Quebec and Catalonia
by Miquel Reniu i Tresserras, president of the Comissió de Lectorats and former chief executive officer of the Catalan linguistic policy.
The commemoration of the 25e birthday of the Charter of the French language (bill 101) is a good occasion to highlight the tight fabric of ideas, proposals, complicities and mutual experiences in the field of linguistic policies which our two countries have shared during this period.
The Charter of the French language establishes the principles which are at the foundation of the French language policy in Quebec, the most important of them undoubtedly being that of the concept of the French language as a foundation of the Quebec society, the most explicit element of its national and cultural identity. In the same way, Llei de Política Lingüística of Catalonia (bill 1/1998) defines the Catalan language as the fundamental component of the shaping and the national personality of Catalonia and as the basic instrument for the communication, the integration and the social cohesion of all its citizens, independently of their geographical origin. In both cases, all this is affirmed with a clear will of permanence and projection in the future.
Our two countries, Quebec and Catalonia, have in common the fact of considering their respective languages, French in Quebec and the Catalan in Catalonia, as fundamental traits of their national realities in a context which is characterized by economic and cultural internationalization, which they face with determination and in a positive spirit, while being in contact with two of the languages with the greatest international diffusion, Spanish and English, i.e. while being subjected to an extraordinarily strong pressure in the fields of new technologies of the communication and information, the culture and the total market, as many sectors which favour the most diffused languages. This pressure, put aside what is already ensured by the legislative framework of these languages, obliges the citizens to a personal bilingualism which often drifts towards a bilingualism of greater amplitude, introducing a kind an uncertainty into the process of standardization and hegemony of their own languages, uncertainty which obliges them to regularly revise their policies and their laws.
The Charter of the French language and the language policy of Québec constituted a reference model for Catalonia. When Catalonia, in 1980, following the re-establishment of its self-government institutions, undertook its first actions to recover control over the Catalonian language and the parliamentary process needed to elaborate the Llei de Normalització Lingüística in 1983, it paid close attention to the Québec linguistic model, both at the legislative and the political levels. On the one hand, because this linguistic model clarified, to the eyes of the Catalan legislators and politicians, a clear will to integrate, without any exception, their own language in all the fields of the social life where it would be specifically recognized as the language of preference, in a linguistic model of cohabitation. Also because the Quebec linguistic model around French, which has a linguistic status comparable to that of Catalan, put the stress, among its actions, on aspects also significant for the Catalan linguistic policy: linguistic planning, the socio-economic sector, culture, education, new technologies and means of communication. In addition, if our statutory political competences were and remain more reduced than those of Quebec, they nevertheless are much broader than those which defend other national languages in Europe (Welsh, Breton and Sardinian) and are, in an obvious way, constitutionally different from those which protect various languages, as in Belgium and Switzerland, where is being applied a strictly territorial system of linguistic pluralism which we could not set up, or the competences that the State of Israel has used for the recovery of Hebrew. For all these reasons, was established and continues to develop a permanent flow of communication, mutual influences, agreements and open and cordial collaboration between the people and the organizations responsible for the linguistic policy of Catalonia and Quebec, as well as a wave of sympathy and recognition between the citizens of the two nations.
The collaboration between the Direcció General de Política Lingüística de la Generalitat de Catalunya and Québec's Office de la langue française has been permanent and important. We have shared numerous strategies, which, despite their differences and their necessary adaptation to contextual circumstances, had numerous points in common. It is important for us to emphasize the invaluable collaboration which we had from the beginning with Jean-Claude Corbeil, who always brought us his invaluable councils when it was necessary for us to specify the goals of our linguistic policy and to choose the most relevant actions and most convenient ones to undertake. That appeared particularly important when in 1995, we worked out and set up the general Plan of the linguistic policy of Catalonia. The influence of the Québécois linguistic policy is detectable in many aspects of the Catalan linguistic policy: progressive establishment of the linguistic system of immersion in teaching, for example, or the establishment of a public utility of linguistic consultations and the establishment of data bases on the terminology, sociolinguistic research, the creation of translation departments in the trade-union sector and the company, the various strategies of external indication, or all this which refers to the policies of development of the own language like main goal for its social use. In other cases, the actions of the Catalan linguistic policy influenced the linguistic policy of Quebec with regard to, inter alia, the establishment of an interdepartmental committee to coordinate the action of the Administration as regards linguistic use, which is based indeed on the technical Network of linguistic standardization of Catalonia and the linguistic Consortium of standardization. Certain linguistic promotion campaigns undertaken in Catalonia were also used as reference for the Québécois linguistic policy.
The influence of the Charter of the French language of Québec on the Llei de Normalització Lingüística (Law 7/1983), and the Catalonian regulation being applied, is visible notably through the echo which articles 2 to 6 of the Charter of the French language, which pertain to the fundamental linguistic rights, have found as part of article 2 of the Catalonian legislation of 1983. One also finds this type of influence of the measures taken in favour of French in the socio-economic sectors and teaching on the Catalan legislation, of 1983 until our days. Concretely, this influence of the Charter of the French language is perceived in Estatut del Consumidor (Law 3/1993) which regulates the linguistic rights of the consumer with regard to the use of the Catalan for the information and the provision of services, in the Decree 317/1994, by which are established the standards on the classification of the establishments of restoration with regard to posting, publicity and the menus, or in many aspects of Llei de Política Lingüística (Law 1/1998), with regard to the socio-economic activity (posting, communication and information with the citizens) and what touches teaching (delivery of diplomas nonuniversity In other sectors, like the whole linguistic standardization of the companies, data processing or the doubling and the subtitling of films, even if, we, Catalans pursued with admiration the Québécois linguistic policy, we also noted impossibility of applying, for the moment, a similar policy in Catalonia.
In order to more tighten the relations between Catalonia and Quebec, the Catalan and Québécois governments subscribed a cooperation agreement on 10 July 1996, itself taken again by another agreement which envisages a specific programme of co-operation out of linguistic matter. This last agreement envisages on the one hand collaboration and the co-operation in order to promote each language on its respective territory and, on the other hand, to establish bonds to share the experiments of recovery of the language carried out on both sides in the long term.
Catalonia, we celebrate the twenty-fifth birthday of the Charter of the French language which reinforced, by its application during all these years, in an obvious and notable way, the national identity of Quebec, like its image and its recognition on the international scene.
http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/ouvrages/amenagement_hs/ral01_charte_reniu_vf.pdf