The Space of Freedom in a Context of War, Exile and Endless Instability: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Autobiographical Narratives on Catalan Exile

Abstract

Abstract In the recent numerous publications on the autobiographies of Catalan writers who went into exile in 1939, themes such as memory, identity crisis or travel have been studied in depth. In this article, I propose a sociolinguistic interpretation of a series of autobiographical works by exiled authors such as Xavier Benguerel, Lluís Ferran de Pol and Antoni Rovira i Virgili. According to the theoretical framework of sociolinguistic studies, autobiographical narratives can be analysed using three different approaches: first, the way authors narrate how ‘things’ are or were; second, how ‘things’ or events were experienced; and, finally, the ways in which ‘things’ or events are narrated. Language is not only historical data or an individual experience which authors narrate in their autobiographical narratives. This sociolinguistic approach to the autobiographical narratives of Catalan exiles shows the close link between language and identity, and between language and morality.