Gafaranga, Joseph

Hall-Lew, Lauren

Joseph, John E.

McNulty, Stephen Joseph

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Scottish Graduate School of Social Science

2025-02-27T15:03:11Z

2025-02-27T15:03:11Z

2025-02-27

In recent years, the field of Language Policy and Planning has increasingly shifted focus away from the decision-making processes of traditional, powerful organisations and institutions and towards the actions of “ordinary” individuals, and the various means by which they exercise their agency within the language policy process. Much has been written about the role of individuals and groups at the grassroots level of society reacting to, or influencing, the implementation of higher order policies (e.g. Johnson and Freeman, 2010, Johnson and Johnson, 2014), or creating policies for their immediate local context (e.g. Baldauf, 2006, Liddicoat and Baldauf, 2008, Drackley, 2019) – including studies of language advocacy and activism (e.g. Sallabank, 2005, Hatoss, 2006, 2019, De Korne, 2021). Comparatively less, however, has been written about the agency of individuals over their own linguistic repertoire – a concept referred to by Spolsky (2019b, 2021) as self-management – and its deployment as an “agentive response” (Vennela and Kandharaja, 2021) in resistance to higher order language management. Moreover, Spolsky (2021)’s assertion that such individual self-transformative processes could be collectivised to greater net effect is yet to be explored. This thesis builds on Spolsky’s assertions by introducing the concept of Collective Language Self-Management: proposed as a mechanism by which individuals lacking the power and authority of traditional language policymakers can nevertheless engage in language policy processes and activities, and tackle more wide-ranging issues, most commonly associated with the macro-level. It draws on a case study of two focal Catalan-language groups on Facebook, who share a belief in the decline and decay of the (authentic) Catalan language as a result of Castilianisation, and who are united in a concerted effort to collectively raise awareness of perceived Castilian interference and to eliminate it from the speech of each member. The movitations for doing so stem from a belief in the mismanagement (and even disdain) of the language and culture by French, Spanish and Catalan authorities, and a general misuse by contemporary Catalan speakers: all of which engender a need for “corrective” action. Utilising a combination of netnographic methods, and an analytical framework incorporating social movement framing theory, critical discourse analysis and positioning theory, this study examines the activities carried out by group members to redefine ideological and linguistic standards, to be adopted by each member. Through these activities, these groups are able to bypass the need to appeal to the authority of official language managers – such as national and local governments – and, by growing their membership base, can aim to achieve wider language change from the centre out, one individual at a time. This study contributes to the growing literature base on agency in language policy and planning, and acts as a response to the call for consideration of both structural and agentive forces (Johnson and Ricento, 2013) through its analysis of the interface between collective action and individual linguistic choices. It also contributes to Pérez-Milans and Tollefson (2018: 735)’s request for further study of the affordances of new and social media: specifically their ability to allow “ordinary” people to “serve as policy practitioners and as policy analysts, in some cases replacing official actors”. Finally, the thesis offers an expansion of one of Spolsky’s latter theories relating to the collectivisation of self-management (Spolsky, 2021), while also challenging his assertion that language advocates lack the power and authority to influence language change directly (ibid., 2019b).

https://hdl.handle.net/1842/43157

http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/5698

en

The University of Edinburgh

MCNULTY, S. J. 2015. La Charte de la langue française and Loi Toubon: A franco- québécois comparison of language policies intended to protect the French language, and an evaluation of their effects. Master of Arts (Hons.) dissertation, University of Glasgow

MCNULTY, S. J. 2018. Linguicide or Linguistic Suicide?: A Case Study of Indigenous Minority Languages in France. University of Edinburgh

MCNULTY, S. J. 2023. Plus ça change…?: Linguicide, Linguistic Suicide and Image Planning for the French langues régionales. In: FELIU, F. (ed.) Desired Language: Languages as objects of national ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 153-169

language policy

language management

Catalan

self-management

social media

Collective language self-management: agentive responses to the minoritisation of Catalan on Facebook

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy