Immigration and language education in Catalonia: between national and social agendas

Most analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects of immigration focus on contexts where a single language is official and widely used. In bilingual Catalonia, newly arriving immigrants find themselves in a situation where the administration seeks to treat Catalan as a fully functional public language while large sectors of the local population still treat it as a minority language not adequate to be spoken to strangers. Popular language practices and discourses often seem to suggest that Catalan serves to assert identity while Spanish serves for practical communicative purposes, thus contradicting the official narratives over language and integration. Thus, what we find is that immigrants are required to adjust to different, competing, often blatantly contradictory linguistic ideologies and practices. In this article, I will seek to describe these contradictions and historical changes together with their implications for the local political economy of intergroup relations. I begin with a brief theoretical grounding of the concepts uses. To this follows a historical account of educational language policies addressed to immigrants since the mid-1980s. A change in official discourses from language as national symbol to language as a means for social cohesion is documented. Language policies are contrasted with ethnographic data on linguistic practices in everyday life in various settings. To conclude, I reflect on the significance of these phenomena for a general understanding of the role of languages in the construction of social difference in contemporary societies

Linguistic 'mudes' and the de-ethnicization of language choice in Catalonia

Catalan speakers have traditionally constructed the Catalan language as the main emblem of their identity even as migration filled the country with substantial numbers of speakers of Castilian. Although Catalan speakers have been bilingual in Catalan and Castilian for generations, sociolinguistic research has shown how speakers' bilingual practices have always been sensitive to keeping a clear sense of the boundaries between the languages and between their communities of speakers. The norms of language choice in everyday life have reflected this as Catalans have tended to use Catalan basically between those considered to 'be' Catalan. This paper shows that this situation is gradually changing due to new conditions of mobility and access to language, that is, because most native speakers of Castilian are now bilingual and speak Catalan often in everyday life. On the basis of a corpus of 25 interviews and 15 group discussions conducted in Catalonia with a sample of young people of different profiles, we show that young people in Catalonia increasingly rely on prima facie linguistic behavior rather than ethnolinguistic classification to decide which language to speak in specific contexts, so that language use loses its earlier function of ethnolinguistic boundary maintenance

Linguistic commodification in tourism

Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2012 in Switzerland, Catalunya and different zones of francophone Canada in sites related to heritage and cultural tourism, we argue that tourism, especially i n multilingual peripheries, is a key site for a sociolinguistic exploration of the political economy of globalization. We link shifts in the role of language in tourism to shifts in phases of capitalism, focusing on the shift from industrial to late capitalism, and in particular on the effects of the commodification of authenticity. We examine the tensions this shift generates in ideologies and practices of language, concerned especially with defining the nature of the tourism product, the public and the management of the tourism process. This results in an as yet unresolved destabilization of hitherto hegemonic discourses linking languages to cultures, identities, nations and States

Reviews

Norman FAIRCLOUGH, Discourse and social chang

Determinantes sociales frente a estilos de vida en la diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 en Andalucía: ¿la dificultad para llegar a fin de mes o la obesidad?

ResumenObjetivoValorar las relaciones de la dificultad para llegar a fin de mes con la obesidad y la diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 en Andalucía.MétodosEstudio transversal basado en los datos de la Encuesta de Salud de Andalucía-2003. Cálculo de prevalencias y odds ratio (OR) de tener diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 según variables de estilo de vida, y de obesidad y diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 según la dificultad autopercibida para llegar a fin de mes.ResultadosLa OR ajustada por edad de tener diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 en personas obesas respecto a las de peso normal fue de 2,52 (intervalo de confianza del 95% [IC95%]:1,63–3,88) y de 2,13 (IC95%:1,28–3,54) en las mujeres y los hombres, respectivamente. El sedentarismo no se asoció con un riesgo significativo de diabetes mellitus de tipo 2 en ninguno de los dos sexos. Para las mujeres con mayor dificultad económica para llegar a fin de mes, respecto a las que tienen más facilidades, la OR de ser obesa, ajustada por edad y ejercicio físico, fue de 3,03 (IC95%:1,96–4,66), y la de diabetes mellitus de tipo 2, ajustada por edad, ejercicio físico e índice de masa corporal, fue de 2,55 (IC95%:1,28–5,10). En los hombres ninguna de las OR fue estadísticamente significativa.ConclusiónEn las mujeres, las dificultades para llegar a fin de mes reflejan un contexto socioeconómico favorecedor de obesidad y de diabetes mellitus de tipo 2. Las desigualdades de clase social y género identificadas pueden contribuir a ampliar el actual marco explicativo de los determinantes de la diabetes mellitus de tipo 2, excesivamente centrado en las conductas individuales. La dificultad autopercibida para llegar a fin de mes podría utilizarse como indicador de pobreza en los estudios de desigualdades en salud.AbstractObjectiveTo assess the relationship between difficulty in making ends meet and obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus in Andalusia.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional survey based on the Andalusian Health Survey-2003. Measures of the prevalence and odds ratios (OR) of type 2 diabetes mellitus were calculated according to lifestyle variables, obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus according to self-perceived difficulties in making ends meet.ResultsThe age-adjusted OR of type 2 diabetes mellitus in obese individuals with respect to those with normal weight was 2.52 (95%CI: 1.63–3.88) in women and 2.13 (95%CI: 1.28–3.54) in men. A sedentary lifestyle was not related to a significant risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in either sex. For women with greater difficulties in making ends meet compared with women with less difficulty, the risk of being obese, adjusted by age and physical exercise, was 3.03 (95%CI: 1.96–4.66), and the risk of having type 2 diabetes mellitus, adjusted by age, physical exercise and body mass index, was 2.55 (95%CI: 1.28–5.10). In men, none of the estimated OR was statistically significant.ConclusionFor women, difficulties in making ends meet reflect a socio-economic context that contributes to a greater risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus. The gender and social inequalities identified could help to broaden the current framework of risks for type 2 diabetes mellitus, which is excessively focused on individual behaviors. Self-perceived difficulties in making ends meet could be useful as a poverty indicator in the study of inequalities in health

Analyse Eines Mehrbenutzer-Mehrfachzugriffskanals Mit Mimo

The increasing number of connected users as well as the availability of new services and mobile applications drive the need for higher data rates. In order to fulfill such expectations different strategies such as spatial multiplexing have been introduced. This thesis is centered on the Multi-User Uplink Channel where different users transmit to a single base station with multiple antennas. The purpose of this thesis is to design the transmitter and the receiver architectures so that the maximum sum rate of a Multi-User Uplink Channel reaches the capacity for single and multi-antenna users. In the literature there is a lack of practical implementations and not many studies exploit the multi-antenna user scenario. It is important to properly characterize the capacity region and define practical implementation schemes on the uplink direction to design the architecture for the Multi-User Downlink Channel also referred as the Broadcast Channel, which is a more complex problem based on the uplink solution. The design of the optimal transmitter is motivated by the analysis of capacity first for the single user scenario with Multi Input Multi Output Peer-to-Peer (MIMO P2P) communica- tions followed by the Multi-User scenario for single and multi-antenna users. At the receiver three types of beamformers are analyzed and compared: Zero Forcing, QR and Minimum Mean Squared Error beamformer. Results for the Bit Error Rate performance and maximum sum rate for the different receivers are provided. The thesis results show that the optimal architecture for the Multi-User Uplink with multi- antenna users that achieves capacity is the combination of the optimal MIMO P2P design, based on the Singular Value Decomposition of the channel matrix and the Water Filling power allocation. For the receiver part the Minimum Mean Squared Error beamformer is proven to achieve capacity. Channel State Information is needed at the transmitter and receiver, therefore a channel estimation algorithm is provided based on orthogonal sequences and is proven to deliver good Bit Error Rate results

New speakers of minority languages: the challenging opportunity - foreword

In this special issue we examine and reflect upon the emergence of “new speakers” in the context of some of Europe’s minority languages. The “new speaker” label is used here to describe individuals with little or no home or community exposure to a minority language but who instead acquire it through immersion or bilingual educational programs, revitalization projects or as adult language learners. The emergence of this profile of speaker draws our attention to the ways in which minority linguistic communities are changing because of globalization and the new profiles of speakers that this new social order is creating. The concept also focuses our attention on some of the fundamental principles which had for a long time been taken for granted in much sociolinguistic research and in particular, language planning associated with linguistic revitalization. The authors of the eight articles included in this volume engage with these issues through their analyses of new speaker communities across a variety of European contexts including the Basque Country, Brittany, Catalonia, Corsica, Galicia, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Occitania

New speakers of minority languages: the challenging opportunity - foreword

In this special issue we examine and reflect upon the emergence of “new speakers” in the context of some of Europe’s minority languages. The “new speaker” label is used here to describe individuals with little or no home or community exposure to a minority language but who instead acquire it through immersion or bilingual educational programs, revitalization projects or as adult language learners. The emergence of this profile of speaker draws our attention to the ways in which minority linguistic communities are changing because of globalization and the new profiles of speakers that this new social order is creating. The concept also focuses our attention on some of the fundamental principles which had for a long time been taken for granted in much sociolinguistic research and in particular, language planning associated with linguistic revitalization. The authors of the eight articles included in this volume engage with these issues through their analyses of new speaker communities across a variety of European contexts including the Basque Country, Brittany, Catalonia, Corsica, Galicia, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Occitania