Language Policies, Ideologies, and Attitudes, Part 2: International Immigration, Globalization and the Future of Catalan

Abstract

This, the second of two articles on Catalonian language policies and their sociolinguistic effects, reviews research related to the current policy called the Pla per la Llengua i la Cohesió Social (Plan for Language and Social Cohesion) inaugurated in 2004. The Plan addresses a situation in which Catalan is stable demolinguistically but in which globalization and international immigration are seen as long‐term threats to the language's vitality. In addition, language planners were and remain concerned with preserving social cohesion in a much more linguistically and culturally diverse society. We show that this policy builds on and maintains the infrastructure of the prior Normalization policy discussed in Part 1. Nevertheless, it presents a late modern ethos in favor of societal multilingualism that transcends the position in favor of bilingualism aimed for by Normalization. We argue that research on Catalonian society's response to this policy shows some difficulties with implementation and a continuing preoccupation with traditional essentialist ethnolinguistic concerns by some Catalonians. However, we also find that this late modern ethos of multilingualism is assumed by large segments of Catalan society as a representing forward‐looking desirable cosmopolitan identity. The article ends with an overview of how recent political developments in relation to Catalonia's political status are linked to language policy and use.

Language Learning Motivation and Language Attitudes in Multilingual Spain From an International Perspective

“…There was, however, a clear age effect that permeated the two bilingual models, in the sense that the older students became the less often they used Basque in both contexts, even among model D students whose use of Basque significantly decreased from 79% to 44% in class and from 41% to 29% on the playground. These results concurred with those obtained in Catalonia (see Trenchs–Parera & Newman, ), where it was also observed that children whose language use was initially Catalan dominant tended to become increasingly bilingual, whereas those that showed a bilingual use or learned Catalan at school steadily moved toward an exclusive use of Spanish. Thus, it can be concluded that the influence of the use of the minority language as a means of instruction has a strong influence in the early stages of schooling, but its positive effect diminishes when students reach adolescence, a trend also detected in other European bilingual contexts such as Wales (Baker, ).…”

New speakers: Challenges and opportunities for variationist sociolinguistics

“…In the late 1980s, Woolard made use of the label ‘new Catalans’ (: 44) to describe L2 Catalan speakers who come to adopt bilingual practices, seeing themselves as both Catalan and Spanish – a designation that, Woolard reports, very few native Catalonians would accept. More recently, Trenchs‐Parera and Newman (: 494) identify such attitudes to be associated with a broader cosmopolitanism, where younger middle‐class new speakers learn Catalan either for professional reasons, or as an academic exercise (see also Frekko, ). Similarly, Urla distinguishes between euskaldun zaharrak (‘old Basques’), who she describes as ‘native Basque speakers who tend to be primarily from farming and fishing communities’, and euskaldun berriak (‘new Basques’), comprised of ‘urban professionals, civil servants, and teachers who have mastered Standardised Basque’ (: 830) .…”

Language attitudes of young Romanians in Catalonia (Spain): The role of heritage language maintenance programs

“…The negative attitudes manifested by most of the students seem to have roots in the perceived difficulty of learning Catalan -a challenge many of the newcomers did not expect before arriving. The surprise of encountering two official languages instead of only one has also been reported by other immigrant groups (Huguet, Janés & Chireac 2008;Madariaga, Huguet & Janés 2016;Trenchs-Parera & Newman 2015).…”