Catalan identity in the digital world. The case of the Catalan Ubuntu community

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the Catalan language and ideologies and identities in the network society. Ideology is understood as a representation of social and linguistic relations along with the interests that accompany them. We understand identity as a relational process that defines what one is in relation to others. Sociolinguistics closely link these concepts with language. In a social context in which the presence of the Internet is increasingly important and multifocal, we aim to establish whether this bond remains intact or is transformed. The analysis is based on the study of the Catalan-speaking Ubuntu community, which is remarkable for its size and the ideological substratum that pervades it. Through interview data, we explore how the participants interact and communicate as well as their opinions and motivations, and this information has been qualitatively processed. The aim is to demonstrate that the link between language and the concepts of ideology and identity is constructed differently in the physical and the digital spaces because they both respond to different conditions of communication and participation. Not only accepting this distinction but also understanding it is, after all, the challenge that the network society, a society in which we are fully positioned, poses us daily.

Keywords: Catalan; online community; ideology; identity; Internet.