NOVES SL. AUTUMN 2002. CECOT COMPANIES AND THEIR LANGUAGE USES, ATTITUDES AND SERVICES (7)


	Sociolingüística catalana



			CECOT Companies and their Language Uses, Attitudes and Services, by the Institut DEP, Anna Prunés and Joan Solé i Camardons

CONTINUA

Table 2: How interested would you and your company be in these services, provided by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística?

Services	Very	Quite	Modera- tely	Little	Not at all	Didn’t know/ answer	Average *
Spell checkers, text checkers and computer programmes in Catalan	30.5	32.0	18.3	4.3	11.8	3.3	6.9
Specific vocabulary	25.0	36.3	17.0	7.0	10.5	4.3	6.7
One-off queries about specific terminology	24.0	27.8	22.8	8.3	11.5	5.8	6.5
Model contracts, payslips and other administrative documents	22.3	29.0	21.0	8.0	13.3	6.5	6.3
Tailored advice on the preparation of model company documents	21.8	28.5	20.8	9.0	14.8	5.3	6.2
Design and implementation of language education schemes	17.3	26.0	24.8	9.0	17.3	5.8	5.8
Tailored design of a Catalan language standardisation or management plan	15.5	24.5	26.0	10.0	18.3	5.8	5.6
Basic and specific bibliographies of Catalan	12.0	26.8	30.0	8.8	16.3	6.3	5.6
Model Catalan language tests for staff recruitment	15.3	23.3	25.0	10.0	20.8	5.8	5.4

* Average: from 0 to 10, where 0 is "not at all" and 10 is "very" interested.

7. Recommendations

Catalan is always or often used over the telephone or directly with clients, and in oral communication. Catalan is hardly ever used in written communication and, in many situations, it is never used. Nevertheless, most businessmen and women rate the use of Catalan in their companies as high. This leads us to believe that CECOT company managers overestimate the real use of Catalan in their companies, adding to the difficulties of making the latter aware of the need to increase use.

The institutions – the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística and the Generalitat of Catalonia – need to increase awareness of the use of Catalan in this area of business. Although most CECOT companies have no internal regulations on the use of Catalan to protect and promote the language, it is taken into account in staff selection procedures.

Company managers believe that the situation of language use is – and will continue to be – the same because, generally-speaking, increasing Catalan use in their companies is not a business need. Only one quarter of this group consider that increasing use is a future possibility because they understand the need to protect and promote Catalonia's own language and to respond to the growing social demand for its use.

We would recommended that companies be offered measures and guidelines to promote the use of Catalan in internal formal communication, particularly at written level, as in the case of employment contracts and invoices. We also need to maintain and expand the policy of educating the staff of administrative companies in Catalan.

Use of Catalan is more closely linked to business opportunities than to needs. Although company managers are divided as to whether the use of Catalan in their companies involves advantages, they are unanimous in their rejection of the disadvantages:

- they largely believe that the use of Catalan entails no internal complications involving stocks or cost increases (production or referencing) or logistical difficulties;

- secondly, they believe that Catalan contributes to communication with clients and increases the satisfaction of the latter;

- thirdly, managers believe that Catalan can, to a certain extent, favour their brand image and provide certain commercial advantages.


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