A model of relationship between collective identity and language in pluricultural and plurilingual settings: Influence on intercultural relations

The introduction of the Spanish Constitution in 1978, together with the development of the Statutes of Autonomy in the autonomous communities, established the co-official status of the regional language alongside Spanish. In one of these communities, Catalonia, located on the north-west boundary of the Lleida province, is the Aran Valley, where three languages coexist: Occitan-Aranese (regional language), Catalan (Catalonia's co-official language) and Spanish. The Valley of Aran is an ideal setting to study the construction of their collective identity and its relation to the language in an intercultural setting. As a result of immigration and the gradual decrease in the population born in the region, intercultural contact takes place among clearly distinct groups.In this work we present an analysis of the development of the Aranese identity and of the role language plays in this process and the way this process influences intergroup relationships. The study is based on a perspective that considers that the influence of language on the creation of collective identity is not a categorical and universal phenomenon [Fernández, M. A. (2000). Cuando los hablantes se niegan a elegir: monolingüismo e identidad múltiple en la modernidad reflexiva. Estudios de Sociolingüística 1 (1), 47–58; Siguán, M. (1996). L’Europa de les Llengües. Barcelona: Edicions 62]. Rather, we view language as a socially constructed means of expressing community membership. In this way, language plays an important part in the formation of Aranese identity, but the meaning given by the population to the language varies according to whether residents identify themselves or not with the Aranese world. At the same time, language also interferes in the relationship between the different groups living in the territory.