Current trends in the development of the language conflict in Catalonia

Papchenko Anna Yurievna PhD in Philology Lecturer, Department of Ibero-Romance Linguistics, Philological Faculty Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Moscow, Leninskie Gory, 1st building of Humanities Faculties (1st GUM), Faculty of Philology aanxen@yandex.ru

A language conflict is considered to be a clash between linguistic communities (communities) of people, which is based on certain problems related to language ^[4]. In a broad sense, the term "language conflict" takes into account, in addition to the actual language, its political, social and cultural dimension.

The prerequisite for using this term in relation to the situation in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (ASC) of Spain is the idea that the existence of multilingual population groups within the same jurisdiction, that is, one state, inevitably leads to some form of struggle between languages, competition for their own space, and sometimes hegemony. Misunderstandings and injustices inevitably arise in this struggle, which often result in a political conflict, as is the case in Catalonia. No wonder it was to describe the relationship between Catalan and Spanish that the term "language conflict" was first used by L. Arasil in 1965 in the report "Language conflict and language normalization in the New Europe" ^[5].

In this context, the fact that U. Weinreich calls it "language contact", is a manifestation of an "individualistic" approach, since "the place of contact is individuals who use language" ^{[3, p. 22]}, and is interpreted at the state level as a situation in which, nevertheless, there are elements of conflict, which can certainly have different degrees of intensity – from latent to active.  The latent phase of the conflict itself, that is, "maintaining the status quo in which the current balance of forces is not subject to discussion" ^{[13, p. 96]} is established if there is a certain degree of tolerance in the issue of the connection between the identity of speakers and language. Such a tendency to deconfliction through identity modification can manifest itself in the bilingualization of speakers in the conflict zone in the absence of destabilizing factors – a condition that is not fulfilled in the case of Catalonia, primarily due to the political confrontation of the autonomy with the center, including, first of all, on the issue of language policy.

As you know, in multilingual states with a federal structure, the global language policy can be arranged in two ways. The first is when several languages with equal rights are simultaneously recognized as state languages in the Constitution, as in Canada, Switzerland or Belgium. The second way is the constitutional recognition of one language as the state language, while all the powers to determine and implement regional language policy are transferred to the subjects of the federation. This is the case of Spain, where the Constitution ^[6] mentions only Spanish as the "official language of the Spanish State (la lengua oficial del Estado). Article 3.2 of the document states that "the other languages of Spain are also official in the autonomous communities in accordance with their statutes."

On the one hand, this allows the Spanish autonomous communities to pursue an independent language policy, but on the other hand, it also allows it to be constantly challenged due to insufficient legal clarity in the relationship between the Constitution and the legislation of the subjects in the matter of language. Thus, dozens of cases related to the use of languages in Catalonia are awaiting resolution in the Constitutional Court of Spain alone, which are becoming more complicated every year ^[21].

If in the 80s-90s of the last century, after the adoption of the 1978 Constitution, which revived the constitutional recognition of the linguistic diversity of Spain after decades of its persecution by Francoism, the Constitutional Court of Spain (CCI) mainly supported the processes of language normalization in autonomous communities, then since 2000, with the coming to power of the People's Party (Partido Popular), which promoted the doctrines of "constitutional patriotism", and also called for a reduction in the autonomy of the regions ^[1], these processes meet fierce resistance from the center.

The crucial legal event in this paradigm shift was the decision of the CCI 31/2010 on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which, in particular, recognized as unconstitutional the "preferred" use of the Catalan language "in the work of public administration bodies and mass media of Catalonia", as well as "in the educational system" ^[11]. In other words, it is precisely in those spheres in which, according to the concept of linguistic justice formulated by the Belgian philosopher Philippe van Parais ^{[19, 20]}, its basic principle - linguistic territoriality - can and should be implemented. Its essence lies precisely in the fact that this single principle, capable of ensuring equal rights to different languages, presupposes the existence of a certain territory (in this case, the ASK), where one of the languages will be dominant in all spheres, primarily in the field of education and public communication, that is, the language of administrative institutions in a broad sense: from courts, state media, legislative acts and representative bodies to signage in public places.

Van Parais notes that if these spheres do not forcibly use the language that certain groups are interested in preserving, then two corrosive forces will act on it simultaneously, which are difficult, if not impossible to resist: one from above, that is, pressure from the spheres of education and public communication, and the other from below, on the part of native speakers themselves, who tend to show excessive "courtesy" in such situations, according to the thesis of French political scientist Jean Laponce - "the nicer people are, the more insidious languages are" ^[14]. Lapons means that when the choice of language depends on the goodwill of the speakers, then not to serve, for example, at the post office a person who addressed in the wrong language means not to act kindly. But by showing courtesy, the speaker weakens the already weaker language even more, so in such cases it is more convenient to refer to the law that prescribes providing certain services or carrying out certain activities in a certain language.

In this sense, the decision of the CCI 31/2010, according to Jaume Vernet, a specialist in language rights, meant not only the loss of "a historical opportunity to mitigate the latent conflict in relations between Catalonia and Spain," but, on the contrary, provoked "a new, far-reaching political conflict with unpredictable political consequences, for the reason, among others, that The Constitutional Court, forgetting about its role as a neutral party, took the side of the dominant language" ^{[21, p. 87]}.

A special role in this case is played by the question of languages in the education system. As Moreno Cabrera notes ^[16], the dominance of one language over another has more than one dimension. So, in the case of Spanish in the ASK, it is not only social, but also competencial, since the level of proficiency in Catalan grammar in Catalonia is lower for a significant part of the population than the grammar of Spanish. These dimensions are interrelated: for social dominance, competence is necessary, accordingly, any attempts to change the existing balance of linguistic competencies – for example, by introducing changes to the education system – are perceived by the dominant language as an attack requiring protection from its "discrimination".

That is why the Catalan-friendly educational model of language immersion (inmersi?n lingstica), adopted in the field of education by the ASC, has become the object of fierce attacks from the central government of Spain. The essence of the model is that Catalan is used as the first and only language of instruction (lengua vehicular) at all levels, and Spanish (and other languages) is taught as a discipline. The introduction of this approach legally began with Royal Decree 2092/1978, which first made it mandatory to study Catalan as a subject, and continued with the adoption of Law 7/1983 on language normalization, approved by the Parliament of Catalonia with only two votes against (more on this: ^[15]).

This language policy in the field of education immediately brought positive results: in the five years from 1981 to 1986, the proportion of those who understand Catalan in the ASC increased from 79.8% to 90.3%, and over the next 10 years (1986-1996) it reached 95.0%. Over the same years, the share of speakers of the language increased from 64.0% to 75.3%, those who can read it ? from 60.5% to 72.4%, write ? from 31.5% to 45.8%. In the future, despite the new waves of immigration to the ASK, the indicators of oral proficiency remained, and the written ones improved. According to the 2011 census, 95.1% of the population understand Catalan, 73.1% can speak it, 78.7% can read and 55.7% can write. ^[12]

At the same time, according to surveys, including those conducted within the framework of the International Program for the Assessment of Educational Achievements of Students (Program for International Student Assessment, PISA), which is designed to assess the functional literacy of schoolchildren in different countries of the world and the ability to apply knowledge in practice, Catalan schoolchildren show the same results in Spanish proficiency that and schoolchildren of the monolingual autonomous communities of Spain ^[22]. Thus, the level of Spanish proficiency received by schoolchildren in the Catalan education system does not suffer from the fact that education is conducted in Catalan. This fact, repeatedly confirmed by the international scientific community ^{[18, 8, etc.]} did not prevent the Supreme Court of Spain from announcing on November 23, 2021 the entry into force of a decision according to which at least 25% of classes in Spanish should be conducted in schools ^[10].

The political, legal and social aggravation of the language conflict calls into question not only the future of the "immersion program", which is the result of the language policy pursued by the ASK government, but also the so-called "grassroots" processes that have been spontaneously occurring in Catalan society over the past 30 years and play no less significant role than language policies, conducted by the government. Among such processes, the most significant are those that occur among young people, since it is the younger generation that ultimately determines any process of revitalization and/or normalization of minority languages by their linguistic behavior ^[2].  

In Catalonia, the process of normalization of Catalan from the very beginning was accompanied by a phenomenon that, in a certain sense, contradicts its global objectives, namely, the increase in the passive language competencies of schoolchildren in Catalan led not to an increase, but to a reduction in the spheres of its use ^[9]. This process is called "Romanization" or "Irishization" of Catalan by analogy with Gaelic in Ireland, where out of more than one and a half million speakers, no more than 300 thousand use it.

Raquel Kazesnoves Ferrer, having analyzed in detail ^[9] the results of sociolinguistic studies from 1986 to 2011, makes an unambiguous conclusion that the level of Catalan proficiency among young people has not only steadily increased over 25 years, but has always been above average compared to other population groups, especially in terms of formal aspects – reading and writing in Catalan. In addition, based on her own study of the language behavior of young (15 to 29 years old) educated Catalans - students of the Central University of Barcelona, conducted in 2013-2014, Kazasnoves demonstrated that the level of proficiency in Catalan does not depend on the native language of the respondents. That is, students for whom Spanish is their native language and the language of home communication, speak Catalan at the same level as initially Catalan-speaking students, which, obviously, is a consequence of their school education according to the language immersion model.

As for the preferred use of Catalan ("solo catal?n o m?s catal?n que castellano"), the indicators of sociolinguistic surveys from 2003 to 2013 indicate that it declined in all population groups, but it is especially active among young people. It is noteworthy that this did not happen in formal spheres of communication, such as going to the bank, to the doctor, to the mall, but, on the contrary, in the family circle, with acquaintances and friends, that is, in contexts least affected by the state language policy. The study of students' language behavior showed that regardless of which language is their native language – Spanish or Catalan – all informants follow the same model when choosing a language of communication in a given situation. Thus, Kazesnoves concludes that over three decades of the implementation of the language policy on the normalization of the Catalan language, the increase in language competence in Catalan among young people has not led to its greater use. At the same time, there is a higher degree of bilingualization of Catalan youth.

As noted by French researcher Christelle Burban ^[7], this seemingly paradoxical situation indicates not so much the failure of the language policy towards Catalan, but rather the transition of the language conflict into another hypostasis, connected precisely with the expansion of the linguistic identity of the Catalan-speaking residents of the ASK. During the Francoist dictatorship, the position of Catalan speakers in Catalonia was sharply opposed to any language of immigrants, primarily Spanish speakers. The access of these latter to the Catalan language was limited both technically by the lack of teaching tools and by the language barrier erected, consciously or not, by Catalan speakers.  This led to a situation of sharp diglossia between the traditionally Catalan-speaking elite of Catalan society and the Spanish-speaking population of the region. The border between these groups was practically impenetrable, which contributed to the preservation of linguistic homogeneity within each of the groups.

With the advent of democracy, the change of course to ensure access to Catalan for everyone was supposed to destroy this border and promote the integration of the Spanish-speaking population of Catalonia into the new political and social reality of the region. In order to reduce the severity of the language issue, due to the fact that the self-identity of the Catalans was enormously language-oriented, Catalan politicians tried to refocus their discourse on a broader understanding of Catalan identity. An example of this is the slogan formulated back in the 1960s by the future president of the Catalan government, Jordi Pujol: "A Catalan is anyone who lives and works in Catalonia" ("Es catala tothom que viu i treballa a Catalunya") ^[23].

As expected, due to the integration policy aimed at reducing the intensity of the language conflict, the border between the ethnolinguistic groups of the Catalan population has become more permeable. This was expressed, first of all, in an increase in the number of bilingual families, previously extremely few, to 29% in 2008 ^[17], as well as the percentage of children from mixed marriages, who in more than 60% of cases retain the bilingualism received in the family.

In addition, this was reflected, as already mentioned above, in an increase in the level of proficiency in Catalan among young people, primarily those for whom Spanish was the only language of communication before school. Thus, the most striking process in the language behavior of Catalan youth is its bilingualization, and this is not a one–sided process among Catalan-speaking young people, but mutual, although not completely symmetrical. In other words, there was a partial rejection of the language model, which Lapons ^{[14, p. 107]} described as "one-sided bilingualism", when society is bilingual, but in reality only one of the two groups uses both languages.

Bilingualism has become a new tool of self–identification for Catalan youth and often serves not so much for breeding languages by spheres of communication, as a means of stylistic play in a situation when monolingual communication - in any of the languages - seems to be an "outdated trend". This indicates that, on the one hand, Spanish-speaking Catalans do not perceive the Catalan language in a hostile way, and, on the other hand, Catalan speakers do not feel the need to maintain the language barrier in the absence of a threat to their linguistic identity.

The spontaneous rejection of the need to choose between languages observed among Catalan youth is an attempt to resolve the language conflict at the individual level. The competent use of this spontaneous, unregulated trend could lead to the strengthening of the policy of linguistic "hybridization", which, with proper planning, can consolidate certain areas of communication for the Catalan language and ensure its survival in a multilingual society. However, the current socio-political trends in the development of the language conflict in Catalonia indicate that the steps of both governments (Spanish and Catalan) continue to be aimed at consolidating diglossia, which once again calls into question not only the prospect of social dominance, but also the future of the Catalan language.