis of a corpus of 25 interviews and 15 group discussions conducted in Catalonia with a sample of young people of different profiles, we show that young people in Catalonia increasingly rely on prima facie linguistic behavior rather than ethnolinguistic classification to decide which language to speak in specific contexts, so that language use loses its earlier function of ethnolinguistic boundary maintenance.

New speakers of Catalan have come to represent, from a demolinguistic perspective, a substantial part of the community of speakers. Of those who presently speak Catalan as an “habitual language”, 41.6 percent are native speakers of Spanish. In this article, we shall follow up the various ways in which native Castilian speakers incorporate Catalan into their lives. This happens, as we will show, in specific biographical junctures that we call mudes, a Catalan term referring to (often reversible) variations in social performance. Our analysis is based on a qualitative study that included 24 interviews and 15 focus groups covering a total of 105 people of different sexes and linguistic, educational, social and residential backgrounds. We shall give a general overview of these mudes as we typified them: when subjects entered primary school, secondary school, the university, the job market, when creating a new family and when they had children (if they did). The study of linguistic mudes provides, in our view, a new and productive perspective on how people develop their linguistic repertoire, their attachment to specific languages and the significance of these aspects for social identity. It facilitates a processual, time-sensitive analysis that allows to contextualise and critique ethnonationalist discourses that have often saturated our understanding of language use.

Most analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects of immigration focus on contexts where a single language is official and widely used. In bilingual Catalonia, newly arriving immigrants find themselves in a situation where the administration seeks to treat Catalan as a fully functional public language while large sectors of the local population still treat it as a minority language not adequate to be spoken to strangers. Popular language practices and discourses often seem to suggest that Catalan serves to assert identity while Spanish serves for practical communicative purposes, thus contradicting the official narratives over language and integration. Thus, what we find is that immigrants are required to adjust to different, competing, often blatantly contradictory linguistic ideologies and practices. In this article, I will seek to describe these contradictions and historical changes together with their implications for the local political economy of intergroup relations. I begin with a brief theoretical grounding of the concepts uses. To this follows a historical account of educational language policies addressed to immigrants since the mid-1980s. A change in official discourses from language as national symbol to language as a means for social cohesion is documented. Language policies are contrasted with ethnographic data on linguistic practices in everyday life in various settings. To conclude, I reflect on the significance of these phenomena for a general understanding of the role of languages in the construction of social difference in contemporary societies.

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(1) Background: Since 2012, our Inclusive Research Team has developed several studies on various topics that interest the co-researchers with intellectual disabilities. In 2021, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the co-researchers decided to investigate the impact of the pandemic on the relationships of people with intellectual disabilities. The aim of this article is to disseminate how this inclusive study was developed and to explain its results; (2) Methods: Co-researchers and academic researchers met six times to make different decisions: decide on the research topic; discuss the topic; prepare an interview script for people with intellectual disabilities; analyse the data obtained; and decide how to disseminate the results of the research. The co-researchers interviewed 10 people with intellectual disabilities and participated as facilitators in 3 focus groups; (3) Results: During the pandemic, digital devices have enabled people with intellectual disabilities to maintain their social relationships. However, the lack of access or support in using them, as well as the restrictions imposed on people with intellectual disabilities living in institutions, have presented significant barriers to maintaining their social relationships; (4) Conclusions: This article shows the difficulties people with intellectual disabilities face in maintaining successful social relationships in times of pandemic, and how we undertook research in an inclusive, virtual manner.