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Abstract
This study explores the processes of, motivations for, and market consequences of bilingual journalism in Spain, and considers this phenomenon in the context of linguistics, identity, and theorizing about nationhood. Based on newsroom observation and interviews with journalists at newspapers in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia, this article develops a framework of production, content, and tailored bilingualism for understanding the operations of this fledgling form of journalism. Moreover, against the backdrop of local nationalism, ethno-linguistic identity, and advocacy journalism, this study posits that a modulated approach to Anderson's (1983) concept of “imagined communities” might begin to explain the rise of bilingual journalism in certain regions of Spain. Newspaper editors there have imagined language communities—niche “nations” of readers with whom they feel a special kinship and for whom they feel a moral obligation to preserve the ethnic language. This “public service” comes at a heavy cost: An analysis of circulation data demonstrates that the most aggressive bilingual journalism has failed to attract wide readership, calling into question the very essence of the editors’ imagined communities and their efforts to serve them. Finally, this paper considers the Spanish case in the wider context of global media trends.
Acknowledgements
For their helpful comments and contributions, I wish to thank assistant professor Renita Coleman and doctoral student David Free, both of the University of Texas at Austin, as well as two anonymous reviewers. I also acknowledge the gracious funding support of the J. William Fulbright Program in the United States and Fulbright's binational commission in Spain (La Comisión de Intercambio Cultural, Educativo y Científico entre España y los Estados Unidos de América).
Notes
1. Both español (Spanish) and castellano (Castilian) have become politicized and polarizing terms in Spain (Atkinson and Kelly-Holmes, Citation2006). Although Castilian is used in the 1978 Spanish Constitution to label the dominant language in Spain, for this study I will use Spanish because it is the more widely recognized name for the language.
2. It could be argued that three distinct bilingualisms are at work here: Catalan–Spanish, Basque–Spanish, and Galician–Spanish. For clarity of discussion, however, this paper will use “bilingual journalism” as a single reference for the type of language-mixing journalism practiced in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia.
3. For a discussion on the role of ABC in the professional development of the Spanish press in the early 20th century, see Sánchez-Aranda and Barrera (Citation2003). In addition, for a recent analysis of the professional practice of journalism as viewed through the stylebooks of Spain's leading newspapers, El País, El Mundo, and ABC, see Muñoz-Torres (Citation2007).
4. Anderson could have been speaking of Spain and its sub-nationalism when he wrote, “Many ‘old nations,’ once thought fully consolidated, find themselves challenged by ‘sub’-nationalisms within their borders—nationalisms which, naturally, dream of shedding this sub-ness one happy day” (1983, p. 12).
5. See www.ojd.es.
6. A national study conducted three times a year that surveys 40,000 Spanish adults and adolescents regarding their media consumption (see Bueno et al., Citation2007). See www.aimc.es.
7. There are, of course, some exceptions to this, including a handful of partially bilingual newspapers along the Texas–Mexico border, among other US regions (Lewis, Citation2006). Also, some larger US news outlets have engaged in sporadic bilingual initiatives; for example, from 1998 through 2003 The Boston Globe included Spanish reports on games pitched by Red Sox star Pedro Martínez.