La Llengua Catalana: The Production of Domestic Soft Power Through Catalan Language Campaigns

Soft power in international relations can be defined as the "power of attraction," employing resources such as culture, political values, and foreign policies. However, traditional soft power literature centers the state as the producer of power. This thesis argues that the concept can be expanded to include non-state actors, such as stateless nations, and be projected within a state's territory. This, I call domestic soft power. To test this application, I draw from two case studies in Catalonia, an autonomous community in Spain, widely considered to be a stateless nation. Here, the Catalan language has historically been tied to national identity and independentist movements. I use language campaigns as a tool by which to analyze domestic soft power as they mobilize the use of language beyond just a means of communication. The first case study, "El Català, és cosa de tots", was chosen as this was the Generalitat's, Catalan's governing body, first attempt at a linguistic campaign aimed at normalizing the Catalan language that immediately followed that suppressive Franco dictatorship. The second campaign seeks the inclusion of Catalan in the European Union language as the 25th official language. For the second case study, I analyzed two sub-campaigns produced by both the Generalitat and Plataforma per la Llengua, a non-profit language advocacy organization. I find that the domestic soft power is projected towards the Spanish state in an indirect manner, exemplifying the ideas of language as a vehicle for cultural differences and as a form of symbolic power. Through language campaigns, Catalonia constructs themselves to be a legitimate social actor while advocating to "normalize" their identity and values. Doing so shapes the social environment in which both the nation and the stateless nation exist.