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Catalonia has become a rich site to investigate minorised-language identity, with the reemergence of a movement calling for independence. Our case study analyses how pro-/anti-secessionist protests are (counter)-fought in urban Linguistic Landscapes. We approach LLs as identity-markers and place-makers delivering messages of political subversion/dominance where majority/minorised-language choice and utopian/dystopian discourse become crucial for understanding their meanings during social upheaval, with renewed nationalist protests linked to an independence Referendum. We employed a content analysis based on a semiotic/semantic interpretation and thematic categorisation of the data. We show that two antithetical "Catalans"/"Spaniards" identities reemerge which mobilise either utopian projects written in Catalan or dystopian visions in Spanish, through intertextuality. The former, categorised as pro-independence "political resistance LLs," project a hopeful impossible to extend a liberating possible. The latter, pro-unionist "threats to Catalan protesters LLs," reinstate order, enforcing the suppression of dissent. This reveals that ethnolinguistic identities are newly reconfigured/resignified, unpacking how a social-semiotics focus on language choice and utopia/dystopia can prefigure social conflict development.
Maria Sabaté Dalmau (Tue,) studied this question.