LINGUISTIC CATALAN NATIONALISM IF THE 1870S – 1930S: POLITICAL GENERATIONS AND SOCIAL MODERNIZATION

The purpose of this study is to analyze the activities of three generations of Catalan philologists and linguists who have made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic Catalan nationalism. The author analyzes the history, directions, forms and features of the activities of several generations of Catalan intellectuals, whose activity contributed to the normalization and standardization of dialect forms of Romance speech in Catalonia, which led to the emergence of the modern Catalan literary language. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the historical, political and cultural contribution of nationalist intellectuals to the development of the Catalan language through the prism of the social consequences of modernization processes. The article analyzes 1) the main stages in the history of various generations of Catalan linguistic nationalists, 2) their participation and role in the processes of standardization and normalization of the Catalan language, 3) the contribution of language activists to the consolidation of the Catalan linguistic identity in particular and the national Catalan identity in general, 4) the role nationalist intellectuals, amateurs and professional linguists, in the development of Catalan nationalism, 5) the contribution of linguistic nationalists to raising the status of the Catalan language in the social, political and cultural spaces of Catalonia. It is assumed that Catalan linguistic nationalism significantly complemented political nationalism, contributing to its strengthening and consolidation of the Catalan national identity in contexts of social transformation of the region's society. The generations of linguistic Catalan nationalism are identical to the stages in the history of political and ethnic nationalisms. The results of the study suggest that in the 19th and 20th centuries, the cultural activity of linguistic nationalists contributed to the processes of modernization of Catalonia, which led to the transformation of the region from a peripheral one to a region with complete social and political structures, the functioning of which was impossible without the Catalan language.