Language Attitudes and Language Choice in the Formal Communications of New Social Movements in Catalonia

Abstract

This study looks into the language choices of social movements in the Barcelona metropolitan area, and the language attitudes behind them, taking into account that these grassroots movements sit between the public and private domains and the implications this may have in situations of diglossia. The methodology used were semi-structured interviews to a total of 12 activists, representing 9 cells of PAH (Mortgage Victims’ Forum), 15M and Marees Ciutadanes (Citizens’ Tides). The reported language choices were then compared to the actual practices in social networks and websites. The findings show that Catalan is overrepresented in formal outward communications if compared to its presence in in-group communication. The reasons for this are mostly related to the status of Catalan as the language of official institutions, and to cultural and historical reasons.

Keywords

• Language choice
• language attitudes
• Catalan
• social movements
• diglossia.