[Linganth] New book for teaching and research (Documenting Gen ’95er Voices from Catalonia: Globalizing Ideologies and Ways of Speaking)

Mon Jun 1 01:59:57 UTC 2026

Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to spread the word about a new book I have published with Palgrave: Documenting Gen ’95er Voices from Catalonia: Globalizing Ideologies and Ways of Speaking. The book, which features a foreword by Dr. Josep Maria Pons Ràfols, Professor Emeritus of la Universitat de Barcelona and the first Vice Chancellor for Institutional Relations and Linguistic Policy in the history of Catalonia's universities, may be of interest to fields including linguistic anthropology, language documentation, sociolinguistics, sociology, communications, political science, Iberian studies, and Catalan studies.
This book documents the globalization of linguistic practices and ideologies (towards language, identity and society) of thirty-five members of the first generation in Catalonia to grow up with democracy and the linguistic normalization of Catalan. Study participants came from naturally occurring social networks based in the Barcelona districts of Sant Andreu and Pedralbes in 1995. Written in English for an international English-speaking audience, the volume presents a longitudinal study of 13 chapters (477 pages) organized into 5 parts (Introduction, Part I, Part II, Part III, Conclusion). The tripartite analysis encompasses the sociology of language, the ethnography of communication, and variationist sociolinguistics.

Part I, which deals with the sociology of language, reproduces, translates, and analyzes artifacts (1975–1998) concerning language shift, linguistic nationalism, and Europeanization, illustrating contemporaneous sociologies of language and globalization in Catalonia. Part I includes 20 linguistic artifacts (in full color and high resolution) dating from the first two decades of the Catalan language normalization project (with extensive English translations in many cases). These artifacts have not circulated anywhere since last century and, with the exception of a single artifact, none has ever been reproduced, much less translated, in any English-language publication that I know of. The four chapters of Part I document how large-scale language planning in the late twentieth century opened the door to the transformation of Catalan society through the dissemination of cultural products infused with positive ideologies towards Catalan language and culture. These chapters demonstrate how the linguistic normalization of Catalan may have influenced members of the Generation of 1995 in Catalonia in terms of (trans)localization and globalization, thus contextualizing the oral history documentation to come in Part II.

Part II, which deals with the ethnography of communication, transcribes, translates, and analyzes oral histories from 2017 Barcelona Metro, detailing ways of speaking (about topics like identity, cultural malaise, politics, and self-determination) involving globalization processes. Part II presents 60 discursive illustrations (in the form of orthographic transcriptions with English translations) of conversational tropes that characterized the speech of the study’s participants. These tropes incorporated dynamic uses of both Spanish and Catalan, illustrating how forms of speech that reproduced contemporary social struggles linguistically indexed the shift from fer país ‘nation building’ in 1995 to fer futur ‘future-building’ in 2017. In this way, Part II documents the discursive construction of sociocultural realities that contributed to “doing being Catalan” just a few months before Catalonia’s declaration of independence proclaimed the ill-fated Republic of Catalonia. The discursive illustrations presented in Part II in fact represent excerpts from longer conversational interviews that are already on deposit in DARDOSIPCAT (https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dardosipcat/), the Digital ARchive to DOcument Spanish In the Països CATalans. Once the recordings and the corresponding transcriptions have been anonymized (a process expected to be completed some time in June 2026), any researcher who wishes to use the MP3 audios and/or the PDF transcripts in their research will be able to download them from the archive free of charge.

Part III, which deals with variationist sociolinguistics, analyzes variation in ideologies and ideological changes (1995–2017) based on childhood linguistic exposure and adult network ties, unpacking emergent lexical coding that indexes globalizing values and worldviews. Part III focuses on modeling (via multiple and hierarchical regression in SPSS) ideologies towards language, identity, and nationalism in 1995 and 2017 as well as longitudinal ideological changes from 1995 to 2017. Qualitative analyses complement quantitative analyses in documenting a striking longitudinal evolution in how research participants perceived and described their concepts of identity and country in 1995 and 2017. This evolution, rooted in local conceptualizations of related cultural categories registered in Part II, directly related to shifts in identitarian ways of speaking in 1995 and 2017. In this way, Part III documents the development of linguistic changes and emergent verbal repertoires indexical of globalized cultural practices in research participants’ contemporary communicative ecologies.

The Springer Nature Link webpage for the book (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-77167-5) provides more comprehensive book information, including the book's TOC, endorsements by Tony Woodbury and Carol Klee, and purchase options (hardcover and eBook). I have also attached a PDF of the official flyer for the book, which contains a code for a 20% discount off of the regular purchase prices.

I hope you find this information helpful. If so, please feel free to circulate widely. Many thanks!

Kind regards and all best,
Rob Vann
Western Michigan University

Robert E. Vann, PhD (he, him, his)

Professor of Spanish Linguistics
Founding Director, DARDOSIPCAT<https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dardosipcat/>

Department of Spanish<https://wmich.edu/spanish>
Western Michigan University
1903 West Michigan Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5338
USA

E-mail: robert.vann at wmich.edu<mailto:robert.vann at wmich.edu>
Office Telephone: 269-387-3042
Department Fax: 269-387-3103

[cid:dc437e53-458e-4a22-a455-9c1d072ccac5]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20260601/cdc93740/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Outlook-2a4lntk2.png
Type: image/png
Size: 40763 bytes
Desc: Outlook-2a4lntk2.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20260601/cdc93740/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Flyer_Documenting Gen ?95er Voices from Catalonia_Vann.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 210543 bytes
Desc: Flyer_Documenting Gen ?95er Voices from Catalonia_Vann.pdf
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20260601/cdc93740/attachment-0001.pdf>