The corpus/status dialectics in the history of the Catalan language. Towards a comprehensive explanation of linguistic changes

Abstract

In this paper, we advocate overcoming the dichotomies that fragment the study of language facts (synchrony vs. diachrony, linguistics vs. sociolinguistics, internal history vs. external history), in favor of an approach that integrates the maximum number of possible explanatory factors. A suitable field for this confluence is the analysis of ongoing language changes, which are those that take place in real time in front of the eyes of the researcher, who can thus benefit from the proximity to the object of study and from the accessibility to the multiple factors that condition its evolution, provided that he is capable of not getting overly involved. The analysis of the transformations observed in Northwestern Catalan since the resumption of the standardization process in Catalonia shows how we can increase the degree of understanding of linguistic changes if we are attentive to the interactions that occur between the socially established uses, the forms subjected to the constraints of the system, and the perceptions that end up forming the linguistic awareness of speakers understood as individuals and as a social body.