Summary
1.
Tarragona: General background
2. Local
justification
3. The
usefulness of the tool for language planning
4. Main
results: tables and graphs
5. The provision
of Catalan in the Public Administration
6. The provision
of Catalan in the economy and society sectors
7. The provision
of Catalan in the media and health and education
8.
Conclusions at local level
1.
Tarragona: General background
Tarragona
is an industrial city and a centre for services, as well as a tourist resort and the
capital of its province. It has been growing rapidly since the second half of the
nineties. However, the Tarragona of today is the outcome of the social and economic
evolution of the last four decades of the 20th century of a city of "soldiers and
civil servants". As a result it has become the present-day centre of the
petro-chemical industry (one of the top 3 in Europe), with many multinational companies
and commercial chains, and, on the other hand, a large number of tourists much in
evidence. The latter come to the city, basically, to see the Roman monuments, the beaches
and the Universal Mediterranean tourist complex (Port Aventura). According to the latest
census figures, issued on 4th April, 2002, the city has 119,353 inhabitants, although more
realistic assessments speak of 140,000 inhabitants all told, given that over the last
three years a large number of immigrants have arrived who do not yet appear in the
official figures.
When preparing the
Ofercat survey for the year 2001, the data we worked with were: 109,995 habitants on
census with linguistic competence oscillating between 94.5 (understand Catalan) 73.5 (can
speak Catalan), according to the 1996 census. As the Provincial capital it has all kinds
of administrative offices: those of central government, the regional government, the
provincial administration, as well as the county hall, local government offices and the
law courts. Also, the services sector contains businesses and companies of all sorts.
The anatomy of the
city is peculiar and has been decisive in shaping the current situation. What we find is a
densely populated urban area and a series of separate nuclei (ever decreasing in number,
because of the constant building) in the form of the Ponent (Western) and Llevant
(Eastern) districts. Historically, this structure has led to the isolation of these
suburbs: they have been separate nuclei of population, with separate sociolinguistic
stories. Thus, the suburbs in the Ponent grew out of the massive influx of migrants from
elsewhere in Spain in the nineteen sixties and seventies, while the Llevant suburbs are
the consequence of the move out from the city itself, in search of space and tranquillity.
Broadly speaking
then we could conclude that what we have here is an urban area and (certain) residential
suburbs where Catalan is obviously in use, but with other suburbs (the Ponent) formed by
Spanish speakers, in the main, who have maintained Spanish as their everyday language.
Only the use of Catalan by the schools has made it possible for the new generations in
these latter districts to learn both the official languages (Catalan and Spanish) and to
achieve a level of knowledge (not necessarily of use) at an acceptable level.
2.
Local justification
When the pilot run
of the Ofercat programme was carried out, five very different types of settlement
were chosen, on the basis of sociolinguistic diversity, economic activity and number of
inhabitants. At the same time, however, these populations in addition to Santa
Coloma de Gramenet were seen representative of the main types of settlement in
Catalonia at the present time.
3.
The usefulness of the tool for language planning
As
a result of the setting up of the Consortium
for Language Normalisation (CPNL) some fourteen years ago, one
of the aims that was articulated in collaboration with other
organisations and entities- was precisely the creation and setting
up of instruments that would facilitate vigorous analysis, with
the ultimate objective of obtaining reliable data that would allow
planning of the most suitable action in a particular area and a
given moment.
The Indexplà and the Programa per a
lanàlisi lingüística dorganitzacions (Organizations Linguistic Analysis
Program) were the first tools of this type created by the CPNL, applicable to all kinds of
organisations, individually. Now, Ofercat represents an important step forward in this
growth process and improvement of tools. It consists of a programme that makes it possible
to analyse a municipal area in its entirety. Or, if wished, a single district within the
area can be examined. Thus the focus is shifted from the individual Indexplà
to the collective Ofercat providing real information on public use of
the language from different viewpoints also applicable, obviously, to sociolinguistic
studies.
With Ofercat the
provision of Catalan is analysed in this case of a whole territorial ambit,
based on indicators referring to: public administration, the social and economic spheres
(primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors) ranging from industry to small businesses,
including shopping centres and public services on the way) also health, education and the
media, associations, sport and leisure. The result can be expressed by means of graphs and
figures that allow us to quantify the degree or extent of the provision of Catalan in a
particular place, whether territory, municipal area, or district within the latter.
With the graphs
generated by the programme, one can begin to evaluate the result, from the most global to
the most specific by ambits. Naturally, the Ofercat indices can be taken as a
reference to detect the strong and weak points of the territory under study (in terms of
language provision) to then be able to plan actions to promote language normalisation in
ambits and sectors where it is really needed. Another possibility that the programme
offers, given that it can be applied periodically to the same territory, is to detect
trends and developments in public use -both in cases where normalisation has been applied
(detecting the effectiveness) and where it has not. In the latter case it will be
detecting the natural trend of change in public use of the language in each of the ambits.
The CPNL plans
take observations every five years, so that the second round of observation at Tarragona
will be carried out in 2006 and the results obtained will be presented during 2007.
In terms of
trends, from the sociolinguistic point of view, comparison of the results from the
different territories where Ofercat has been applied also provides invaluable information
for the drawing of a map of public use of the language. Then, with the successive
observations, the direction of change since the first application of the programme can be
detected. It should be said that commission that developed the programme drew on the
expertise of technicians at the CPNL, the Institute of Catalan Sociolinguistics
http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/dades (ISC, the organ of the Directorate
General for Language Policy, DGPL) as well as an advisor in evaluation and IT.
Accordingly, thanks to the ISC, the data provided by Ofercat has been cross-referenced
with the data on population growth, the sociolinguistic data on knowledge and use of
Catalan. The information was taken from the linguistic censuses, and from certain specific
surveys on declared knowledge and use of the language. The last-mentioned sources were
only available for Tarragona (1991 data), Manresa and the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma
de Gramenet (figures for both populations obtained in 2000). These comparisons allow us to
observe sociolinguistic trends and to conclude that knowledge, use and language provision
are three variables which are closely interrelated and mutually condition each other.
4.
Main results: tables and graphs
The Ofercat study
of Tarragona was carried out between the spring of 2001 and spring 2002. The fieldwork was
completed between November and January of that period. In June of last year, there was a
public presentation of the results for the whole city, with an open meeting of the City
Council and the production of several press dossiers, as well as the reports that were
subsequently published by certain of the local media. At the end of the year, a paper was
given on the functioning of the programme at Jornades sobre la Llengua a les Comarques de
Tarragona (Conference on Language in the Counties of Tarragona) (27 to 29 November 2002);
at this Conference a Power Point presentation was also made of the results first presented
in June, and, a part of these results, never before in public circulation, was utilised to
describe the socio-economic sector. All the data offered below represent a summary of
these various different public presentations.
5.
The provision of Catalan in the Public Administration
In the twenty
years since the approval of the Language Normalisation Act (April 1983), the various
levels and ramifications of the Public Administration has undergone adaptation to various
degrees. Tarragona, as the provincial capital, has all the types of administration amply
represented, ranging as it does from Central government (with delegations for all the
ministries) to the strictly local (municipal), including on the way the Regional
Autonomous (with territorial delegations of all departments of the Generalitat), the
provisional (Delegation) and county level (Tarragona County Hall), as well as Justice (the
law courts and offices, approximately 30 altogether). This coverage enables us to take a
surprisingly complete X-ray of the different levels of provision of Catalan across the
range.
The Autonomous
and the local administration levels show extremely high indices, a mean
of 98% and 96% respectively. In the case of the Autonomous level (the government of
Catalonia) only the written communications [WRC] score lower than 90% specifically
85% as a result of the legal obligation of having available models of documents in
Spanish for any citizens who might request them.
Figure 1.
Local administration
Figure 2.
Autonomous administration
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