Do Valencians accept language unity? A systematic comparison of its wordings

Abstract

The assertion that the Valencian variety forms part of the Catalan language still poses a challenge today. In the aftermath of a complex identity conflict, the unity of the language is often perceived as a taboo subject. On the one hand, surveys avoid it, leading to a scarcity of demolinguistic data on this issue, and on the other hand, institutions are hesitant when it comes to wording this concept and never formulate it in a fully direct way. Both the vacillations of political actors and the diversity of results between studies that opt for different wordings may indicate that Valencians’ support for language unity varies depending on how euphemistically it is expressed. Thus, agreeing with more explicit wordings could still be conditioned today by other ideological and sociolinguistic factors. In order to verify if wording has an effect on the acceptance of unity and to establish which other variables correlate with it in each case, we assessed the degree of agreement of a single sample of Valencian Country residents (n = 1.090) with seven different language unity wordings. The sample had been adjusted for population representativeness considering geographical, ideological and age criteria. Results revealed overall high support for language unity and, in general, validated the positive effect of using euphemistic wordings. However, it was also found that an excess of euphemism may negatively affect the degree of agreement. Additionally, correlations with sociolinguistic variables suggest that other elements in the wordings, independent of the euphemistic aspect, can trigger further ideological reluctance.