2018/04/13 by Ian Stewart, Yuval Pinter, Stewart, Ian +3
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity #Political Systems and Governance #Gender Studies in Language
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1804.05088
Political identity is often manifested in language variation, but the\nrelationship between the two is still relatively unexplored from a quantitative\nperspective. This study examines the use of Catalan, a language local to the\nsemi-autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, on Twitter in discourse related\nto the 2017 independence referendum. We corroborate prior findings that\npro-independence tweets are more likely to include the local language than\nanti-independence tweets. We also find that Catalan is used more often in\nreferendum-related discourse than in other contexts, contrary to prior findings\non language variation. This suggests a strong role for the Catalan language in\nthe expression of Catalonian political identity.\n