Political and Media Use of Sociolinguistic Concepts in the Current Language
Abstract
Any effective progress in the process of normalizing a national language subject to the mastery of the state official one will always be accompanied-fought by a semantic-terminological arsenal aiming to destroy or neutralize it. The strategy of imposing the languages considered indisputable in their prerogatives will be endowed with diverse tactics, adapted to the historical moment and to its greater divulging effectiveness. In this operation of the neo-imposition of state languages, concepts or expressions are used that do not sympathize with the historical origin or with the sociolinguistic reality. It is, therefore, interesting to analyze the legal-political use —and its media derivative— of notions such as common language, language conflict, immersion, plurilingualism or normalization. We refer, in particular, to the Spanish framework, and to the national languages depending on it: Galician, Basque, and Catalan. The question of languages —their general use, their rights, their existence, in short— is closely linked to the recognition or not of the peoples, of the societies to which they belong. It is, therefore, an essentially political issue, in which the admission or not —in democratic and horizontal equality— of nations that do not have state institutions at their service is at stake. In the current phase of globalized capitalism, theoretically proclaimed democratic rights are being called into question by the de facto imposition of languages that have long had a powerful machinery for social and public implantation and consolidation. As a significant example, we point out the non-compliance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, recognized as para-legislation by the Spanish State in 2001 or the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, approved unanimously by the Spanish Congress of Deputies and the Galician, Basque and Catalan Parliaments in 1996.
Received: 07 March 2022
Accepted: 09 May 2022
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Last update: 26/10/2026
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