30.2296, Review: Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Historical Linguistics; Ling & Literature: Pérez Saldanya, Roca Ricart (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2296. Mon Jun 03 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2296, Review: Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Historical Linguistics; Ling & Literature: Pérez Saldanya, Roca Ricart (2018)

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Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2019 12:31:05
From: Pedro Ivorra Ordines [pedro.ivorra at upf.edu]
Subject: Del manuscrit a la paraula digital / From Manuscript to Digital Word

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-4013.html

EDITOR: Manuel  Pérez Saldanya
EDITOR: Rafael  Roca Ricart
TITLE: Del manuscrit a la paraula digital / From Manuscript to Digital Word
SUBTITLE: Estudis de llengua i literatura catalanes / Studies of Catalan language and literature
SERIES TITLE: IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 16
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Pedro Ivorra Ordines

SUMMARY

“From Manuscript to Digital Word. Studies of Catalan language and literature”,
edited by Manuel Pérez and Rafael Roca, offers a multidisciplinary
demonstration of research in Catalan language and literature. It is the
sixteenth volume of the “IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature.
Studies, Editions and Translations” collection by John Benjamins Publishing
Company. The volume is divided into three parts, whose aim is to show
different applications with a diversity of interests and theoretical
approaches by researchers in Catalan. Following a foreword by the editors, the
volume comprises twenty-five papers whose intention is to make a small
contribution to account for the fact that the research in Catalan language and
literature is progressing satisfactorily. In addition, there is a toponym
index and an index of concepts at the end of the book. 

Part one, “Cultura i llengua dels segles XV a XVIII”, starts with a paper by
Conca & Guia, in which the authors propose that – due to translations –
knowledge in languages, cultures, and nations has been transmitted through
history.  In this particular study, the authors compare eight manuscripts,
written by the doctor and translator Jafudà Bonsenyor, and their Spanish
translation of the 15th century. Through a linguistic analysis of a series of
paratextual and textual elements, the authors reach the conclusion that the
translator worked literally with regard to the source text and that the
translation shows some imprecision in terms of paremiology. Next, Soler
tackles the issue of the context within which “Curial e Güelfa” was written.
In this novel, the presence of passages reflecting mistrust between Italian
and Catalan community predominates, and the comparison of historical figures
with fictional characters contextualizes the chivalric romance in the
Neapolitan court of King Alfonso the Magnanimous and, furthermore, dates the
novel at around 1446. 

The following three articles analyze the social uses of Catalan during the
modern age, placing importance on different scenarios. In the first article,
Moret & Sorolla study the use of Catalan in the village of Fraga (a province
of Huesca in Aragon) in the administrative sphere via royal documentation – or
more specifically, regional and parish documentation – during the Early Middle
Ages and its gradual substitution in the different spheres during the modern
age. This substitution was not abrupt. Instead, it took almost two centuries
to evolve and it varied in each rank. In the second article, Zaragoza reflects
on the potential factors that brought religious women writers to use a
specific language during the modern period. The interest on the part of the
nuns and devout women in communicating with other convents in Spain, or the
fact that there existed widely-read Spanish spiritual authors in those days,
led to the profuse use of the Spanish language. However, there is evidence
that Catalan predominated within convents and in the exchange of letters with
family members or other Catalan-speaking religious people. The third article
deals with drama, in which Rossich focuses on the use of dialectal varieties
in Catalan works during the modern period in order to characterize the role of
characters who provide comic relief. This interference of two or more
languages or dialects in a single dramatic text is not common in Valencia,
although in other parts of Catalonia – particularly from the Roussillon
province and the Balearic Islands – it appears frequently. In contrast, in
Catalonia, pronunciation (prosody) is used to reproduce this difference,
despite notable exceptions like “Representació del naixement del divino Verbo
encarnat,” in which shepherds are characterized through the use of an oriental
dialect. 

The following two studies deal with the internal evolution of Catalan by doing
a diachronic radiography of several linguistic elements. One the one hand,
Ribera focuses on the factors that contributed to the decline and the
subsequent disappearance of the pronoun “hic” during the 15th and 16th
centuries. Through this study, Ribera asserts that the fact that there existed
other adverbs like “hi,” “en,” or “ací” resulted in the disappearance of
“hic,” since they shared both the semantic and the functional values in many
cases. On the other hand, Martí explores the process of word formation and
change from lexicographic data extracted from popular literary texts, taking
into consideration the cultural and anthropological environment in order to
understand it better. This purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge
of word history, and aid in the improvement and updating of historical and
etymological dictionaries. 

To conclude Part One of the book, Miralles offers a panoramic view of the
prolific amount of literature generated in the Catalan territories as a
consequence of three episodes of war: the Battle of Lepanto, the War of the
Spanish Succession, and the Reapers’ War. This literature featured heroic
themes and served as the basis of the nation’s strength. Through this study,
Miralles shows and demonstrates how achievements were used as propaganda so
that the population became aware of the past and the future. 

Part Two, “Cent anys de literature catalana: 1859-1959”, starts with four
articles whose aim is to offer a panoramic view of how irony was used from
1900 to 1939. Firstly, Malé tackles the irony in Josep Carner’s works by
analyzing the articles that the Catalan author wrote during his tenure as a
consul in Costa Rica. Through the use of irony, Carner expressed his critical
opinion about the land and the habits of the tropics. In this sense, Carner’s
intention was to escape from a reality in which he could not fit and, since he
was not able to escape physically, he tried to do so via literature and thus,
imagination. Next, Rigobon discusses Espriu’s irony in some of the works that
were published during the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War,
an irony which at times possesses a humorous intentionality and by which
preconceptions are set aside. One type of irony in Espriu’s works is
understood as self-irony. This conception was not very common among ironists
and from which a false modesty is deduced. It is consequently a resource by
which he strives – not always successfully – for credibility. Then, Santamaria
observes the two contrasting meanings of irony used by Dalí. With the first
meaning, Dalí refers to a visual procedure by which one captures the original
essence of the reality with the highest precision and clarity, a style derived
from the Italian writer Alberto Savinio. In contrast, the second irony appears
from 1929 on, when he abandons all notions of the aseptic understanding of
reality, which is when Dalí no longer uses the word “irony” anymore, although
he employs “instinct” or “intuition” with the same meaning that Savinio had
given to “irony”. Finally, Francés undertook the irony that two contemporary
writers, Mercè Rodoreda and Caterina Albert, used as a rhetorical figure, in
which one thing is said with a tone that provokes the understanding that they
really mean the opposite. The fact that they were two female writers who tried
to be part of an eminently male-dominated world indicated that they would find
in irony a resource of humorous distance against the expectations that their
works generated because of the mere fact that they were women. 

The last four works of Part Two deal with several different topics. It starts
with Esteve, whose study focuses on historian Ferran Soldevila’s late 1920s
travel journal “Hores angleses”, in which Soldevila sets out to prove, through
his experiences, that he lived in a place in which he did not belong and his
reflections of this foreign society, which he frequently compared with his
own. This travel journal facilitates the understanding of Catalan literature
before and after the disastrous Spanish Civil War through the construction of
the Catalan identity in contrast with the English society and culture. Next,
Maestre discusses the concept of trauma in the short story “El carro dels
morts” by Joan Santamaria, in the form of a war with personal, social,
historical and cultural consequences. With this short story, Maestre
demonstrates the existence of a patriotic discourse that sees conflict as an
opportunity for Catalonia’s emancipation through a critical position,
distancing itself from the romantic and heroic vision of works from the same
period. Then, Gallén explains the problematic influences of the Franco regime
on original and translated Catalan dramatic literature from the publishing and
theatrical viewpoints.  In fact, Catalan authors were forced to write in
Spanish during the first years of the dictatorship, but this trend changed
from the 1960s with a progressive use of Catalan in their works, which
affected the position assumed by playwrights. Consequently, during the end of
the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century a new group of
playwrights created works in both languages indistinctively.  In the last
article of this second thematic section, Rigobon presents a new study about
the textual history of “Incerta glòria” (available in English as “Uncertain
Glory”) by Joan Sales, which was censured by the Franco regime. Two factors
must be taken into account when approaching the novel: it was published during
the Franco regime, and Sales was an editor. Therefore, it is also critical to
take self-censorship into account when analyzing the author’s literary
renovation because, as an editor, he also rectifies potential mistakes and
improves its style. Rigobon ends with some outlines of the Italian
translation, whose publication is imminent. 

Part Three, “Multilingüisme i multiculturalitat”, starts with an article by
Rafel, in which the author considers that most of the dictionaries are
elaborated without taking into consideration the evolution and the advances of
scientific knowledge, since linguists seem not to show any interest in the
lexicography and, furthermore, lexicographers, due to publishing house issues,
fail to put their knowledge into practice. In order to support his thesis,
Rafel takes a look at French, Spanish, and Catalan lexicography. These are
languages in which the implementation of theoretical linguistic knowledge is
very slowly applied to the practical elaboration of dictionaries. Many
different kinds of obstacles are encountered, from following a long-honored
tradition which hinders innovation, to publishing houses setting financial
rather than scientific priorities. Next, Valriu examines Catalan legends for
the similarities that they share with the various stories of the Passion in
the Gospels. Bearing in mind that legends belong to oral literature, the most
common scenes are those which are considered violent and consequently, have a
greater impact on the audience. In short, all these stories reproduced the
beliefs, the way of understanding the world during an epoch that lacked
scientific explanations. Then, Perea describes the computerization process of
the mapping data that was compiled in 65 notebooks by Alcover during his
philological travels from 1900 to 1928. The dialectologist from Manacor
compiled dialectal information from different areas – phonetics, morphology,
lexis, syntax, and folklore – in 1,016 Catalan-speaking geographical points,
taking into consideration the six geographical regions that he established.
Computerizing all this information offers a visual presentation of diverse
dialectal data by means of maps to view its distribution in the different
territories and, furthermore, observe its evolution through the years. 

The following two articles encompass the impact that new technologies have had
on language evolution and the way we communicate. Firstly, Nogué considers the
influence of digital communication on linguistic uses. On the one hand,
private uses of language are analyzed: factors such as the limitation of the
number of characters and keyboard characteristics favor an informal and
very-little-elaborated language in which multimodal evidence – emoticons – may
be found in order to provide sentences with the expressiveness that cannot be
obtained in a written text. On the other hand, in public uses – social
networks like Facebook or Twitter – word processors are used to correct many
mistakes, although some may be overlooked. Notwithstanding, the publication of
the new grammar by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans is a first step towards the
adaptation of the codified language of the new era. Secondly, Lorente updates
Catalan verbal neologistic data from 2010 to 2014 with the intention to detect
trends in the process of neologism formation. These linguistic trends are
usually biased by social changes that take place in a specific time and place.
Therefore, as in previous periods, prefixation, semantic change, and loans are
the most productive processes in word formation. 

The last four contributions to Part Three deal with Catalan and its
relationship with the languages of its surroundings, from linguistic uses of a
certain community, to the phenomenon of intergenerational language
transmission and the recreation of diglossia in a fictional story. Bernat &
Torrens’ study examines linguistic use within the Italo-Catalan and the
Franco-Catalan families. By means of both individual and group interviews,
this study aims to analyze the linguistic behavior of two foreign communities
within a familiar framework in which either of the parents speaks French or
Italian as their mother tongue. Thus, Spanish is the predominant language
between the couples, although, in intergenerational relationships, a variety
of languages is spoken, with a greater predominance of one of the parents’
mother tongue. In the next study, Saffroy intends to characterize linguistic
habits of the speakers residing in the Baix Ebre province, a province in
contact with Spanish, Catalan and Valencian due to the geographical location.
Despite the phenomenon of diglossia between Spanish and Catalan, and through
interviews in three different towns, Saffroy confirms that the subjects show a
preference for Catalan not only within the home environment and as a general
means of communication, but also as a linguistic identity and an element
distinguishing the speech variety from that of the surrounding territories.
Then, Lahosa studies intergenerational language transmission in immigrants in
Tavernes de la Valldigna, a small town in the Valencia region. This
transmission occurs from the children to the parents within the home
environment. Those interviewed express three characteristics: the immigrants’
L1 is not Valencian, and they must have relatives enrolled in schools where
Valencian is taught. Therefore, their motivation to learn Valencian is
determined by their willingness to integrate into the community and find a
job. Finally, albeit from a fictional point of view in this case, Gatell
examines the linguistic attitudes of the immigrants in Maria Barbal’s novel
“Carrer Bolívia”, and how these attitudes serve to describe the characters.
This characterization allows for reflection on the characters’ attitudes with
regard to  immigration, the establishment in another country, and the
coexistence with a language and a culture which are not one’s own. 

EVALUATION

“From Manuscript to Digital Word. Studies of Catalan language and literature”
is a volume which encompasses a very diverse range of Catalan language and
literature themes, as indicated by the title. This book will be of interest to
those who are curious about research in Catalan language and culture – not
only for those whose mother tongue is Catalan, but also those with a passive
knowledge thereof. The volume starts with a foreword by the editors, in
Catalan and in English, in which they express their hope that this collection
of studies “will prove to make a solid contribution to the unstoppable
progress that Catalan has been making for decades” (p. 8). Their goal has been
achieved not only because of the wide range of approaches that have been
carried out in the study of Catalan language and culture, but also due to the
fact that those who have contributed hail from different territories where
Catalan is spoken, as well as from outside the region. This justifies the
tremendous importance and increasing interest by researchers from other
countries like Italy or France. In addition, there is a toponym index and an
index of concepts which facilitates and improves the search of proper names
and theoretical concepts within the volume. 

The quality of the volume is in accordance with the high standards that one
may expect of a publishing house like John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Nevertheless, there are some typographical errors throughout the
contributions, a few incoherencies in some of the bibliographical sections,
and some inconsistencies with the newly-published Catalan orthography in terms
of the diacritic accentuation. These are minor errors, which shall be
rectified in the event that new editions are published. Despite all of these
slight inconsistencies, the reading of the different contributions remains
fluid.  

There is a small issue with the proposed division into three parts, given that
some of the contributions do not quite fit with regard to the topic. This is
the case with the contributions of Miralles in Part One; the contributions by
Esteve, Santamaria, Gallén and Rigobon in Part Two, and the contributions by
Rafel and Valriu in Part Three. However, this fact only serves to reassert the
diverse variety and the different approaches that can be carried out in
Catalan language and literature. 

A remarkable feature is the detailed bibliography contained within each
contribution, which highlights the notable work that researchers in Catalan
language and culture have accomplished thus far. Moreover, the possibility of
following research pathways from new viewpoints, as some contributions mention
– such as the ones by Moret & Sorolla or Esteve – and the undertaking of
little known topics – for instance, the ones by Conca & Guia or Martí –
reflect the dynamism and the curiosity by the researchers in Catalan language
and culture.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pedro Ivorra Ordines is a PhD candidate in Translation and Language Sciences
at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He holds a degree in Translation
and Interpreting (2016) from the Universitat d’Alacant and a master’s degree
in Translation Studies (2017) from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research
interests include phraseology, fictional orality, contrastive linguistics and
construction grammar. His current work is on comparative structures in ''La
plaça del Diamant'' by Mercè Rodoreda, partly funded by the Mercè Rodoreda
foundation.





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