Youth and television: the Televisió de Catalunya experience

Abstract

Is Catalan “cool”? If this means that Catalan can be a language that is ordinarily used in the communication media when seeking to reach out to young people, it may be said that Catalan can be “cool”. It all depends, however, on how the media play their cards. The appearance of Channel 3XL, which is addressed to young people, has faced the challenge of creating language models that strike a balance between the observation of reality, creativity and tradition. This paper describes how advantage should be taken of the possibilities offered by today’s world and how to achieve models that will allow young people to relate to the media. It has been sought to build a model that is prescriptive as well as fresh and lively; that incorporates the language of blogs, Facebook or text messages (with the fragmentation of the discourse that this entails), and that will allow it to be affirmed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Catalan is “cool”.

Key words: social use of Catalan, youth, communication media, television, cultural consumption.