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Summary
1. Linguistic conscience
2. The Precursors
3. The ideas of the precursors
4. Factors influencing language use
5. Bibliography
1. Linguistic conscience
Generally, in
critical sociolinguistics, an important emphasis has been placed on linguistic conscience
by all authors (Catalan or otherwise) who have attempted to use sociolinguistics as a tool
for analysing and transforming reality in such a way that a language involved in a process
of language shift reverses the trends of the shift and starts or consolidates a process of
language standardisation.
Lacking a
coherent linguistic conscience is like lacking the conscience of nationhood. In this case,
the community can only walk mechanically on without direction, towards its death. As one
essayist recently commented, in these cases, we could sing "ni som ni serem" (we
are not now nor shall we be in the future). A linguistic community without linguistic
conscience would be a phantom, a shadow without key strategic references. A community
without a linguistic conscience would not know either its objectives or its arms; it would
be unaware of who its people were and even its language or the name of its language.
The Catalan
linguistic community has suffered each and every one of these pathologies and
deficiencies: in the nineteenth century, it showed signs of not even knowing the
historical name of its own language nobles used the term llemosí; Catalan
nobles considered the use of Catalan in formal contexts unnecessary and even absurd;
Yxart, who promoted Catalan in literature, believed it inappropriate to use Catalan in
journalistic or scientific writings; the leading figures of the Renaixença
fostered the use of Catalan in poetry amidst violins and sweet-briers, but paid no
attention to educating the population in Catalan and did not contemplate the need to set
up schools to teach in this language. During the twentieth century, even the name of the
language was denied to the south of the Catalan linguistic community and the Franja de
Ponent, as many people fell into the trap of ignorance and began to call into question the
linguistic unit. Assimilist linguistic ideologies and others that support subtractive
bilingualism have taken root, jeopardising the future of Catalan.
The
Diccionari de Sociolingüística (2001) defines linguistic
conscience as "the series of thoughts, expressed and documented
or implicit and masked, through which a linguistic community sees
itself as different because of the language that it uses, and as
linked or opposed (depending on the context), to the languages and
communities that surround it. It therefore encompasses ways of thinking,
beliefs, motivations and attitudes that make up symbolic values
for a given linguistic group". The thoughts that shape linguistic
conscience can be of two types: (a) expressed and documented
or (b) implicit and masked. That is to say, there is a difference
between the ideas that an average person on the street without a
university education has of the language that they speak and those
of people who have documented their theories and proposals on their
own language and neighbouring languages. Thus, although we should
reject ignorance in linguistic science, we must not forget that
we all have a linguistic perception and ideology which, in a minoritised
community, are extremely important for the future of the language,
since it is these perceptions and ideologies that will form the
basis of the language attitudes adopted by speakers and, subsequently,
of the language uses that they will choose and that will become
hegemonic.
The aim of our
research (of which this is a summary) is to study a series of Catalan thinkers who already
spoke in sociolinguistic or ecolinguistic terms before sociolinguistics appeared as an
autonomous discipline, (1) and who were, therefore, already
making ecosociolinguistic proposals based on safeguarding the Catalan sociolinguistic
sphere. The aim is that the ideas of these writers, clergymen, essayists and men of
culture in general will help to shed some light on the reality of language use.
2. The Precursors
Precursors of
what we could term the Catalan sociolinguistic discourse include such men as
Ramon Llull, Ramon Muntaner and the apologists of the Catalan language throughout the
ages: Onofre Manescal, Andreu Bosc, Josep Romeguera, Josep Ullastre, Antoni Tudó, Carles
Ros, Ignasi Ferreres, Lluís Galiana, Antoni de Bastero, Marc Antoni Ortí, Agustí Eura,
etc, - despite the fact that anti-sociolinguistic ideas also abound in the majority of
these literary-minded figures. Authors such as Cristòfor Despuig, Baldiri Reixach and
even Josep Pau Ballot are of particular interest. During the Renaixença:
Constantí Llombart, Marià Aguiló, Jaume Collell, editors of periodicals such as
"El Vertader Català", etc. And in the pre-modernisme: Valentí Almirall
and Josep Yxart are two figures who should be taken into consideration. |