Catalan, at risk in audiovisuals

The survival of a community’s way of understanding the world pivots on the vitality of its culture and the creation of its own imaginary. The Catalan community, which constitutes a country and a group bound by language, is facing one of the keenest risks to its survival: backsliding in the social and audio-visual use of Catalan. Reversing this process depends on both endogenous and exogenous factors. The endogenous factors are the linguistic and cultural awareness of the entire community that shares knowledge of the language and the legislative and institutional capacity of the instruments that protect it and guarantee its use. This article does not explore these endogenous phenomena but portrays the exogenous ones: the rapid erosion of minoritised languages, including Catalan, caused by transformations in the audio-visual sector and changes in society’s consumption habits.