Building an audience from scratch. The contribution of radio to standard Catalan

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain, on the basis of a historical review, how the Catalan language model used on the radio has helped to build up a Catalan-language radio audience in a social context that prefers to speak in Spanish. According to different sources (Informe de política lingüística 2019, Generalitat de Catalunya, 2021b;1 AIMC-EGM2 and IX Informe sobre la situació de la llengua catalana (2015), Observatori de la Llengua Catalana,3 Pradilla i Sorolla, coord., 2016), radio is the medium with the greatest consumption in the Catalan language (75.3 %), which is far higher than the figures for this language in television or the press. The private Catalan radio station RAC1, of the Godó Communications Group, has done much to create this interesting trend. In this paper we will explain the reasons that lie behind it.