La Llei 1/1998, de 7 de gener, de política lingüística: el nou desplegament de l'art. 3 de l'Estatut d'Autonomia de Catalunya i els conceptes de llengua pròpia i la llengua oficial

Resum

This paper sets out to present the Language Policy Act, passed by the Catalan Parliament at the end of 1997, as a step forward in the process of language normalisation. The Language Policy Act has replaced the 1983 Language Normalisation Act, which was of great historical importance in the revival of the Catalan language. Although both acts develop Article 3.3 of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which imposes the duty on the Catalan government to guarantee the "normal and official" use of Catalonia's two official languages (Catalan and Castilian), the new act is superior to its predecessor in its greater precision in the definition of juridical concepts and its more imperative character. In the second part of the paper, the author sets out to explain the two fundamental juridical concepts in the Language Policy Act: the concept of autochthonous language and the concept of official language. The normative consequences of the former concept, which applies solely to Catalan, are threefold: first, Catalan shall be the only language of Catalan institutions (although they shall use Castilian in their dealings with citizens who explicitly request it); second, Catalan shall be the preferential language in the State administration in Catalonia; third, the idea of language normalisation is linked to the autochthony of Catalan (not only to its officiality, as in Article 3.3 of the Statute of Autonomy). As for the concept of official language, which applies both to Catalan and Castilian, its normative consequences are twofold: first, individuals have the right to use the official language of their choice; second, for this right to be guaranteed, a language normalisation policy is called for. The right to choose the official language entails the right to know both official languages, the right to use either of them and to be attended to in either of them, and the right not to be discriminated against because of the chosen official language.