Abstract

This article analyses the sociolinguistics elaborated in the Catalan speaking countries, based on a textual corpus. First, different topics are examined; second, the most neglected aspects are indicated (with a theoretical reflection on the paradigm concept and a deep evaluation of Aracil’s work); third, the analysed common loci are compared and their relevance discussed. Finally, the representations of the studied authors are analysed from two different points of view: from a theoretical model based on the Catastrophe Theory and from the sociological paradigm perspective.

Abstract

The results of an analysis on literature about microsociolinguistics, where you can also see a lack of theoretical congruence, are shown in this paper. The authors classify the works in three groups, depending on the community with which they deal: communities where the main spoken language is Catalan, communities where it is Spanish or communities where Catalan became extinct. From the first two groups, they review phonological and morphological studies. From the third, they suggest the study of language vestiges in communities where Catalan became extinct. Finally, they claim that macro and microsocionlinguistics should be unified and remark the interest of language variation studies for the language planning.