Short description:

“This book provides profound insights into communicative ecologies during a time of significant political and cultural change in Catalonia. Longitudinal documentation and compelling analysis of ideologies and languaging patterns among members of The Generation of 1995 constitute key resources for researchers and students interested in contemporary Spain’s linguistic and cultural situation. An essential read for those interested in the dynamics of language revitalization within contexts of (trans)localization and globalization.”

—Carol Klee, Professor, University of Minnesota, USA

“Robert Vann’s rich study of emerging practices and ideologies surrounding generational ways of speaking in Barcelona is a genuine feast, not least because he fashions language documentation into a vivid, multilayered canvas for exploring cultural history and social and political change while never losing sight of the voices of actual people as they create, enact, and circulate globalizing ways of being and social ideas.”

—Anthony C. Woodbury, Professor of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, USA

This book documents linguistic practices and ideologies toward language, identity, 
and nationalism among 35 members of the first generation in Spain to grow up with 
democracy and Catalan language normalization. Part I reproduces, translates, and 
analyzes artifacts (1975–1998) concerning language shift, linguistic nationalism, and 
Europeanization, illustrating contemporaneous sociologies of language and 
globalization in Catalonia. Part II transcribes, translates, and ethnographically 
analyzes oral histories from 2017 Barcelona Metro, detailing ways of speaking (about 
topics like identity, cultural malaise, politics, and self-determination) involving 
globalization processes. Part III analyzes variation in ideologies and ideological 
changes (1995–2017) based on childhood linguistic exposure and adult network ties, 
unpacking emergent lexical coding that indexes globalizing values and worldviews. 
This book will be of interest to fields including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, 
sociology, communications, political science, Iberian studies, and Catalan studies.

Robert E. Vann is Professor of Spanish linguistics at Western Michigan University, USA. He is founding director of DARDOSIPCAT (the Digital ARchive to DOcument Spanish In the Països CATalans) and author of Materials for the sociolinguistic description and corpus-based study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a documentation of colloquial Spanish in naturally occurring groups (2009).

Long description:

This book documents linguistic practices and ideologies toward language, identity, 
and nationalism among 35 members of the first generation in Spain to grow up with 
democracy and Catalan language normalization. Part I reproduces, translates, and 
analyzes artifacts (1975–1998) concerning language shift, linguistic nationalism, and 
Europeanization, illustrating contemporaneous sociologies of language and 
globalization in Catalonia. Part II transcribes, translates, and ethnographically 
analyzes oral histories from 2017 Barcelona Metro, detailing ways of speaking (about 
topics like identity, cultural malaise, politics, and self-determination) involving 
globalization processes. Part III analyzes variation in ideologies and ideological 
changes (1995–2017) based on childhood linguistic exposure and adult network ties, 
unpacking emergent lexical coding that indexes globalizing values and worldviews. 
This book will be of interest to fields including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, 
sociology, communications, political science, Iberian studies, and Catalan studies.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: The Sociology of Language from 1975 to 1998.- Chapter 2: The Generation of 1995 in Catalonia: The first children of both democracy and the linguistic normalization of Catalan.- Chapter 3: Boundary-breaking language ideological practices and the spread of language-borne cultural products, 1975-1998.- Chapter 4: Language artifacts from the 1980s and 1990s: Government Resources.- Chapter 5: Language artifacts from the 1980s and 1990s: Beyond Government Resources.- Part II: Ethnographic analysis of retrospective discourses produced in 2017.- Chapter 6: In their own words: Language, identity, and fer país.- Chapter 7: In their own words: The language of cultural malaise.- Chapter 8: In their own words: Language, political economy, and democracy.- Chapter 9: In their own words: El dret a decidir and el procés.- Part III: Variationist analysis of ideologies and of longitudinal ideological change (1995-2017).- Chapter 10: A framework for quantitative analysis.- Chapter 11: By the numbers.- Chapter 12: What do you mean by Castilian and Spain?.- Chapter 13: Conclusion.- Index.