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Catalan Sociolinguistics: State of the art and future challenges
Edited by Miquel Àngel Pradilla Cardona
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 32] 2022
► pp. 1–14

Chapter 1
Catalan sociolinguistics

A multifaceted discipline

| Rovira i Virgili University | Institute of Catalan Studies

Almost five decades after its foundation, Catalan sociolinguistics is a vigorous discipline. It should be said, however, that the magnitude of the research carried out reveals a knowledge area with extremely vague limits. On the whole, Catalan sociolinguistics still presents a clearly sociological bias. The sociology of language is still the object of most of the scientific output by a critical mass of researchers who largely insist on empathising with the communicative viability of Catalan. Of course, the initial militancy following its foundation has been toned down, but even so, controversial approaches persist.

Despite the emphasis I have given to the section on macrosociology, Catalan sociolinguistics has also been active in the fields of variationism, the ethnography of communication and, in particular, pragmatics. The contributions made by microsociolinguistics show that Catalan sociolinguistics is a multidimensional entity with an ever-increasing diversity of interests.

Keywords: Catalan sociolinguistics, variationism, ethnography of communication, sociology of language, linguistic planning, corpus planning, status planning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A multifacted sociolinguistic tradition
    • 2.1Macrosociolinguistics
      • 2.1.1Epistemological reflection
        • 1.Ecology of languages
        • 2.Prospective sociolinguistics
        • 3.The social history of the language
      • 2.1.2Language planning
        • 1.Formal planning
        • 2.Functional planning
        • 3.Acquisition planning
      • 2.1.3Social psychology
    • 2.2Microsociolinguistics
      • 2.2.1Ethnography of communication
      • 2.2.2Pragmatics and discourse analysis
      • 2.2.3Sociolinguistics of variation
  • 3.Epilogue
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.32.01pra
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