Ensuring the quality of language standardization: The training of advertising announcers in Catalan

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this article is to describe a training programme intended to ensure the quality of standard Catalan in broadcast advertising. Initiated in 2007, the programme offered working or aspiring broadcasters training in the linguistic and oral performance skills necessary to carry out their job in fully proficient standard Catalan. Promotion, organization and instruction of the programme was shared between a local university and a public media corporation, and in the three years that it was offered a total of 83 students were certified by the programme. It served to significantly increase the pool of broadcasters with full professional proficiency in standard Catalan and laid the foundations for the development of a professional sector characterized by its use of high-quality specialized and standardized language. It can thus be seen as forming part of the extension of language knowledge and use phase in the process of standardizing a minority language.