2023-09-03 09:14:04
The linguist and teacher Carme Junyent i Figueras has died at the age of 68, as family sources have confirmed. Born in 1955 a Masquefa (Anoia), Junyent was professor of linguistics at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Barcelona (UB) –specialized in endangered languages, linguistic anthropology and the languages of immigration to Catalonia– and director of the Threatened Languages Study Group (GELA). She is the author of a vast work on the situation of the world’s languages and linguistic diversity. Junyent was also president of the Advisory Linguistic Council and awarded with the Saint George’s Cross in 2019 “for his long career in the study and defense of linguistic diversity in Catalonia and the world”.
We are the children of the @carmejunyent. Our mother just died. I wanted to thank you all on this medium. We will announce the details of the farewell ceremony in the coming days.
— M. Carme Junyent (@CarmeJunyent) September 3, 2023
Junyent studied philology at the University of Barcelona and traveled to the universities of Marburg, Cologne and California to complete his education. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Barcelona (UB) with a thesis on languages in Africa and their expansion. She worked as a professor of general linguistics at the Faculty of Philology at the UB.
Founder of the Threatened Languages Study Group for the knowledge and study of linguistic diversity in 1992, she was part of the committee of experts consulted for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996) and was a member of the Committee Linguamón International Scientist – House of Languages. He ordered the inventory of the languages spoken in Catalonia.
Gender in language
In addition to research in the field of threatened languages, linguistic anthropology and languages that arrived in Catalonia through immigration, Junyent reflected on the use of split gender. In 2010 he organized the conference ‘Visibility or marking: rethinking gender in the Catalan language’, acts from which Grup 62 collected in book format.
The document was a key point for the defense of unmarked gender or the use of masculine as inclusive, about which he published numerous informative articles. In 2021 she edited the volume ‘We are women, we are linguists, we are many and we say enough’ (Eumo), a volume that sparked some controversy and heated debates on social networks about the convenience of doublings or the use of the third genre.
The book collects the opinion of about seventy linguists on inclusive language and its use with arguments about language and gender from the areas of administration, such as education, the university, proofreading and translation, information and entertainment.
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