The linguistic and political situation in the autonomous community of Valencia contains a double conflict: a linguistic conflict based on the diglossic situation of Valencian and Castillian plus the rivalry of Valencian and Catalan which leads to an ideological conflict regarding the unity of the Catalan and linguistic secessionism. Valencian can either be traditionally considered as one variant of Catalan or as an independent language. Different institutions are involved in ongoing development of an official norm of Valencian.
My project, situated in the field of language change and perception and following the usage-based approach, investigates how frequency effects influence the process of norm development of Valencian.
The hypothesis is that frequency in this process, in interaction with salience, is strongly influenced by ideological factors. The relation between norm and real usage is essential. By using quantitative and qualitative research methods, I aim to show that there are various possibilities whose forms are accepted by the valencian language planners and included in norm documents and thus accepted and used by the norm recipients.