Description
A surging movement for Catalan political independence from Spain has brought renewed urgency to questions about what it means, personally and politically, to speak or not to speak Catalan and to claim Catalan identity. This book develops a framework for analyzing ideologies of linguistic authority and uses it to illuminate the politics of language in Catalonia, where Catalan jostles with Castilian for legitimacy. Kathryn Woolard's longitudinal research across decades of political autonomy contextualizes this ethnographic study of the social meaning of Catalan in the 21st century. Part I lays out the ideologies of linguistic authenticity, anonymity, and naturalism that underpin linguistic authority in the modern western world, and gives an overview of a shift in the ideological grounding of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Part II examines discourses in the media surrounding three public linguistic controversies: an immigrant president's linguistic competence, a municipal festival, and an international book fair. Part III explores individuals' linguistic practices and views, drawing on classroom ethnographies and interviews with two generations of young people from the same high school. Woolard argues that there is an ongoing shift at both public and personal levels away from the ethnolinguistic authenticity that powered relations in the early transition to political autonomy, and toward new discourses of anonymity, rooted cosmopolitanism, and authenticity understood as a project rather than a matter of origins and essence.
Winner of the 2017 Edward Sapir Book Prize
About the Author
Kathryn Woolard is a linguistic anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Woolard is author of Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia (Stanford 1989, reissued 2015) and co-editor of Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford, 1998) and Language and Publics (St. Jerome 2001; Routledge 2014). She is past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reviews
This book is remarkable for its clarity of theory, the crystalline writing style, the beautiful use of vast amounts of quite different sorts of evidence, the way it draws the reader in with humor and irony and the careful politics of analysis. These qualities, I have found, make it an exemplary resource for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. I love to teach this book because it teaches all the right things. * Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Chicago *
ReadingSingular and Pluralis a singular opportunity to follow a historical trajectory of the politics of a minority language over three decades of research that couples the study of public language, policy, and practice ... with compelling accounts of the lived experience of language in the lives of speakers over time. ... I am absolutely sure that it will become a foundational text for future research in many currents of scholarship focused on bilingual practices and politics in situations of contact and conflict....this complex, nuanced, and analytically sophisticated account of continuity and change in the political landscape of Catalan is rendered in clear and elegant style; it is simply a pleasure to read on every level. * Anthropology News *
This book conveys a (professional) lifetime of research on the politics of language in Catalonia as well as [Woolard's] specific way of deploying the model of 'linguistic ideologies' that she and her colleagues developed through a number of seminal works in the early 1990s. ...The review of [the] language debates is impressive: extensive, detailed and up to date virtually until the book was printed. ... The result is a nuanced critique of processes that are complex and contradictory, with a wealth of information that has no equal on the matter (including in publications in Catalan or Spanish). * Journal of Sociolinguistics *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the Ramon Llull International Prize Winner of the 2017 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190258627
Author Kathryn A. Woolard
Format Paperback
Page Count 390
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 234mm * 25mm
Winner of the 2017 Edward Sapir Book Prize
About the Author
Kathryn Woolard is a linguistic anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Woolard is author of Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia (Stanford 1989, reissued 2015) and co-editor of Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford, 1998) and Language and Publics (St. Jerome 2001; Routledge 2014). She is past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reviews
This book is remarkable for its clarity of theory, the crystalline writing style, the beautiful use of vast amounts of quite different sorts of evidence, the way it draws the reader in with humor and irony and the careful politics of analysis. These qualities, I have found, make it an exemplary resource for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. I love to teach this book because it teaches all the right things. * Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Chicago *
ReadingSingular and Pluralis a singular opportunity to follow a historical trajectory of the politics of a minority language over three decades of research that couples the study of public language, policy, and practice ... with compelling accounts of the lived experience of language in the lives of speakers over time. ... I am absolutely sure that it will become a foundational text for future research in many currents of scholarship focused on bilingual practices and politics in situations of contact and conflict....this complex, nuanced, and analytically sophisticated account of continuity and change in the political landscape of Catalan is rendered in clear and elegant style; it is simply a pleasure to read on every level. * Anthropology News *
This book conveys a (professional) lifetime of research on the politics of language in Catalonia as well as [Woolard's] specific way of deploying the model of 'linguistic ideologies' that she and her colleagues developed through a number of seminal works in the early 1990s. ...The review of [the] language debates is impressive: extensive, detailed and up to date virtually until the book was printed. ... The result is a nuanced critique of processes that are complex and contradictory, with a wealth of information that has no equal on the matter (including in publications in Catalan or Spanish). * Journal of Sociolinguistics *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the Ramon Llull International Prize Winner of the 2017 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190258627
Author Kathryn A. Woolard
Format Paperback
Page Count 390
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 234mm * 25mm
