Sí o no, què penses? Catalonian Independence and Linguistic Identity on Social Media
This research addresses the problem of understanding how linguistic identity manifests in political discourse for social media analysts and sociolinguists, though it is incremental as it builds on prior findings.
The study quantitatively examined the relationship between language use and political identity in Catalonia by analyzing Catalan language usage on Twitter during the 2017 independence referendum, finding that pro-independence tweets were more likely to include Catalan and that Catalan was used more in referendum-related discourse than in other contexts.
Political identity is often manifested in language variation, but the relationship between the two is still relatively unexplored from a quantitative perspective. This study examines the use of Catalan, a language local to the semi-autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, on Twitter in discourse related to the 2017 independence referendum. We corroborate prior findings that pro-independence tweets are more likely to include the local language than anti-independence tweets. We also find that Catalan is used more often in referendum-related discourse than in other contexts, contrary to prior findings on language variation. This suggests a strong role for the Catalan language in the expression of Catalonian political identity.