Calling things by their name: Catalan or Eastern Aragonese?

Abstract

The arbitrariness of the administrative demarcation of the territory called La Franja ignores the language issue. This has helped to create a distorted image throughout Aragonese society of the language which is spoken in that area. The first aspect to suffer from the resultingly wide range of viewpoints and opinions is the very name of what is spoken in La Franja, that is to say, of the Catalan language which is in use there in various dialectal forms. This paper presents an overview of the different designations applied to Catalan in the Autonomous Region of Aragon. Firstly, the names given to the language by its selfsame speakers are recalled; secondly, the names appearing in the various laws dealing with the legal status of Aragon’s own specific languages are listed, and lastly, the suitability of the syntagma Eastern Aragonese, which has appeared with a certain forcefulness since the approval of the Language Act in 2013, is discussed.

Keywords: La Franja d’Aragó, Language Act, Catalan in Aragon, nomenclature and identity, Eastern Aragonese.