Managing Diversity: A Proposal for A Local Welcoming Linguistic Plan

Mallorca is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, belonging to the Balearic Islands (Spain), where 17.2% of its inhabitants have migrant background in 2019 as states the Balearic Institute of Statistics’ website (https://ibestat.caib.es/ibestat/estadistiques/illa-xifres/MALLORCA). Linguistically speaking, this situation generates the possibility to study several issues. The one that will be addressed in this study belongs to the sociolinguistic field and more specifically to the language policy discipline. Mallorca’s sociolinguistic reality is made up by Spanish as official language, the dominant one, together with Catalan, the local and subordinate language, and a huge number, over 160 (Canyelles, 2012), migrant languages. Given this sociolinguistic reality, the research question of this study is the following: How can Lloseta be linguistically managed given its cultural diversity? Lloseta is a Majorcan village where almost 11% of its 5,989 inhabitants have migrant background, and with no diversity management plan. 

In order to know what has been previously done in the Balearic Islands to manage cultural diversity, the linguistic management plans created by the Balearic Islands public institutions together with two more Spanish linguistic management plans, one from Catalonia and the other from the Basque Country, have been classified according to four packages of concepts emerged from two Isidor Marí (2005, 2007) articles. After this state of the question, a Lloseta’s diagnostic is carried out to know which kind of community it is. For this purpose, it is conducted a self-response survey of Es Puig de Lloseta Primary School —with 197 respondents—; a telephone interview survey of the teachers of winter activities in Lloseta — with 27 respondents—; and 33 interviewees to both Lloseta newcomers and professionals of the field. 

According to Mercedes Causse Cathcart (2009), a community is based upon two main axes: community defined by a structural axis, on the one hand, and from a functional axis, on the other. In this study third, fourth and fifth axes are added, according to the Welfare and Social Rights Area of the Balearic Islands Government (up to now WSRABIG, 2016) and to Wolfgang Welsch (2011). The third and fourth axis are proposed by the WSRABIG and are the feeling of belonging and the participation. Welsch proposes our fifth axis: transculturality, as a way to describe modern culture emerged in modern societies from the constant contact between different cultures.

After Lloseta’s diagnostic, it has been proved that Lloseta is only a community in a structural sense, as there is no functional axis, no feeling of belonging among newcomers, neither participation of all its inhabitants: locals and newcomers do not interact. Hence, there is neither transculturality. Given this situation, a Lloseta Linguistic Welcoming Plan is proposed in order to increase newcomers’ participation at the different village’s activities, as well as locals’ involvement in the welcoming of Lloseta’s new members. Lloseta’s Linguistic Welcoming Plan can also be applied to other Majorcan villages with similar characteristics. This way, as the general conclusion of this study, a template is proposed with general activities which similar villages can make use of.