Monolingüisme oficial en estats lingüísticament heterogenis. El cas de l'Estat català independent

Abstract

The goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly we shall examine the languages policies in those European countries which have become independent states since the fall of the Berlin Wall and within which more than one language is widely spoken (linguistically heterogeneous state). In this sense, we have confirmed that in most countries, official monolingualism has failed and that, both for external and internal reasons, these countries have ended up adopting linguistic policies far more pluralist. Secondly, and partly drawing from this empirical basis, we argue that official monolingualism should be discarded as an appropriate language policy for a hypothetical Catalan independent state. All recent surveys show that Catalan population would largely support a language policy in which both Catalan and Spanish languages would share an official status in a hypothetically independent Catalonia. Data from these surveys are consistent with those of previous surveys that asked citizens about the degree of agreement regarding the currently in-force official bilingualism.

Keywords

• language policy
• official monolingualism
• official bilingualism
• linguistically hetorogeneous state
• independent Catalonia