In the Balearic Islands and Catalonia, Spanish and Catalan coexist, and are granted the same official status. However, the sociolinguistic situation in both regions is vastly different: in Catalonia, Catalan has a relatively... [ view full abstract ]
In the Balearic Islands and Catalonia, Spanish and Catalan coexist, and are granted the same official status. However, the sociolinguistic situation in both regions is vastly different: in Catalonia, Catalan has a relatively normalized status, while in the Balearic Island the local government has shown discontinuous support of the regional language. This difference in the treatment of the language has a great impact on speakers’ language ideologies.
The aim of this communication is precisely to underline the dissimilarities between language ideologies associated to Catalan and Spanish in Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona, the capital cities of the abovementioned regions. The main objective of this investigation is to analyse fully comparable data on language ideologies that brings to light the differences in Palma and Barcelona. To this end, focus groups with undergrad students from universities in both cities have been organised, which have provided speeches through which they manifested their language ideologies.
The results highlight the diversity of language ideologies regarding Catalan and Spanish. On the one hand, in Barcelona, Catalan is generally considered an anonymous language, belonging to no one and everyone. It is perceived as the language of the public administration and education, although it is still a symbol of identity, according to the informants. On the other hand, in Palma, Catalan is related to authenticity, and the role of anonymous language has been given to Spanish, which occupies a big part of the public spaces (i.e. mass media, administration).
