Immigration and Linguistic Diversity: A new and poorly understood situation for Catalan

For decades Catalan, a language minoritized and endangered by the hegemony of other state languages, has been experimenting with a process of revitalization driven by social activism and political autonomy, which has been particularly strong in some of its historical regions. Recently, however, seri...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Comellas, Pere, 1965-
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/170102
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/170102
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Català
Identitat lingüística
Multilingüisme
Catalan language
Linguistic identity
Multilingualism
Descripción
Sumario:For decades Catalan, a language minoritized and endangered by the hegemony of other state languages, has been experimenting with a process of revitalization driven by social activism and political autonomy, which has been particularly strong in some of its historical regions. Recently, however, serious doubts about the success of this process have been heightened due to a surge of immigrants that speak neither Catalan nor Spanish. This article attempts to assess the impact of immigrant languages on the future of the linguistic dynamic using demographic evidence. We raise the question of whether this is a key factor to Catalan's survival, and finally demonstrate that the underestimation of alloglots in statistical studies is an indicator of the need to expand the study of the phenomenon of the new linguistic diversity, which exceeds the traditional framework of bilingual settings.