“Ai, que em faig un lio”. Recent developments in awareness of normative language use in Catalan and Spanish

Abstract

This paper examines the awareness of the normative forms of Catalan and Spanish by means of an innovative fieldwork experiment. Fifty participants were required to identify instan-
ces of non-normative linguistic interference in the two languages and, based on the results, conclusions were drawn as to their awareness of current linguistic norms. The participants belonged to two age brackets: the younger group was between 25 and 35 years old while the older group was aged between 55 and 65 years. This study’s theoretical framework focuses on the academic debate on language policy and planning, particularly concerning corpus planning and linguistic codification, since the experiment seeks specifically to evaluate the role of foreign interference in normative Catalan. On the basis of the experiment’s results, it may be asserted that Catalans are increasingly aware of the current linguistic norms of the Catalan language, above all with regard to the identification of instances of non-normative Spanish interference. It is also pointed out that, within the framework of this linguistic situation, the various types of language planning and policy are intrinsically linked, as they all form part of the same sociolinguistic reality.

Keywords: Linguistic normalisation, codification, language planning and policy, linguistic interference.