Urbanisierung und Sprachwandel am Rande Barcelonas: "Els antics" de Can Porta

Abstract

The article studies parallels and interrelationships between urban processes and the evolution of language, starting from the idea of ​​the “contemporaneity of the non-contemporary” (Bloch). In a situation such as that of Barcelona, where two languages ​​with different political and social status compete, the processes of urbanization and modernization will be precisely those that favor the entry and diffusion of the dominant language: "more modern", "more urban" than the local language, at least in the perception of "normal" speakers, with little access to the literary language. These processes affect both the linguistic structure, at the lexical level (formation of neologisms) and the semantic level (specialization / extension of meanings), as well as, and above all, the forms of communication, framework and basis of the aforementioned structural changes. The relations between communicative patterns, linguistic forms and urban processes are demonstrated through the detailed study of three "representatives" of a generation with roots and socialization still markedly rural, but experiencing, to varying degrees, the impact of environmental urbanization. The polarization / transition between rural experiences and growing urban impact is studied based on the biographical data of the people observed, at the following levels:

— the forms of reference to the social context (neighborhood) used in the conversation (concepts that express the rural vs. urban world, the “old” vs. “the new”, and their respective social meaning);

— the communication templates and the corresponding degree of “bilingualism”;

— the “interferences” between native language (L1) and dominant language (L2), in relation to aspects of urbanization / modernization;

— and, finally, the internal mechanisms and functions of language, “spontaneous” (internal) processes of linguistic innovation / evolution, confronted with the influence of contact with a related dominant language.

In all three examined cases, with native speakers aged between 56 and 88 years, there is a growing presence of Castilian elements representing aspects of innovation, but integrated within the framework of an essentially Catalan repertoire and showing a clear preference for that language. Generally, the linguistic elements of Spanish origin incorporated into, or adapted to, Catalan turn out to be functional, with pragmatic, semantic or communicative criteria of use, or have the effect of introducing simpler and / or clearer grammatical schemes (i.e. lead to reduction of complexity or ambiguity), coinciding in this with the tendencies of internal “regularization” in the spoken colloquial language.