Economic dynamics and use of minoritised languages. The case of commercial digitalisation in the Valencian Country

Abstract

Through a descriptive study on the analysis of the web content of companies and entities representing the commercial offering in the Valencian Country, this article focuses on theelectronic presence of the Catalan language, from the information on products and services to the possibility of making monetary transactions. The results show that there is an almost absolute absence of Catalan in the Valencian companies that deal directly with customers in their establishments when a part of this service is technologically mediated. However, by expanding the focus to embrace the entire digital panorama of languages and to offer a prospective vision, the possibility of finding commercial transaction information and tools in the Catalan language is increased in two spheres, both of which are observed to involve trends in the current economic, political and cultural dynamics. These two spheres are, on the one hand, the multinational direct sales companies and the large international platforms that centralise a large number of commercial transactions, and, on the other hand, the local entities which also operate in the market and have a system of alternative economic relations and practices linked to their territory, such as the social and solidarity-based economy and ethical financing. Our conclusion is that due to the global/local dynamics, and from the perspective of the competition between linguistic markets, economic actors (entrepreneurs and prosumers) reproduce ideological structures in their linguistic practices. The configuration of the competition between the three languages with the greatest presence (Spanish, Catalan and English) could be the product of the interaction between two types of language-related discourse: market discourse (seeking profit) and identity discourse (showing pride).