State Language Ideology and the Shifting Nature of Minority Language Planning On Corsica
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1-18-2016
School
Humanities
Abstract
The French nation is well-known for its long history of centralized language policy, and for a language ideology in which French is both the symbol of and the chief medium for the expression of national, civic and cultural identity and legitimacy. French language policy, with its monocultural and monolingual norm, has both devalued local and regional languages and offered powerful economic and cultural rewards for learning French, the only language taught and recognized in France’s schools for a good part of the twentieth century. In regions like Corsica, this has resulted in rapid ‘language shift’ away from the minority language, Corsican. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century most Corsicans had Corsican as their mother tongue, by 1950, many Corsicans were French-dominant speakers. Since the 1970s, however, linguistic revitalization movements for many of the minority languages of France arose (Basque, Breton, Occitan in addition to Corsican).
Publication Title
Language, Ethnicity and the State
Volume
1
First Page
40
Last Page
55
Recommended Citation
Jaffe, A.
(2016). State Language Ideology and the Shifting Nature of Minority Language Planning On Corsica. Language, Ethnicity and the State, 1, 40-55.
Available at: https://aquila.usm.edu/fac_pubs/19557
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