A significant movement for Catalan independence has been building since 2010 and in 2015 is bringing Catalonia to a political showdown with the Spanish state. The Catalan language has long been cast as a key sign of identity and a rallying point for Catalan nationalism. This classic anthropological study, originally published in 1989 and now available for the first time in paperback, provides essential background for understanding Catalan national identity and its relationship to the distinctive Catalan language. Author Kathryn A. Woolard analyzes language and identity politics at a significant turning point in the modern history of Catalonia: 1979-80, when political autonomy was re-established after the end of the Franco dictatorship. This book examines the formal language politics of parties and policymaking as well as the interpersonal politics of individuals negotiating their social identities through choices between the Catalan and Spanish languages. This dual approach uncovers the relationship between the public and personal meanings of the languages that continue to resonate with Catalan national aspirations in the current political movement. Double Talk confronts enduring questions about bilingual life that arise not only in Spain, but also in settings worldwide.

A surging movement for Catalan political independence from Spain has brought renewed urgency to questions about what it means, personally and politically, to speak or not to speak Catalan and to claim Catalan identity. This book develops a framework for analyzing ideologies of linguistic authority and uses it to illuminate the politics of language in Catalonia, where Catalan jostles with Castilian for legitimacy. Kathryn Woolard's longitudinal research across decades of political autonomy contextualizes this ethnographic study of the social meaning of Catalan in the 21st century. Part I lays out the ideologies of linguistic authenticity, anonymity, and naturalism that underpin linguistic authority in the modern western world, and gives an overview of a shift in the ideological grounding of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Part II examines discourses in the media surrounding three public linguistic controversies: an immigrant president's linguistic competence, a municipal festival, and an international book fair. Part III explores individuals' linguistic practices and views, drawing on classroom ethnographies and interviews with two generations of young people from the same high school. Woolard argues that there is an ongoing shift at both public and personal levels away from the ethnolinguistic authenticity that powered relations in the early transition to political autonomy, and toward new discourses of anonymity, rooted cosmopolitanism, and authenticity understood as a project rather than a matter of origins and essence.

"Language ideologies" are cultural representations, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human beings in a social world. Mediating between social structures and forms of talk, such ideologies are not only about language. Rather, they link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and epistemology. Through such linkages, language ideologies underpin not only linguistic form and use, but also significant social institutions and fundamental nottions of person and community.
The essays in this new volume examine definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of societies around the world. Contributors focus on how such defining activity organizes language use as well as institutions such as religious ritual, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling, and law. Beginning with an introductory survey of language ideology as a field of inquiry, the volume is organized in three parts. Part I, "Scope and Force of Dominant Conceptions of Language," focuse on the propensity of cultural models of language developed in one social domain to affect linguistic and social behavior across domains. Part II, "Language Ideology in Institutions of Power," continues the examination of the force of specific language beliefs, but narrows the scope to the central role that language ideologies play in the functioning of particular institutions of power such as schooling, the law, or mass media. Part III, "Multiplicity and Contention among Ideologies," emphasizes the existence of variability, contradiction, and struggles among ideologies within any given society. This will be the first collection of work to appear in this rapidly growing field, which bridges linguistic and social theory. It will greatly interest linguistic anthropologists, social and cultural anthropologists, sociolinguists, historians, cultural studies, communications, and folklore scholars.

"Language ideologies" refers to the representation, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human beings in a social world. This collection of essays examines definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of settings, focusing on how such defining activity organizes individuals, institutions, and the relationships between them. The contributors look at language and its role in such fundamental social institutions as religious ritual, child socialization, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling and the law, and in doing so, link language to larger issues of identity, aesthetics, morality, and epistemology. This will be the first collection of work in this rapidly growing field.