Pluricentric Languages in Conflict as a field of (empirical) inquiry
Josep Àngel MAS CASTELLS
Departament de Lingüística Aplicada
Universitat Politècnica de València
46730 Grau de Gandia
Email: jamas@upv.es
Keywords: language attitudes, language ideologies, Catalan language, empirical research
The main aim of this paper is, on one hand, to emphasize the need of taking into account findings in languages in conflict research, including theoretic postulates and empirical results, to improve research on pluricentric languages. On the other hand, to assume the case of pluricentric languages in conflict as a reality and as a field of inquiry itself. For instance, because it exemplifies the double role played by Dominant Varieties (DV), being at the same time minorised by another dominant language and dominant with regard to Non Dominant Varieties (NDV) of the own language. From a sociolinguistic point of view, this is to say that it becomes necessary to assume the non-relevance of the distinction between languages and varieties of a language when talking about ideologies, opinions and attitudes.
Instead, what is relieving and indispensable is to distinguish between those different factors affecting use and consideration of languages and language varieties. Starting from languages in conflict research findings, a first distinction needs to be made between primary and secondary factors, being primary those given to the speaker, such as origin or parent’s language, and being secondary those that can change throughout life, such as language attitude, ideology or social network. The second indispensable distinction is between ideology and language attitude, which can be even contradictory. Moreover, they need to be studied by means of different methods and techniques, only a small number of which are used in pluricentric anguages research.
In fact, pluricentric languages in conflict seem to be a perfect scenario to observe differences between language ideologies and language attitudes. The example of the Catalan language, a pluricentric language in conflict with widely spoken languages such as Spanish, French and Italian, shows some features that could be extrapolated to other cases: empirical research demonstrates that the (ideological) discourse of equality between languages and varieties is not the same when talking about varieties. Furthermore, it coexists with an attitudinal system that underlines a perceived superiority of their own variety across DV speakers. Meanwhile, NDV speakers do not reproduce this scheme, being victims of a double minorising process.
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