La situació social del català al País Valencià en el trànsit dels segles XX al XXI [The social situation of Catalan in the Valencian Community at the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries]

In this article we analyse the sociolinguistic situation of Catalan in the Valencian region in the last two decades. The Servei d'Investigació i Estudis Sociolinguistics (Department for Research and Sociolinguistc Studies), an official centre of the Department of Education of the Valencian Government, carried out the interviews which have been used in this study in 1992, 1995, 2005 and 2010. With this data, we have studied the evolution of the knowledge, usage and attitude Valencian people have with regard to their language. In general terms, the evolution of Catalan is shown to be negative, and its usage is decreasing in social and private spheres. The reasons for this decrease – which can be observed in relative figures – can be justified, on one hand, by the arrival of a great number of immigrants in this period and, on the other, by the political change which took place in 1995 in the Valencian Government, which has meant a regression in the process of linguistic recovery.