From normalization to sustainability: the limits to planning status

Abstract

The authorities’ involvement in the status of the Catalan language after the democratic transition
period was not, strictly speaking, the object of planning and it is characterised by disinterest
or hostility on behalf of the State and the supra-state, by the diversity of the political
sub-state spaces and by the discontinuity of policies. Until the end of the Eighties, the predominant
approach was that of ‘linguistic normalisation’, based on the creation of a juridical
and institutional framework capable of reversing the language shift process. The need for comprehensive linguistic planning became evident by the end of the Eighties and the beginning of the Nineties.However, as of the end of this decade, the central idea has been that of linguistic politics. Subsequently, changes induced by globalisation brought about the perspective of linguistic
sustainability, which by the beginning of the 21st century began to gain ground. The paper makes an overall analysis of how the stages and settings in which the authorities’ intervention on the status of Catalan have evolved.

KEYWORDS: language planning, status planning, reversing language shift, language politics, language
sustainability.