Castilian Takes Backstage in the Balearic Islands: The Activation of Catalan Standardization Recursions in Facebook

Abstract

This article explores the ideological consequences of recent language policy changes in the Balearic Islands, where Catalan and Castilian are the official languages. It will approach the intersection between minoritized language contexts and ideologies of standardization, focusing on negotiations of linguistic authority and linguistic differentiation at the individual level. In the frame of intense language ideological debates in the archipelago, I examine the interactions between members of two large Facebook communities to show how the ideological frame shifts toward one in which the relationship between Balearic varieties and the Catalan standard becomes central, and in which Castilian is only implicitly addressed.

“The right to lead”: Navajo language, dis‐citizenship, and Diné presidential politics

“…Post: “He might have to wait for rosetta stone to come up with the Navajo language package…”; Reply 1: “They have one set”; Reply 2: “nice…”). Following Duane (), we also paid close attention to radio interviews, articles published on the topic in The Navajo Times and also in other journalistic outlets including blogs, national and international newspapers, and news sites to aid in contextualizing the Facebook conversation.…”

“…Digital discourse studies in the context of social networks (Rambe, ; Thurlow, : 1) afford us “novel potentials for indexing and constructing discourses and ideologies” (Duane, : 77). Moreover, local digital networks, as spaces that largely escape editorial and institutional control, such as the control exerted by the fluency test mandated by the OHA, represent environments where “language variation, innovation, and change develop, where written language norms may be pluralized and localized, and standards challenged” (Duane, : 77). Indeed, throughout these posts, Facebookers employ multiple linguistic standards—spoken and written—including playful uses of orthography in both English, Navajo, and code‐mixed English‐Navajo, and a sustained discursive emphasis on the internal variations of language use in Diné speech communities.…”

“…We choose a social networking site as the focal point for our analysis for several reasons. First, we seek to show the “everyday” nature of this conversation and the ways it plays out both at the level of official tribal politics and in the daily lives of Diné citizens during moments when speakers were not in the limelight (De Bres & Belling, ; Cameron & Panovic, ; Duane, ; Thurlow, ; Wortham & Reyes, ). Second, in this analysis, we seek to emphasize the affective and class‐based dimensions of formal language policy, including the fluency requirement, and how this impacts Diné lived experience.…”

Postracial Policing, “Mother Tongue” Sourcing, and Images of Singlish Standard

“…I suggest that the aesthetics of standard‐like‐ness motivate embodied investments in particular registers—as well as the statuses those registers make available (Silverstein 2017, 246–47) beyond standardization as such. I suggest that sustained attention to the image of standard highlights the ways in which sensuous qualities get attributed to “correct” (versus incorrect) speech in processes aimed at making standard‐backed prescriptive norms (Duane 2017; Romero 2012; Tupas and Rubdy 2015) detachable from their text‐specific tokens, rendering them available to de‐ and recontextualization: to “circulation” as interdiscursivities (Briggs and Bauman 1992; Gal 2018; Silverstein and Urban 1996) or events of citation (Nakassis 2012; 2013; 2016). When evaluating Singlish, some instances of use come to feel correct, or not, as an effect of the structuring of qualities that felt to diagram a conic, standard‐like model.…”

Linguistic Anthropology in 2017: It Could Be Otherwise

“…A great deal of work in linguistic anthropology has analyzed the semiotic processes whereby, in the contexts of nation‐state building and maintenance, variation and contingency of linguistic and social phenomena are erased or made to serve as foils for an essentialized unity. While such practices (and practices resisting them) remain relevant (e.g., Farquharson ; Karlander ; Westinen ), many of the works published by linguistic anthropologists in 2017 explicitly theorize and ethnographically situate political economies of language in contexts of neoliberal capitalism, in which linguistic and social variation are less erased than commodified (e.g., Cavanaugh ; Duane ; Heller ; LaDousa and Baldridge ; Leone‐Pizzighella and Rymes ; Lo and Choi ; Park ; Sharma and Phyak ; Weinberg ).…”