Catalan is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian. It has semi-official status in the Italian comune of Alghero, and it is spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking territories are often called the Països Catalans or "Catalan Countries".
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. These alternations are generally intended to influence the relationship between the speakers, for example, suggesting that they may share identities based on similar linguistic histories.
Language policy is both an interdisciplinary academic field and implementation of ideas about language use. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard Spolsky, Robert B. Kaplan and Joseph Lo Bianco argue that language policy is a branch of applied linguistics.
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelligibility is sometimes used to distinguish languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue; but many read and write in one language. Being multilingual is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots.
Sociology of language is the study of the relations between language and society. It is closely related to the field of sociolinguistics, which focuses on the effect of society on language. One of its longest and most prolific practitioners was Joshua Fishman, who was founding editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, in addition to other major contributions. The sociology of language studies society in relation to language, whereas sociolinguistics studies language in relation to society. For the former, society is the object of study, whereas, for the latter, language is the object of study. In other words, sociolinguistics studies language and how it varies based on the user's sociological background, such as gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. On the other hand, sociology of language studies society and how it is impacted by language. As Trent University professor of global politics Andreas Pickel states, "religion and other symbolic systems strongly shaping social practices and shaping political orientations are examples of the social significance such languages can have." The basic idea is that language reflects, among several other things, attitudes that speakers want to exchange or that just get reflected through language use. These attitudes of the speakers are the sociologist's information.
Code-mixing is the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech.
The majority of languages of Spain belong to the Romance language family, of which Spanish is the only one with official status in the whole country. Others, including Catalan/Valencian and Galician, enjoy official status in their respective autonomous regions, similar to Basque in the northeast of the country. A number of other languages and dialects belonging to the Romance continuum exist in Spain, such as Aragonese, Asturian, Fala and Aranese Occitan.
The Constitution of Mexico does not declare an official language; however, Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by over 99% of the population making it the largest Spanish speaking country in the world. Due to the cultural influence of the United States, American English is widely understood, especially in border states and tourist regions, with a hybridization of Spanglish spoken. The government also recognizes 63 indigenous languages spoken in their communities out of respect, including Nahuatl, Mayan, Mixtec, etc.
Joshua Fishman was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.
Language ideology is, within anthropology, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their social worlds. Language ideologies are conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices. Like other kinds of ideologies, language ideologies are influenced by political and moral interests, and they are shaped in a cultural setting. When recognized and explored, language ideologies expose how the speakers' linguistic beliefs are linked to the broader social and cultural systems to which they belong, illustrating how the systems beget such beliefs. By doing so, language ideologies link implicit and explicit assumptions about a language or language in general to their social experience as well as their political and economic interests.
Bimodal bilingualism is an individual or community's bilingual competency in at least one oral language and at least one sign language, which utilize two different modalities. An oral language consists of a vocal-aural modality versus a signed language which consists of a visual-spatial modality. A substantial number of bimodal bilinguals are children of deaf adults (CODA) or other hearing people who learn sign language for various reasons. Deaf people as a group have their own sign language(s) and culture that is referred to as Deaf, but invariably live within a larger hearing culture with its own oral language. Thus, "most deaf people are bilingual to some extent in [an oral] language in some form". In discussions of multilingualism in the United States, bimodal bilingualism and bimodal bilinguals have often not been mentioned or even considered. This is in part because American Sign Language, the predominant sign language used in the U.S., only began to be acknowledged as a natural language in the 1960s. However, bimodal bilinguals share many of the same traits as traditional bilinguals, as well as differing in some interesting ways, due to the unique characteristics of the Deaf community. Bimodal bilinguals also experience similar neurological benefits as do unimodal bilinguals, with significantly increased grey matter in various brain areas and evidence of increased plasticity as well as neuroprotective advantages that can help slow or even prevent the onset of age-related cognitive diseases, such as Alzheimer's and dementia.
A bilingual sign is the representation on a panel of texts in more than one language. The use of bilingual signs is usually reserved for situations where there is legally administered bilingualism or where there is a relevant tourist or commercial interest. However, more informal uses of bilingual signs are often found on businesses in areas where there is a high degree of bilingualism, such as tourist venues, ethnic enclaves and historic neighborhoods. In addition, some signs feature synchronic digraphia, the use of multiple writing systems for a single language.
Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy is the study of place names. Landscape ethnoecology, also known as ethnophysiography, is the study of landscape ontologies and how they are expressed in language.
Linguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere. Other parameters for analyzing linguistic rights include the degree of territoriality, amount of positivity, orientation in terms of assimilation or maintenance, and overtness.
Translanguaging is a term that can refer to different aspects of multilingualism. It can describe the way bilinguals and multilinguals use their linguistic resources to make sense of and interact with the world around them. It can also refer to a pedagogical approach that utilizes more than one language within a classroom lesson. The term "translanguaging" was coined in the 1980s by Cen Williams in his unpublished thesis titled “An Evaluation of Teaching and Learning Methods in the Context of Bilingual Secondary Education.” Williams used the term to describe the practice of using two languages in the same lesson, which differed from many previous methods of bilingual education that tried to separate languages by class, time, or day. In addition, Vogel and Garcia argued that translanguaging theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as previously thought when scholars described bilingual or multilingual speakers, bilinguals and multilingual speakers select and deploy their languages from a unitary linguistic repertoire. However, the dissemination of the term, and of the related concept, gained traction decades later due in part to published research by Ofelia García, among others. In this context, translanguaging is an extension of the concept of languaging, the discursive practices of language speakers, but with the additional feature of using multiple languages, often simultaneously. It is a dynamic process in which multilingual speakers navigate complex social and cognitive demands through strategic employment of multiple languages.
Linguistic ecology or language ecology is the study of how languages interact with each other and the places they are spoken in, and frequently argues for the preservation of endangered languages as an analogy of the preservation of biological species.
There is a variety of Vernacular languages spoken in Spain. Spanish, the official language in the entire country, is the predominant native language in almost all of the autonomous communities in Spain. Six of the seventeen autonomous communities in Spain have other co-official languages in addition to Spanish. Bilingualism in different degrees and in distinct communicative situations between Spanish and another language is a habitual practice for many of the Spanish people who reside in one of these autonomous communities.
Jasone Cenoz is a professor of education at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) University of the Basque Country in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain since 2004. From 2000 to 2004 she was Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Her research focuses on multilingual education, bilingualism and multilingualism. She is known for her work on the influence of bilingualism on third language acquisition, pedagogical translanguaging, linguistic landscape, minority languages and Content and Language Integrated Learning.
Ingrid Piller is an Australian linguist, who specializes in intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education. Piller is Distinguished Professor at Macquarie University and an elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Piller serves as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Multilingua and as founding editor of the research dissemination site Language on the Move. She is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts.
