ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter presents the basic concepts employed in this book, in particular the notion of ‘linguistic claims’ that is used extensively as a tool to examine different linguistic conflicts. Our departure point is to explore demands made by citizens, individually or collectively, either directly or by their representatives, regarding linguistic policies in different territories in Spain during the period 2005–2015. Claims about individual linguistics rights as well as claims about linguistic policies are considered in the comparative analysis, which aims to identify under which conditions they escalate into political conflicts, and when they have an impact on the policy-making process. This chapter also details the contents of the book. Whereas Chapter 2 is devoted to the conceptual framework, Chapter 3 describes the multilingual configurations in Spain, and Chapters 4 and 5 present the empirical analysis of the selected case studies. Chapter 6 introduces the European dimension into our analysis, and Chapter 7 concludes.
