For that reason it is important to
regulate or foster policies of promotion of Catalan given that, as we saw earlier, the
language is labouring under a double difficulty. On the one hand it lacks a nation state
which would promote national culture and this function is necessarily left to regional and
local government. This devolution is desirable, under the subsidiary principle, as long as
the state also lends a hand.
6.2 Guidelines for language policy in
the companies
Training and language
In both types
of company we have seen that the variable that most correlates with the use of Catalan is
the percentage of internal training staff training courses carried out in Catalan,
(IUCE=28.7 in the case of the big companies and ICUC= 37.3 in the public service companies
if less than half the courses are carried out in Catalan, and IUCE=51.1 in the big
companies and 66.5 in the public service companies if more than half are carried out in
Catalan).
But this
variable is as explanatory of use as use is explanatory of the fact of the percentage of
courses, leading to a circle with positive
feedback, so that if one of the two is increased the other will increase also, and this
will increase the first in turn, and so on progressively. This fact is explained by two
phenomena. Firstly, in the qualitative study of use of Catalan in big companies it was
found that these companies adapt the language of the courses to the language of workers,
and thus it follows that with greater use of Catalan there will be a greater proportion of
in-house training courses in Catalan. But this phenomenon works in the opposite direction
also, the proportion of courses of this type in Catalan will help to normalise this
language among the workers and thus have a positive impact on its use.
The fact that
training in Catalan affects use is also shown in a more generalised way, in the data from
the Enquesta dUsos Lingüístics del Català (EULC) (Survey of patterns of Catalan
language use) where we see that mother tongue Spanish speakers who adopt Catalan as their
usual language are more highly educated than those who do not do this, and thus we can see
that the fact of having received their education in Catalan reinforces use in all
settings.
Figure 10. The adopting of Catalan as usual language
by level of eduaction
In accordance
with the findings discussed to this point, we propose three lines of action or aspects of
such for a language policy in multinational and public service companies, which we sum up
as follows:
1. Promotion
of the mechanisms that guarantee that internal training programmes will be mostly in
Catalan .
2. Regulation or self-regulation of
knowledge of Catalan as a precondition for being hired by the company.
3. Public information directed at
companies on the advantages of using Catalan.
In terms of
training, we see that if we want to develop a language policy for companies, or at least
for the two types of company analysed here, it might be a worthwhile to promote the idea
that the language used as teaching medium in the in-house training programmes should be in
Catalan since these play a crucial role in normalisation of the language in the company.
In terms of hiring new staff: in the
big companies too it can be important to intervene in this process, building in knowledge
of Catalan as a requirement, at least in key points like those where there is contact with
the outside world, whether other companies or the end consumer.
It would also
be good to inform about the benefits in communication with clients, customers and
consumers that accrue from increasing or improving the use and quality of communication in
Catalan. And to inform people also that the
use of Catalan does not mean losses, and does not involve greater risks than not doing so.
The Secretariat for Language Policy is publishing a site about guidelines on
multilingualism in company webs.
7. Conceptual map
Below is a
table summarising the basic ideas emerging here.
Concept |
Multinationals |
Public service companies |
External communications |
High:
Oral attention (56 %)
Low:
Website (23%), brochures and catalogues (28%) |
High:
Advertising on radio and TV (68%), written communication (64 %) and oral attention (61%)
Low:
Website (33%) |
Internal communications |
High: Non-managerial
meetings (62%)
Lows:
IT software (28%) |
Hihg:
Non-managerial meetings (76%)
Baixes:
IT softmare (14%) |
Advantages |
Enhances communication |
Enhances communication |
Drawbacks |
Non-Catalan market |
Economic costs |
Priority demands, linguistic
services |
Software, vocabularies and
terminology |
Software, vocabularies and
terminology |
Factors that favour use of Catalan |
In-house training in Catalan
Catalan as a requirement or advantage
Valuing of use of Catalan at work |
In-house training in Catalan
Catalan as a
requirement or advantage |
Public policies |
Promoting Catalan as medium for
training programmes
(Self)regulation
of knowledge of Catalan when appointing staff
Information on
the benefits of Catalan |
Promoting Catalan as medium for
training programmes |
To set about
tidying up these ideas a conceptual map has been drawn up with use of Catalan in companies
as the central element, flanked at the sides by elements that explain this use, the main
advantages and drawbacks that companies perceive this use to have, and the main demand for
language services originated by these companies. We have also described the three main
vectors of the public policies that need to be implemented to act on these factors and
thus indirectly on the use of Catalan in the multinational and public service companies.
Diagram 3. Factors, demands, advantages
and drawbacks in the use of Catalan.
In multinational and public service companies
Promotion of Catalan as medium in in-house training programmes
8. Bibliography
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lingüístico y sus efectos sobre la eficiencia y la distribución, Consejo
Económico y Social, Colección Estudios no. 158, 2004.
Enquesta sobre Usos Lingüístics a Institucions
Públiques (EULIP), Generalitat de Catalunya, Department of the Presidency, Language
Policy Secretariat, 2004.
Estadística dUsos Lingüístics a Catalunya 2003
(EULC), Generalitat de Catalunya, Institut dEstadística de Catalunya (Catalan
Statistics Institute) and the Department of the Presidency, Language Policy Secretariat
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7th January.
1/1998 Language Policy Act.
Querol, E.
Lús del català a les grans empreses in, Llengua i Ús núm. 28, third quarter 2003,
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language and employment in Catalonia, Working Paper 03-04 Economics Series 10,
Departamento de Economía, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, July 2003.
Sales, A.
Lestat nació, les empreses transnacionals i la qüestió lingüística en una
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2003. Barcelona: Generalitat of Catalonia. Department of the Presidency. Secretariat
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Usos lingüístics a les grans empreses presents a
Catalunya, Generalitat de Catalunya, Department of Culture, Directorate General for
Language Policy, 2002.
Joan
Solé Camardons
Jonatan Castaño
Agustí Díaz
Institute of Catalan Sociolinguistics |