What corpus language planning is in place for public television outlets in the Catalan communicative space?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the latest developments in the corpus language planning interventions in the implementation of the codification (Haugen, E. (1983). The implementation of corpus planning: theory and practice. In J. Cobarrubias & J. A. Fishman (Eds.), Progress in language planning. International perspectives (pp. 269–289). Mouton.) of Catalan by Catalan-language media corporations, taking into consideration that Catalan is a pluricentric language (Darder, L. (2015). La variació lingüística en els mitjans audiovisuals com a estratègia conscient. Treballs de sociolingüística catalana, 25, 303–316. https://raco.cat/index.php/TSC/article/view/342907; Costa-Carreras, J. (2021). Compositionality, pluricentricity, and pluri-areality in the Catalan standardisation. In A. Cortijo Ocaña & V. Martines (Eds.), History of Catalonia and its implications for contemporary nationalism and cultural conflict (pp. 182–197). IGI Global; Mas Castells, J. À. (2021). Invitació al pluricentrisme. Notes per a l’estudi d’una llengua pluricèntrica en conflicte. Treballs de sociolingüísticacatalana, 31, 15–30. https://raco.cat/index.php/TSC/article/view/386900) that is standardised both de facto and de jure. It concludes that Muhr, R. (2020). European pluricentric languages in contact and conflict – An overview. In R. Muhr, J. À. Mas Castells, & J. Rueter (Eds.), European pluricentric languages in contact and conflict (pp. 11–64). Peter Lang approach to language variation management does not fit with the Catalan communicative space, and that the proposals, both of the term multi-standard by Auer, P. (2021). Reflections on linguistic pluricentricity. Sociolinguistica, 35(1), 29–47. https://doi.org/10.1515/soci-2021-0003, and of the term location by Dollinger, S. (2019). The pluricentricity debate on Austrian German and other Germanic Standard varieties. Routledge are not needed, as Mas Castells’s (2021) definition of ‘centre’ is fully pertinent for Catalan. A sociolinguistic and standardological perspective has been adopted (Joseph, J. E. (1987). Eloquence and power. The rise of language standards and standard languages. Frances Pinter; Costa-Carreras, J. (forthcoming). On the epistemological status of comparative standardology and standardisation. Caplletra, 79 (fall 2025)) to compare the style guides of three audiovisual media corporations, with an exemplification on a particular issue in relation to both prescription and use. An appropriate description of the linguistic pluricentricity of three Catalan-language media corporations (Darder 2015; Costa-Carreras 2021; Costa-Carreras, J. (2022, June 15–17). What ideological factors are relevant to analyse language variation management for Catalan? Talk presented at the Symposium Rules and incentives in language policy and planning: Economic, legal and sociolinguistic approaches; Mas Castells 2021) is therefore offered: the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation with headquarters in Catalonia, the Valencian Broadcasting Corporation with headquarters the Valencian Country, and the Broadcasting Public Entity of the Balearic Islands with headquarters in the Balearic Islands.

KEYWORDS:

• Catalan
• dialect
• media corporations
• pluricentricity
• standardology
• style guides

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 At the time of writing this text (November 2023), the Aragonese Academy for the Language (AAL) had published the normative Agreement 1/2023, of February 27, of the Aragonese Academy for the Language, on the regulations for the official use of Aragonese Catalan.The Plenary approved the following regulatory agreement:

‘[…] in relation to Aragonese Catalan, the use of the normative compositional model established by the Institute of Catalan Studies is considered ‘correct use’ of this language […]. However, due to the fact that it is registered in the normative context of the common language and due to dialectal proximity, to the extent that it coincides with the regulations of the Institute of Catalan Studies, what is determined by the Valencian Language Academy is also applicable to the Valencian Normative Dictionary and the Valencian Normative Grammar.’

Therefore, the AAL is a third official ‘centre’, but just assuming the IEC’s and AVL’s codifications. But the victory of the extreme right in the elections in May 2023 in the autonomous community of Aragon will slow down the development of the AAL.

2 See section ‘The concept of “centre”’ for a definition of ‘centre’ in the Catalan situation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joan Costa-Carreras

Joan Costa-Carreras does research in corpus language planning and sociolinguistic variation, mainly in comparative standardology, corpus planning in the Catalan language, evaluation of the implementation of normative grammar, discourse analysis of normative grammar, analysis of linguistic norms, linguistic variation and change linguistic (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joan-Costa-Carreras). He is now working on the Language standardisation revisited: mediatisation, vernacularization and language ideologies in contemporary Spain Project (ESTANDAREV (PID2021-124673NA-IOO); https://diarium.usal.es/estandarevesp/), to which the present work is related to.