Anti-Catalanism, Moral Panics and the Catalan Language: The Case of Ciudadanos de segunda

Increasingly fervent expressions of anti-Catalanism by Spanish institutions and individuals are one of the reasons behind the Catalans' increasing support for independence. Negative categorisations of the Catalans partly revolve around the use of Catalan as the main medium of instruction in edu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Iberian and Latin American research Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 184 - 198
Main Author Crameri, Kathryn
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 04.05.2015
Subjects
Catalan language
Catalonia
documentary ethics
linguistic immersion
moral panics
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Summary:Increasingly fervent expressions of anti-Catalanism by Spanish institutions and individuals are one of the reasons behind the Catalans' increasing support for independence. Negative categorisations of the Catalans partly revolve around the use of Catalan as the main medium of instruction in education, portrayed as an aggressive attempt to rid the region of the Spanish language. This specific form of anti-Catalanism is examined through the television documentary Ciudadanos de segunda, which constructs an unambiguous condemnation of Catalan language policies out of seemingly balanced interview material. The film is analysed in the light of theories of moral panic as applied to language issues by Sally Johnson (1999) and others. The analysis reveals that the documentary bears the hallmarks of an attempt to create a moral panic, which, although not fully successful, did contribute to an on-going campaign of sensitization waged by the right-wing Spanish media to promote negative images of Catalonia to other Spaniards.
ISSN:1326-0219
2151-9668
DOI:10.1080/13260219.2015.1092491