El món del dret i la normalització lingüística

Resum

In spite of a firm and explicit declaration by the Catalan Administration and society about their desire to recuperate the use of Catalan in the legal sphere, ten years after Catalan was declared official the legal documents published in Catalan are still relatively very few. Joan Xirau attempts at discovering the reasons for this apparent reluctance to linguistic reconversion on the part of Catalan law professionals. The use of Catalan would involve a profound change in the working methods of the law professional, which would require a considerable personal effort as well as external support. It cannot be expected of law professionals, in relation to such an important matter as the language they use at work, to change from Castilian to Catalan when they have not previously received any kind of legal training in Catalan during their Law School years and without there being any sort of defined standards on the subject. Aside from the more technical obstacles, there are also two drawbacks of a politicocultural nature: the lack of Catalan-speaking professionals as well as the continued presence of a Castilian monolinguistic «culture» within the world of law practice. The author believes that a linguistic normalization policy in this context should be based on the following action proposals: the development of an awareness of the necessity for change; the progressive introduction of the use of Catalan at all levels (in a way that would eventually turn it into the most commonly used language at law schools in Catalonia); normative modifications; the creation of books of style of Catalan legal language; the definition of a Catalan terminology for juridical use; and, lastly, the creation of a series of formularies.