From En valencià to En català: The first and second online conferences for the promotion of Catalan amongst Teenagers

Abstract:

Modern Languages has seen its prestige devalued as a subject at secondary and tertiary levels in both the United Kingdom and Spain over the past half century. Successive governments have done little to arrest this decline – particularly acute with regard to minority languages – which coincides with an insidious, institutional critique of Arts-orientated disciplines now commonly known as the Crisis of the Humanities. In the UK the notion of Impact, where funding for research no longer depends on intrinsic academic value but rather on the relevance to an identifiable constituency outside the Faculty, is emblematic of this mindset. This article assesses the success of a pilot project which, availing itself of such funding, sought to arrest linguistic substitution in the Catalan-speaking areas by demonstrating to school leavers the international prestige of the vernacular via a series of online conferences organized by Cambridge University with the participation of academics, from universities in Europe and the USA, in a medium which demonstrated the suitability of the language for the present century.