INTRODUCTION. Regional Languages in France: Current Research in Rural Situations

Abstract

The aim of this issue is to present results of research in progress on regional languages in France and, in doing so, to illustrate the regional language situation in France today. It is this last purpose that makes this issue one of the sociology of language, for any human situation is necessarily a social situation in a language-mediated world. We are born, grow up, work, give life to a new generation, and die within that world. The purpose of the sociology of language is, as I see it, to study and elucidate how social variation can affect the languages involved, i.e. how a language or languages undergo variations or transformations and how these can be linked with social transformations. The basic fact of our human roots within a language-mediated universe is not questioned by the sociology of language as far as it could be, for example, by a comparative study of social communicative behavior in animal and man. We stay within a universe where we cannot help existing as language beings.In this study of the regional language situation in France we are concerned with an evolution where one language, rightly or wrongly labeled 'regional language' -we come to that later on -is gradually or drastically replaced by another language, rightly or wrongly labeled 'national language'. The regional languages are many: Picard, Breton, Alsatian, in the northern part of France, Occitan, Gascon, Catalan, among others, in the southern part of France (see Figure 1); the national language is one: French. The changes that are described are, of course, taking place in an overall framework of continuous change affecting French itself -a language changes because it is used (Martinet, 1969) -, but this has not particularly been taken into account here, nor has the fact that the regional languages themselves did undergo changes and still do if only by their contact with French or the fact that French was and still is being influenced by the regional languages. However, it has not been my choice that these last points are neither studied nor mentioned here; it is rather to be taken as a symptom of a frame of mind where the regional language dealt with is taken as an entity, the wholeness of which is not to be questioned. If its situation changes it is because it is less and less spoken: the point of view is one of appreciating a quantity of usage. How many people still speak the regional language, how often and to whom? -questions that all lead back to the sociological setting of the language situation. Appreciating the quality of what is still spoken under the name of a particular regional language, e.g. Occitan or Gascon, does not seem to be a topic of research spontaneously mentioned when one is asking, as I did, for studies in the rural sociology of language. For this is what I mentioned when I first approached several research centers and colleagues to ask for contributions to the present issue. The rural sociology of language is far less developed than the urban sociology of language to which questions set by the findings of Fishm...