Linguistic introspection in Ribagorçan lexical compilations

Abstract

This article shows evidence about the building process of a linguistic perception regarding the Ribagorçan variety of Catalan. We consider it under the theoretic scope of chronotope, as a spatiotemporal frame that confers the value of social indicators to the linguistic variables. This evidence comes partly from the participatory observation into activities that several social entities have been developing regarding the dialect. Our main source are amateur compilations of lexicon that give us evidence (1) about the awareness of language change from the introspective work of their authors along two generations, and (2) about the identification of some elements that have become overtly emblematic of the geolect. The awakening of such an awareness is attributed to the contrasting presence of the standard variety. This would be confirmed by contrasting different cases in the area: the case of Catalan under Catalonia’s administrative context, the neighbouring context of Occitan in the Aran Valley, and that of Catalan under the Aragonese administration. Only in the first case the language is present in formal and academic uses and we find lexical compilations as those described above.