Bridging language diversity: a place for Catalan

Multilingualism is one of Europe's defining features and core values. However, managing multilingualism and linguistic diversity has always been a challenging task. Often, multilingualism is mistakenly considered to generate confusion in societies or to hinder intercomprehension, thus neglecting the cultural richness it represents and the role it plays in the maintenance of cultural heritage, in social cohesion, and in the articulation of common projects such as CIVIS. Today, the loss of languages is a fact throughout Europe, a situation that particularly affects heritage languages which, like Catalan, are not the official language of a nation-state. In part, this is so because, regardless of their size - Catalan, for instance, has around 10 million speakers - these languages lack any presence in the formal spheres of Europe. Although significant progress has been made, for example, with the official status of Irish Gaelic in the European Parliament, there is still a long way for Europe to move towards full recognition and acceptance of its multilingualism. 

Moreover, whereas the processes of internationalisation of higher education create an invaluable opportunity to become acquainted with Europe's linguistic diversity, the growing presence of English as the lingua franca of academia has an impact on minoritized languages which become more and more relegated to the family sphere. However, EU’s policies for the exchange of students and researchers - initiatives such as the Erasmus program or CIVIS itself - are filling this gap by aiming to foster deep cultural knowledge and to develop a more integrative multilingualism.

In this sense, this BIP relies on the methodological and theoretical tools provided by sociolinguistics and applied linguistics in order to better understand the linguistic reality of European higher education and further address the needs of a global multilingual university environment. Its main goal is to question the taken-for-granted idea that multilingualism hinders communication while showing how policies and practices that address multilingualism effectively can be a bridge towards the promotion of language diversity. As part of this objective, this BIP aims to increase participants' multilingual competences by helping them communicate fruitfully in multilingual contexts. Several strategies will be mobilised in order to exploit students’ entire linguistic repertoires. Besides resorting to a common language, participants will learn to draw on their receptive competence in multiple languages to negotiate meaning in interaction thus generating new linguistic knowledge. For this, participants will become familiarised with the use of intercomprehension strategies. Intercomprehension is a communicative practice in which each speaker uses their own language in order to carry out a conversation. 

This project focuses on learning Catalan through intercomprehension strategies which will accommodate the different languages spoken by the participants. Choosing it as the object of study is not accidental. Firstly, it is a medium-sized European language, which offers possibilities of intercomprehension with other Romance languages spoken and studied in many universities within CIVIS. Secondly, it enjoys a certain degree of official recognition in many of the territories where it is spoken - it is official in Andorra and in a number of regions in Spain. Thirdly, it enjoys an educational and scientific tradition, studied in more than 150 universities around the world, out of which 97 are in Europe. It also counts with political and economic support which translates, for instance, in the creation and support of cultural institutions, such as the Ramon Llull Institute, which manages that network of universities where Catalan is taught: https://www.llull.cat/english/aprendre_catala/mapa_llengua.cfm 

The course is organised in two parts. The first one will be delivered virtually and it will offer monographic theoretical sessions on different aspects related to sociolinguistics, language policies, and the management of multilingualism, always with a European focus and with an emphasis on the higher education system. Each session’s lecturer will be a well-recognised specialist in the field, with professors both from CIVIS and from other higher education institutions. Students will have to prepare for these sessions by reading the assigned texts in advance in order to fully contribute to the subsequent discussion spaces that will be created during and after class time.

The second part consists of in-person teaching and focuses mainly on linguistic practices that facilitate intercomprehension, aiming for participants to become more multilingual. After a theoretical session about the value of and strategies for intercomprehension, there will be two practical workshops, which will be further divided into two parts. For the first one students will have to apply the newly gained contents  in an immersion - and Catalan-speaking - context. To this end, some sessions will be held in Barcelona - with the collaboration and co-financing of Institut Ramon Llull (see below) - where students will interview language policy makers and carry out conversations with Catalan speakers both in a controlled environment (the classroom) and in free interactions with people in the city. The second part will also be practical, consisting of linguistic intercomprehension workshops and based on horizontal learning (collectively among the participants), where students will learn from one another within their multilingual group. This will mobilise participants’ acquired knowledge of Catalan, as well as of other languages of their repertoires. In all cases, teachers will provide them with strategies and bridging tools to understand all languages involved in the dialogues through the use of their linguistic competence.

Besides offering the CIVIS community valuable multilingual strategies to navigate today’s global world, this BIP will also foster positive attitudes towards diversity through the acquisition of intercomprehension skills and through the increased knowledge of multilingualism and of a language with a significant social, cultural, political and economic presence in Europe.

Main topics addressed

• Multilingualism management
• Language, identity and higher education
• Linguistic intercomprehension
• Role of English in today's Europe

Learning outcomes

Two main learning outcomes are expected:

• First, students will acquire an initial or intermediate level of Catalan (A2/B1 of the CEFRL), together with competences for multilingual communication. Through intercomprehension practices, they will acquire several linguistic tools that will mobilise their whole repertoire. This will be achieved through several strategies, namely the experimentation with alternative forms of expression in different languages and with linguistic and paralinguistic resources (mimicry, gestures, facial expressions, etc.), and finding out the rules of equivalence and derivation.
• Second, they will gain theoretical knowledge about multilingualism in Europe and about linguistic policies in higher education. Students will be provided with frameworks and tools to understand and apply linguistic policies. Finally, they will have to put into play the acquired knowledge and skills. On the one hand, they will submit a report reflecting on their experience interviewing Catalan policy makers. On the other, participants will practice with oral and written assignments that will require them to apply intercomprehension strategies in communication with speakers of Catalan and other European languages spoken by participants.