Bilingual crossroads in literature: Sociolinguistic and literary considerations on Carles Casajuana’s "L’últim home que parlava català"

Abstract

Taking the Catalan case as an example, this article analyses the impact of language choice of writers who live and write between languages and cultures. After a first part in which the linguistic dilemma is depicted by offering a general view of the frontier authors in the Catalan context, this essay focuses on the study of L’últim home que parlava català (Carles Casajuana 2009), a novel in which the construct of fiction and metafiction serves both to analyse the question of literary bilingualism –the bilingual crossroad in literature– and to highlight certain controversial aspects of Catalonia’s particular sociolinguistic map, its language policies and the underlying ideological tensions.

Keywords

• bilingüismo literario
• escritores bilingües
• opción lingüística
• elección de código
• dualidad lingüística y cultural
• discurso tanatocéntrico