Over 6,000 transgressive artifacts were coded for language, theme, and location using Adobe Lightroom. Chi-squared tests in R assessed thematic trends by language and location. Findings reveal that Catalan is more prevalent in messages about social issues or community, whereas Spanish and English are preferred for sentimental or illicit themes. This corroborates prior research indicating a lower usage of Catalan as compared to Spanish in vulgar or informal registers (Frekko 2009; Newman, Patiño-Santos, and Trenchs-Parera 2012), specifically because Spanish terms “carry connotations that the Catalan equivalents might not” (Woolard 1989, 65).
LL data findings were presented to 60 Catalan-Spanish bilinguals during semi-structured interviews. Regarding the value of interviews in LL research, Phillips (1999, 25) argues that, “without people and context, graffiti are no more than the meanings our imaginations give them”. Responses suggest that pro-independence sympathizers used Catalan as a semiotic resource to create a Catalan Republic utopia distinct from Spain in the LL after observing the dystopia following the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Participants pointed to a relative dearth of Catalan referents in media and popular culture as a potential explanation for the comparatively higher presence of Spanish and English in sentimental and vulgar artifacts.
This research contributes to scholarship on language’s role in the sociocultural framework of Catalonia in this sociopolitically complex era. Respondents’ reflections on the LL offer an essential lens through which scholars can better understand linguistic repertoires on public walls and their consequences for evolving language ideologies.