A comparative study of the evolution of prestige formations and of speakers' attitudes in Occitan and Catalan
This thesis explores the nature and the mechanism of change of language prestige and language attitudes in two neighbouring languages: Occitan and Catalan. These two Romance minority languages show great similarities in their early external history and striking differences in their more recent past. The concepts of language attitudes and prestige call for a multidisciplinary approach which incorporates aspects from social psychology, ethnography, historical sociolinguistics and sociology to enable the author to depict in a comprehensive manner the interaction between the formation of the perception of language prestige and the declaration of language attitudes.An important rationale in this thesis is the search for an understanding of the patterns of change in prestige descriptions. Prestige and attitudes are generally interpreted as static entities but a diachronic overview of the values attached to Catalan and Occitan displays signs of disparity and evolution which are scrutinised through the analysis of selected Occitan and Catalan grammars from different periods. The data collected through semi-structured interviews with Occitan and Catalan speakers and processed with the method of Critical Discourse Analysis
Joubert, Aurelie
prestige ; attitudes ; Occitan ; Catalan ; Sociolinguistics
A comparative study of the evolution of prestige formations and of speakers' attitudes in Occitan and Catalan. This thesis explores the nature and the mechanism of change of language prestige and language attitudes in two neighbouring languages: Occitan and Catalan. These two Romance minority languages show great similarities in their early external history and striking differences in their more recent past. The concepts of language attitudes and prestige call for a multidisciplinary approach which incorporates aspects from social psychology, ethnography, historical sociolinguistics and sociology to enable the author to depict in a comprehensive manner the interaction between the formation of the perception of language prestige and the declaration of language attitudes.An important rationale in this thesis is the search for an understanding of the patterns of change in prestige descriptions. Prestige and attitudes are generally interpreted as static entities but a diachronic overview of the values attached to Catalan and Occitan displays signs of disparity and evolution which are scrutinised through the analysis of selected Occitan and Catalan grammars from different periods. The data collected through semi-structured interviews with Occitan and Catalan speakers and processed with the method of Critical Discourse Analysis
comparative_study evolution prestige formation speaker attitude catalan explore_nature mechanism change language prestige language_attitude neighbouring language catalan romance minority_languages show great similarity early external history striking difference recent_past concept language_attitude prestige call multidisciplinary incorporates aspects_social psychology ethnography historical sociolinguistics sociology enable author depict comprehensive manner interaction formation perception language prestige declaration language important rationale search pattern change prestige description prestige attitude generally interpret static entity diachronic overview value attach catalan display sign disparity evolution scrutinise analysis_select catalan different_period data_collect semi_structured_interview catalan speaker process method critical_discourse_analysis