Language Use in Shops in Girona, Lleida, Tarragona and Tortosa. Ofercat Retail 2015

This paper presents a summary of the data from the study of language use in shops in Girona, Lleida, Tarragona and Tortosa in 2015 conducted by the Directorate General for Language Policy and the Consortium for Language Normalisation. These data show the availability of Catalan in commercial signage and spoken customer care in these cities together with changes with respect to previous Ofercat surveys in these cities. For the first time we also examine the percentage of shops run by immigrants which is one of the main variables that influence the evolution of language options in retail. This field work and the field work performed in late 2012 in Barcelona round off retail observation in Catalonia’s major capital cities.