Policies Promoting the Use of Catalan in Oral Communications and to Improve Attitudes towards the Language

Abstract

Ever since the establishment of Spain’s ‘autonomous communities’, each of these communities with a native tongue other than Castilian in a part or all of its territory has carried out specific recognition of its own linguistic diversity and has implemented a unique language policy model based, fundamentally, on two interrelated variables that have been referred to in previous chapters. These are, firstly, social and political mobilisation in defence of each autonomous community’s own language and the nationalist, language and identity-related commitment of their respective governments. This political process also explains how it is that, in Spain, no language communities are recognised, except for the Castilian-speaking one (which enjoys this recognition implicitly) and that, consequently, speakers of the same language may enjoy different degrees of recognition of rights and linguistic security from one autonomous community to another. Thus it is, for example, that the Catalan-speaking community is subject, within the Spanish state alone, to five language policies and five different language rights systems: those of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Aragon and Murcia (Bodoque 2007).