Documenting Gen ’95er Voices from Catalonia

“This book provides profound insights into communicative ecologies during a time of significant political and cultural change in Catalonia. Longitudinal documentation and compelling analysis of ideologies and languaging patterns among members of The Generation of 1995 constitute key resources for researchers and students interested in contemporary Spain’s linguistic and cultural situation. An essential read for those interested in the dynamics of language revitalization within contexts of (trans)localization and globalization.”

— Carol Klee , Professor, University of Minnesota, USA

“Robert Vann’s rich study of emerging practices and ideologies surrounding generational ways of speaking in Barcelona is a genuine feast, not least because he fashions language documentation into a vivid, multilayered canvas for exploring cultural history and social and political change while never losing sight of the voices of actual people as they create, enact, and circulate globalizing ways of being and social ideas.”

— Anthony C. Woodbury , Professor of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, USA

This book documents linguistic practices and ideologies toward language, identity, and nationalism among 35 members of the first generation in Spain to grow up with democracy and Catalan language normalization. Part I reproduces, translates, and analyzes artifacts (1975-1998) concerning language shift, linguistic nationalism, and Europeanization, illustrating contemporaneous sociologies of language and globalization in Catalonia. Part II transcribes, translates, and ethnographically analyzes oral histories from 2017 Barcelona Metro, detailing ways of speaking (about topics like identity, cultural malaise, politics, and self-determination) involving globalization processes. Part III analyzes variation in ideologies and ideological changes (1995-2017) based on childhood linguistic exposure and adult network ties, unpacking emergent lexical coding indexical of globalizing values and worldviews. This book will be of interest to fields including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociology, communications, political science, Iberian studies, and Catalan studies.

Robert E. Vann is Professor of Spanish linguistics at Western Michigan University, USA. He is founding director of DARDOSIPCAT (the D igital AR chive to DO cument S panish I n the P aïsos CAT alans) and author of Materials for the sociolinguistic description and corpus-based study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a documentation of colloquial Spanish in naturally occurring groups (2009).