Sobre política lingüística municipal

Resum

Nowadays, everybody speaks about linguistic policy and confers all kind of meanings to this expression. Now, Catalan sociolinguistics keeps this expression for naming the political activity —institutional or not— about the use of a language/languages. However it is difficult to find proposals of linguistic policy signed or assumed by politicians. It is necessary to distinguish between linguistic policy and linguistic planification. Linguistic policy is any activity addressed to affect the sociolinguistic situation (knowledge of a language, uses, functions, ideologies, etc.) and it is positive when its aim is to improve —in quality or in quantity— the situation of a particular linguistic community. By linguistic planification we mean the organized and designed activity that intends to achieve certain aims in linguistic politics issues which have been previously decided. If there is no social demand, no civic pressure, linguistic standardization can not work. It is necessary to be precise about the importance of institutional authorities in the extension of the use of a language and, furthermore, if we take into account the fact that the basic function of the institutions is to maintain social stability, including sociolinguistic stability. Sociolinguistic activity must be composed of a civic linguistic policy and institutional linguistic policy. The municipal sphere is the most appropriate one to carry out a specific and positive linguistic politics because its relationship with the citizen is more direct than that of other institutions.