The State, the Activists and the Islanders: Language Policy on Corsica

The State, the Activists and the Islanders Language Policy on Corsica

Language Policy VOLUME 8 Series Editors:

Bernard Spolsky, Bar-llan University, Israel Elana Shohamy, Tel Aviv University, Israel Editorial Board:

Claire Kramsch, University of California at Berkeley, USA Georges Lüdi, University of Basel, Switzerland Normand Labrie, University of Toronto, Canada Anne Pakir, National University of Singapore, Singapore John Trim, Former Fellow, Selwyn College, Cambridge, UK Guadalupe Valdes, Stanford University, USA The last half century has witnessed an explosive shift in language diversity not unlike the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, but involving now a rapid spread of global languages and an associated threat to small languages. The diffusion of global languages, the stampede towards English, the counter-pressures in the form of ethnic efforts to reverse or slow process, the continued determination of nationstates to assert national identity through language, and, in an opposite direction, language rights, all these are working to make the study of the nature and possibilities of language policy and planning a field of swift growth. The series will publish empirical studies of general language policy or of language education policy, or monographs dealing with the theory and general nature of the field. We welcome detailed accounts of language policy-making – who is involved, with the development of policy under different conditions and the effect of implementation. We will be interested in accounts of policy development by governments and governmental agencies, by large international companies, foundations, and organizations, as well as the efforts of groups attempting to resist or modify governmental policies. We will also consider empirical studies that are relevant to policy of a general nature, e.g. the local effects of the developing instruction needed to achieve competence, selection and training of language teachers, the language effects of the Internet. Other possible topics include the influence of political ideology on language policy, the role of economic factors, policy as a reflection of social change. The series is intended for scholars in the field of language policy and others interested in the topic, including sociolinguists, educational and applied linguists, language planners, language educators, sociologists, political scientists, and comparative educationalists.

Robert J. Blackwood

The State, the Activists and the Islanders Language Policy on Corsica

Robert J. Blackwood University of Liverpool UK

ISBN: 978-1-4020-8384-6

e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-8385-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008924853 © 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com

For Jane

Acknowledgements

The completion of this book is due to a considerable number of people whom I’d like to thank in this brief section. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the significant contributions made by two senior colleagues and friends. Charles Forsdick at the University of Liverpool has been an invaluable support and source of sound advice since my arrival in Merseyside in 2003. As a new lecturer, it is difficult to imagine more helpful and dedicated research mentoring than that offered by Charles. Similarly, Ian Press at the University of St Andrews has continued to encourage my research, despite the fact that I expect, having waded through drafts of my PhD thesis, various articles and now this book, he never wants to read another thing about Corsican. Elsewhere in the academic community, I have benefited enormously from discussions with colleagues in the UK and beyond, including Pierre Escudé, Alexandra Jaffe, Mari Jones, Gabrielle Parker, Paul Rowlett and Stefania Tufi. On Corsica, I’d like to record my gratitude to Jean-Marie Arrighi, Schools Inspector for Corsican at the island’s Education Authority, for clarifications and documents he has provided – in person and electronically – to nuance some of the debates examined in this case study. I would like to thank Bernard Spolsky, editor for the Language Policy Series in which this book appears, who has been not only very helpful but exceptionally swift to answer my questions and offer guidance where I have sought it. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of the draft manuscript for their valuable and constructive suggestions and comments which have led to a better book. I would also like to record my gratitude to Jolanda Voogd and Helen van der Stelt at Springer, not only for their assistance in getting this study into print but also their patience with me. It is important to record my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK for the award of a grant to extend my institutional study leave to complete this project. Similarly, I am particularly thankful for the financial support generously offered by the University of Liverpool, both from the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies (and, in particular, its Head, Eve Rosenhaft) and from the Research Development Fund. Emma Stewart gallantly undertook the fieldwork for the 2003 survey used in this project, putting my questions to her contacts in Porto Vecchio and Conca. Given the vii

viii

Acknowledgements

thankless nature of survey work, I am particularly grateful that Emma gave up her own time cheerfully. This book has been considerably improved thanks to the labours of Bethan Williams who has faithfully plodded through the first draft and suggested splendid revisions for the less felicitous phrases. Nevertheless, the responsibility for the remaining clunky phrases (and the controversial footnotes on Nelson and the Virgin Mary) lies with me. The translations are also my own. On Corsica, I am particularly grateful to the help provided by Véro Emmanuelli, friend, journalist and former teaching colleague. She has consistently helped out with accommodation on the island, provided entrées into various communities and opened up her address book to engineer many a useful meeting. A host of people – not least my mum and dad – have patiently supported the progress of this book in practical ways, in particular John Barnes, Pat Burke, Cathy Cahill, Dave Evans, Steph Hobbs, Rob Mackley, Dot & Donna Mayell. Finally, I’d like to thank in particular my sister, Jane, to whom this book is dedicated. Since we were children, she has continually supported me and my studies, and I appreciate more than she might realise what she has done for me over the years. I am also grateful that she, and my brother-in-law Mark, had the perfect sense of timing to provide me with a wonderful niece, Hannah, during the sabbatical for the writing of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

1 1.1 1.2

1.3 1.4

Corsica, the Poor Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining Language Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Manipulation and Intervention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 The Principal Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reversing a Language Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Warp and the Weft of Language Policy on Corsica . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 2 3 5 7 8

Corsica, a Genoese Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corsica and the Ancien Régime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Revolution of 1789 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 The Revolution on Corsica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 The Revolutionaries and Language Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Management in a New France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-revolutionary Language Management – a Corsican Perspective . . Empire and the French Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language-in-Education Planning in the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . 2.7.1 The Napoleonic Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7.2 The July Monarchy and the Second Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11 12 14 14 15 16 18 20 22 22 24

The Third Republic and a New Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ferry and Language-in-Education Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 The National Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 The Corsican Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corsica’s Linguistic Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Extra-linguistic Factors in Language Beliefs and Practices . . . . . . . . .

27 28 28 29 30 31

2 2.1 2.2 2.3

2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

3 3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4

ix

x

3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

Contents

Language Activism and the Seeds of Regionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Beliefs and the Spectre of Mussolini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . War, Occupation and the Myth of a Latin Brotherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . The Post-war Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8.1 Language Management from the French Republic . . . . . . . . . . 3.8.2 Post-war Language Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8.3 The Islanders’ Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34 37 39 43 43 44 45

The Loi Deixonne – Language Management Against the Grain . . . . . . Language Activism Influencing Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . Decolonisation and the Growth of Regionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Overshadowing of Language Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Management to Defend French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Management to Cloister Corsican . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aléria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Activism in the 1970s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Three Strands of Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Activism and Reversing the Language Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47 49 51 54 55 56 58 59 61 63

The Final Decades of the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Decentralisation for France, Devolution for Corsica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Activists Within the Administration of Corsica . . . . . . . . . . La Collectivité Territoriale de Corse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Management to Defend French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Agents in Language Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.1 The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . . . 5.6.2 The French State’s Response to the Charter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.3 The Charter in a Corsican Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.4 The Local Implications of the National Impasse . . . . . . . . . . . .

67 68 71 73 74 76 77 78 81 82

Language Beliefs Influencing Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpreting Language Management from Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 The Circulaire Bayrou on Corsica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Matignon Accords – Another Threshold Crossed . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evaluating the Progress of Corsican Language Education . . . . . . . . . . A New Plan for Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 An Acknowledgement of Language Realities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Language Management Beyond the School Precincts. . . . . . . . 6.5.3 Action Plans for Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85 87 89 91 94 96 96 97 98

4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Contents

xi

7 7.1

The Islanders – A Longitudinal Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Types of Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 The Profiles of the Respondents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Basic Language Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Corsican Spoken in Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Non-corsophones Learning Corsican . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.4 Corsican as a Marker of Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Response to Language Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mother-Tongue Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 The First Stage – Language Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 The Second Stage – the Evolution of Beliefs into Practices . . . 7.4.3 The Distribution of Responsibilities According to Personal Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

103 104 105 105 106 107 109 112 113 115 120 120 123

The Conclusions – Two Languages, Two Language Policies? . . . . . . . The Language Activists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Islanders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

131 133 138 142

Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

149

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

151

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

157

7.2

7.3 7.4

128

8 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Chapter 1

1.1

Corsica, the Poor Relation

Within sociolinguistics, language policy is emerging as an important field of study at the start of the twenty-first century. Scholars are now able to refer to a growing canon of work in language policy, yet despite this growing interest, and given the prominence of France’s post-Revolution language planning in discussions of language management, it is perhaps surprising to find a new case study devoted entirely to the fate of Corsican. Recent important examinations of language policy (such as Cooper, 1989; Schiffman, 1996; Ager, 2001; Spolsky, 2004; Judge, 2007) have traced the outlines of France’s management of language questions and Spolsky (2004, 63), in what can be considered the handbook for language policy, describes France as ‘the paradigmatic case for strong ideology and management’. However, in spite of this focus upon French language policies, the case of Corsican, one of the languages of France, is frequently treated en passant, oftentimes with a reference to nationalist violence. It would not be inappropriate to state that, in certain circles, Corsican is considered the poor relation amongst the languages of France. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to observe that Corsican has been viewed in such a light when compared with the heritage languages spoken on mainland France. The causes of languages like Breton, Occitan and Catalan have enjoyed more visible attention in academic and lay writings, while Corsica as France’s island territory in the northern Mediterranean (and Corsican as a language) has, in its post-Revolution history, been overlooked or, at best, sidelined. In order to redress the balance, this book will analyse and chart how and to what end language policy has been undertaken on Corsica. The following chapters will seek to highlight how it is that the French State has sought to marginalize Corsican and how the two other key constituents in this language situation, namely language activists and the islanders themselves, have played their respective parts in attempting to redress France’s (in)famous language management.

R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

1

2

1.2 1.2.1

Chapter 1

Defining Language Policy Manipulation and Intervention

As the profile of France’s Mediterranean island rises during the first decade of a new millennium, it is pertinent to undertake an explicit examination of the issue of language policy as it has been articulated on Corsica. To do so requires some kind of definition of language policy in the light of recent trends within the field. Given the breadth of publications on this topic, we shall not seek to reinvent the wheel or to rehearse here all of the many and varied arguments put forward by those who have been investigating and refining their expertise in the field. However, it is important to outline how the theories and principles detailed by others inform the analysis offered by this study. Cooper (1989, 46, 47) formulated his much-used template by which language policy can be measured, namely ‘what actors, attempted to influence what behaviors, of which people, for what ends, by what means, and with what results’ (original emphasis). Although subsequently refined and redefined, this framework is a useful starting point for a universalised appreciation of language policy, since it prompts a list of essential discussions. An understanding of language policy can be mistakenly limited to an interpretation of the term that sees it as language laws made by a State. In its narrowest sense, language policy is a decision reached by someone on a language matter: the use of a particular language or on a language’s internal structure, for example. In this respect, we can see that language policy covers such strategies and schemes as the resolve to create a monolingual superpower (Grenoble, 2003, 37), to centralise a State on its language (Schiffman, 1996, 76, 77), or to prove the right to existence of a newly independent State (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001, 64). The scope of language policy can, however, be expanded to include much more than language laws. Kaplan and Baldauf Jr (2003, 6) articulate language policy as ‘a body of ideas, laws, regulations, rules, procedures, and practices intended to achieve the objectives of a policy’. This definition can be nuanced to include the goals of a language policy, which can be either covert or overt. As with the majority of policies pursued by a government or a State, language policy is not expressed in some kind of vacuum; according to Mar-Molinero (2000, 74), it is set in ideological and political contexts. Others, such as Schiffman (1996, 5), anchor language policy in a narrower linguistic culture. There is also a broad agreement that language policy is not the same as language planning, but rather that language policy is a superordinate term to describe a number of key elements. Cooper (1989) articulates language planning as three distinct strands: corpus planning, status planning and acquisition planning, the latter of which Mar-Molinero (2000, 81) argues is the most important part of language policy. Although we shall examine both corpus and status planning in this case study, acquisition policy, or – as referred to by others, including Kaplan and Baldauf Jr (2003, 6) – language-in-education planning, is certainly of key import when examining Corsican. France, as we will see below, can be seen to have profited from the potential of language-in-education planning in order to endeavour to

1.2 Defining Language Policy

3

achieve its goals. However, as this project seeks to demonstrate, language policy should not only be understood in terms of laws passed by a State or its dependent bodies. There are many other mechanisms exploited, possibly unintentionally in some cases, by those who enjoy some level of power within a community, which can create or perpetuate a language policy (Shohamy, 2006, xv); these devices can also be used to deliver the results expected by the policy. We shall acknowledge below the tools used by the main actors in language policy on Corsica. In approaching this project, a key guiding principle has been Spolsky’s 2004 definition of language policy. He redefines language policy as a superordinate term that covers three fundamental pillars, namely language beliefs, language practices and language management. These Spolsky (2004, 5) interprets as: its language practices – the habitual pattern of selecting among the varieties that make up its linguistic repertoire; its language beliefs or ideology – the beliefs about language and language use; and any specific efforts to modify or influence that practice by any kind of language intervention, planning or management.

In seeking to understand language policy in this way, Spolsky identifies language management as the intervention to achieve language planning, be that status, corpus or acquisition planning. Language policy does not, according to Spolsky, equate to language planning in terms of laws passed or rules for language behaviour. In common with others, Spolsky argues that a key theme of language policy is manipulation, be that of language(s), of a language situation, of linguistic behaviour or of a combination of these elements (Cooper, 1989, 102; Spolsky, 2004, 8; Shohamy, 2006, xv). The level of manipulation varies, but the essence of this intervention is that it seeks to change, to differing degrees and for numerous reasons, one or more of these three elements. This manipulation might well seek to increase language rights (Ager, 2001, 23), to ‘nativize’ a language in a newly independent State (Grenoble, 2003, 205) or to enhance the status or prestige of a given language in a community (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr, 2003, 222). What emerges as a pattern is the interference in a language or a language situation. This interference seeks, at least at the outset, to change a set of language practices.

1.2.2

The Principal Actors

The concord on the sense of manipulation evoked by language policy is mirrored by the general agreement about the key agents involved. Language policy is closely linked with questions of power and authority, although this power can range from a State or government, companies, agencies and institutions, right through to families and small private associations and clubs. The question of power has long been accepted to have a primordial significance in the development, status and position of languages, as outlined by Bourdieu (1991), and reaffirmed in recent studies (see, for example, Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2002). Most obviously, this power is maintained by those in a position of authority (Ager, 2001, 5), although

4

Chapter 1

Kaplan and Baldauf Jr (2003, 6) draw attention to the fact that this authority need not necessarily equate to the State but can cover a spectrum of those who exert some kind of influence or power, from multinational businesses to hospitals and corner shops. Cooper (1989, 31) goes as far as to argue that it is ‘too restrictive’ to see those in power within a community as authoritative bodies. Nevertheless, the State remains the dominant agent in language policy, often by virtue of its position within societies and communities. Ager (2001, 175–176) identifies two other main types of policy makers, namely individuals (from the likes of Jacques Chirac to Josef Stalin) and ruling groups or communities, such as major political parties. Although the State and its related bodies are undeniably key participants in the development of language policy, the language situation on Corsica has been shaped by two other key constituents: the language activists and the islanders themselves. These two constituencies engage with the strategies followed by the French State, and thereby create a symbiotic relationship, since their responses, as will be demonstrated below, inform the aims of language management as prescribed by the French State. Language activists can focus their efforts upon the language itself, its scope, and production in the language, as exemplified by the oft-cited Félibrige who worked on behalf of Occitan in the nineteenth century. Language activists can also become involved in the politics of minorities, the most striking example of which in western Europe is ETA, the Basque nationalist movement established in the 1950s. Within ETA, the abertzales – the political activists who include Euskera, the Basque language, as a central pillar of their creed – act in political, cultural and social domains on behalf of Euskera (MacClancy, 1996, 214). Such activists demonstrate that language management, whilst initially pursued by an authoritative body such as a national government, is not unidirectional, and that groups or individuals can and do respond to its impact. In this examination, language activists are understood to be those members of what Ager (2001, 158 ff) refers to as a ‘powerless community’ who seek to reverse the language shift as per Fishman’s framework (1991, 395, reproduced in Appendix A); or if not reverse it, at least to go some way to revitalise or normalise their minorised language. Normalisation aims not only to enhance a minorised language in order to fulfil the communicative demands of its community but also to increase its use by that group, and is discussed more fully by, amongst others, Mar Molinero (2000, 80, 93). Normalisation, often identified with language policy in Catalonia, is the extension of a language into as many domains as possible. In other words, normalisation is closely related to changing language practices so that a particular language or variety is used for the majority of speech acts as well as for writing. Revitalisation, on the other hand, can be identified with the earlier phases of Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Dislocation Stages, including but not limited to the reconstruction of a minorised language (often understood as corpus planning), its acquisition as a second language by adults in the relevant community, cultural interaction – often led by older generations – in the minorised language and the use of this language in the homes of its speech community (see Fishman, 1991, 393–405 for a full discussion of this revitalisation). Language activists in the European tradition tend to have close links with the ethnolinguistic group to which they feel affiliated. Whilst there is not necessarily a

1.2 Defining Language Policy

5

requirement for the activists to be born in the relevant territory, or to have generations of ancestors entombed in the soil of a given area,1 many do originate from the regions in whose name they act. It is important to remember this when considering the case of Corsica, given that neither all language activists on Corsica are islanders, nor are all islanders language activists. One local perspective that has been particularly prominent towards the end of the twentieth century has been an expression of frustration at the portrayal of Corsica as an island populated solely by nationalists determined to wrench their home from the hands of the French State. The following chapters will offer a study of the diversity of perspectives and perceptions of the islanders, and will demonstrate how these attitudes affect not only the standpoints of the language activists, but also the language management strategies that are formulated in Paris. If one of the aims of this case study is to highlight the differences between language activism and political activism on Corsica, it will be important to recognise those who identify themselves primarily as language activists. Although it is the case that there is frequent blurring of the distinction between the two groupings of activists, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, there are individuals, associations and movements who, by their actions, mark themselves out as Corsican language activists. Throughout this case study, we will acknowledge the prominent personalities who would consider themselves first and foremost as language activists; the newspapers and journals around which language activists have clustered; the groups, societies and associations which have been formed to take action on behalf of the language and the agencies that have emerged which have embarked upon language projects such as corpus planning for Corsican.

1.2.3

Motivation

The manipulation of language is not undertaken merely for its own sake, and one of the key themes of this study is the tracing of the various motivations behind language policy. The scope of this particular case study, that of the position and status of a European heritage language, does not extend to the process of purifying a language of its ageist, blasphemous, racist or sexist elements. Thus it follows that no space will be devoted to this aspect of language management. When discussing the actions of the language activists, we shall, however, refer to the purification of language for other ideological reasons. It is therefore relevant to characterise the motivation for a language policy directed at influencing cultural identity and the language practices of minorities.2 For the purpose of outlining the impetus for language policy, it is not unhelpfully simplistic to divide language management into two strands, given the other case studies presented in this series. On the one hand, States and other influential actors pursue a strategy to suppress diversity and with the aim of creating a monolingual society. On the other hand, there are counter strategies which seek to encourage linguistic diversity and nourish multilingualism. There is evidently some overlap

6

Chapter 1

between the motivations for both these categories, and we will see below how the management of language use on Corsica has evolved to encompass both branches of this dichotomy. First, though, let us outline the factors that govern schemes seeking to suppress diversity in language behaviour. Since the late seventeenth century, if not earlier, States have been concerned with language issues, and have sought, for a variety of reasons, to limit variation in language behaviour. From the nineteenth century, this drive towards monolingualism became closely identified with the European model of nation building (Blommaert, 1996, 212), whereby a contemporary State was understood to require one language for communicative purposes in order to be truly modern. As with many of the rationales for language management, this motivation is anchored in ideologies that are other than linguistic. Language management, as this study will illustrate, is not usually undertaken solely for linguistic reasons. As with many other kinds of policies pursued by States, ruling groups and powerful individuals, language policies are promoted for political ends. Within a historical context, at the founding of new states, language policies which aim to reduce linguistic diversity are formulated in order to stabilise a newly formed community (Ager, 2001, 177; Blommaert, 1996, 210, 211; Kaplan & Baldauf Jr, 2003, 6). Social cohesion, be that in decolonised countries or in states establishing themselves after upheavals and internal turmoil, is a primary objective of newly formed societies and, historically, there has been an understanding that this cohesion can be achieved if a population speaks with one tongue. There are also practical reasons – what Blommaert (1996, 210–212) refers to as ‘the efficiency assumption’ – whereby it is more viable for a State to function using fewer rather than more languages. This has been often cited in discussions of the processes of decolonisation and yet, while used implicitly by the French State on Corsica, does not play a significant part in this case study, as will be highlighted below. Closely linked to the drive for stability is the creation of a new identity that is grounded in the community and bound by one language. This has been the ideal sought, with varying degrees of success, in places such as Israel (Amara & Mar’i, 2002, 3), the Soviet Union (Grenoble, 2003, 1) and France (Judge, 2007, 16–23). This kind of language management has sought to encourage the emergence of new citizens, loyal to the new community (Mar Molinero, 2000, 113). The expectation of loyalty through language is occasionally expressed in other terms, such as the encouragement of individuals or groups to participate fully in the life of the State and to exercise their full rights and responsibilities as a citizen, something which will be discussed later with particular reference to Corsica, but which is also witnessed elsewhere, such as the Arab community in Israel (Amara & Mar’i, 2002, 56). As outlined by Amara and Mar’i (2002, 2, 3), these rights include access to education, information and economic development, key motivations discerned on Corsica during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More ideologically, language management strategies that seek to reduce multilingualism have been developed in order to secure the political future of communities. In the case of France, both before and after the Revolution, schemes designed to assure the dominance of French at the same time also sought to sanctify the sovereignty of the ruling body (Cooper, 1989, 34). Subsequently, this kind of language management can

1.3 Reversing a Language Shift

7

embrace explicitly ideological motives, such as the creation of a Communist superpower in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century (Grenoble, 2003, 26), and to vindicate decolonisation or the emergence of independent countries, such as the ex-Soviet Muslim states (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001, 206). It is not without significance that this kind of language management is most often undertaken by those within communities who wield power, which serves to reinforce the strength of the relationship between language and power first highlighted by Bourdieu. Conversely, language management can seek to encourage diversity, and to nurture multilingualism, although amongst the canon of work on language policy, case studies devoted to this kind of management are few. In terms of the motivation for these policies, Ager has devoted much time to understanding this kind of language management. Citing the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, brought forward by the Council of Europe, Ager (2001, 94) notes that such a strategy is a response to ‘the feelings of persecution, marginalisation and lack of recognition’. Just as it is the State which is often identified with what Mar-Molinero (2000, 75) calls ‘restrictive’ legislation, it is the powerless communities with whom the ‘promotive’ schemes (Mar-Molinero, 2000, 75) are associated. The powerless communities, in a similar vein to newly founded State bodies, can seek to protect cultural identity, but these programmes are motivated, according to Ager (2001, 166), by a desire to ‘correct or at least reduce the inequality, inequity or injustice from which they suffer within the state.’ This book will evaluate how the language management strategies pursued by the French State are understood, according to one local perspective on Corsica, to have created a sense of inequality and injustice. In response to this perceived impact of French language plans, we can identify the symbolic importance of ‘promotive’ programmes. The symbolism of language management which favours multilingualism is, in the case of Corsica, linked to questions of language revitalisation and we shall trace the significance of this symbolism when examining the actions of the island’s language activists. At the same time, the symbolic purpose of a given strategy is not the preserve of language activists. Spolsky and Shohamy (1999, 61) note that ‘the statement of the policy is as important or more important than the effective implementation’, a conclusion that, we shall see, was reached by successive governments in Paris as much as by activists on the Corsica.

1.3

Reversing a Language Shift

Although the first part of this case study focuses upon the State’s actions to impose French on the island and, subsequently, establish the national standard language as the H language in the islanders’ repertoire, the emergence of language activism at the end of the nineteenth century recontextualises this analysis. Since its conception on Corsica, language activism has sought to engage in a process that we now refer to as the reversal of a language shift. The debates surrounding the reversal of a language shift (RLS) have been guided by the principles and theories developed by Fishman, most notably in his two landmark works on the subject (1991 and 2001b). The principles that Fishman has reached and refined will provide the underpinning

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for our evaluation of the actions of the language activists in this case study. Fishman first published his Graded Intergenerational Dislocation Stages in 1991 (393–405) and in doing so offered a strategy for RLS, as well as a yardstick by which to measure attempts to achieve the normalisation of a minorised language. Ten years later, Fishman’s model was refined, using a number of case studies, and a further template for RLS was published, namely a four-stage linkage system designed for the transformation of a threatened or minorised language into the first language of a given community (Fishman, 2001a, 15). As we seek to examine critically the actions of language activists on Corsica, we shall refer extensively to the principles articulated by Fishman for reversing a language shift. However, it is important to note at the start of this case study the gloss that Fishman offers regarding RLS and which is pertinent to the Corsican case examined here. Fishman (2001a, 7) observes that those seeking to reverse a language shift are not attempting to replace the dominant language with their own minorised language: Though being themselves dominated, RLSers nevertheless do not generally strive at being hegemonic dominators. What most RLSers in this day and age seek is a reasonable compromise […] so that they can gain the autonomy they need with respect to fostering their own language-imbedded cultural identities, while engaging in the worldwide encounter with modernisation via controlled interaction with neighbours both near and far.

Although not necessarily their ultimate aim in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, contemporary language activism seeks not to rid the island of its French influence but, instead, re-allocate the domains in which French and Corsican are used in order to preserve the linguistic cultural heritage of the island, something that can be identified with, for example, the earliest stages of the normalisation of Catalan. It is misleading, therefore, to perceive language policy on Corsica as a struggle between those working to maintain the position and status of French on the island and those committed to a monolingual corsophone island. Moreover, this case study is not merely an investigation into the conflict between the State and language activists; unsurprisingly, the language situation on the island is far more complicated.

1.4

The Warp and the Weft of Language Policy on Corsica

In describing, explaining and evaluating language policy on Corsica, this study focuses on the interface between two sets of factors or concepts. On the one hand, there are the three components of a speech community’s language policy, as identified by Spolsky and taken as our definition for this examination: language beliefs, language practices and language management. On the other hand, there are the three principal agents identified in this study: the State, the activists and the islanders. The engagement of these three agents will be analysed through the prism of Spolsky’s definition of language policy. This case study will focus on the interaction between the agents and the three components of language policy in order to reach an appreciation of language policy on Corsica. While it is both impractical

1.4 The Warp and the Weft of Language Policy on Corsica

9

and undesirable to analyse any of these six indices separately, it will be necessary, on occasion, to privilege one of the constituents over the others or demonstrate the particular engagement of one agent with one element of language policy. At the heart of this book is desire to attempt a greater understanding of language use on Corsica by reassessing a traditional understanding of language policy through the intertwined relationship between the three components identified by Spolsky and the three principal agents. This book will highlight the supporting roles played by other protagonists in language policy in Corsica, ranging from individuals – such as prominent activists and Heads of State – to communities or significant groups, like the Council of Europe or the French Socialist Party. The starting point for this case study is the transfer of ownership of Corsica from Genoa to France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Before this point, the history of Corsica had been marked by frequent changes of governorship of the island, which had established a diglossia on the island, where Tuscan Italian, known and used by a minority of the islanders,3 was the H language. Corsican, the island’s heritage language, was the L language in the diglossia. For this study, however, it is of particular interest to focus on the two hundred and fifty years of French rule. The examination of the language practices, beliefs and management of this period must be contextualised within the preceding centuries which, marked by the rivalry between Genoa and Pisa for control of Corsica, grounded language policy on Corsica in what can best be described as an Italian frame of reference. The fact that Italy – and Tuscan Italian – constitutes a touchstone for Corsica throughout the majority of this study is of particular importance, not least when considering that Corsican, an Italo-Romance language, belongs to a different branch of Romance languages than that which has become the island’s national standard language, French. First, we shall trace both royal and republican language management, assessing in particular the motivations behind the differing strategies employed and the mechanisms exploited to pursue them. As will be demonstrated, these strategies will be shown to have affected both language beliefs and language practices on the island, and it is imperative to evaluate language management through both these indices in order to discern the nature of the relationship between the three components of language policy. The evolution of the islanders’ language practices will be outlined through reference to published documents from numerous different sources and eras since this is one of a number of methods by which the success of language management strategies can be measured. Given the nature of language beliefs, however, and especially in the light of France’s attitudes towards such indices, it is difficult to chart the evolution of the islanders’ attitudes to the languages within Corsica’s linguistic repertoire. Surveys into language beliefs in Corsica’s interior in the eighteenth century were not undertaken and records were not kept of attitudes of the fishermen of the Cap Corse or the farmers of the Sartenais towards the rise of French during the nineteenth century although, to a certain extent, it is possible to discern language beliefs by reference to the evolution of language practices. We can, however, rely upon surveys from the late twentieth century and this book will close with a summary of a longitudinal study into language beliefs, based on surveys undertaken on Corsica for this project in 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2005,

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thereby providing a contemporary conclusion. This study, therefore, proposes a different perspective by which to analyse the dramatic changes in the language use of a given speech community, inviting comparisons with other communities from across the globe and from different eras. Where language policy has, in some studies, equated solely to language management, this book underscores the fundamental significance of different sections of a given community in the evolution of language use, highlighting the interplay between language practices and language beliefs that can be overlooked in examinations that privilege language management to the detriment of other factors. At the same time, the importance of language management as the backcloth to the other two components of language policy will not be diminished. Given the nature of France as the quintessential model for strong language management, the interaction of the agents in language policy will be illustrated in this book in a way that questions the dynamics of language use in speech communities elsewhere. In addition to offering a new approach to analysing language policy, the warp (language beliefs, language practices, language management) and the weft (the State, the activists, the islanders) will come together to produce the first extensive case study of language policy on Corsica.

Notes 1. MacClancy (1996, 213), for example, notes that non-Basques are accepted as abertzales. 2. The term ‘minority’ is, as many have commented, problematic, since a minority on a national scale might well constitute a majority within certain given territories or regions. Both Extra & Gorter (2001a, 4–5) and Grin (2003, 19–22) discuss this point more fully. 3. Recently, specialists – such as Comiti – have challenged the commonly held view that all islanders were fluent in Tuscan Italian as well as speaking Corsican and this is a point which will be examined at greater depth in the first chapters of this study.

Chapter 2

2.1

Corsica, a Genoese Island

In May 1768 France and Genoa signed the Treaty of Versailles, which saw control of Corsica pass from the latter to the former. At the time, the island was enjoying what is regarded as its fifteen years of independence and it was not until the defeat of the now-iconic Pasquale Paoli and his troops at the battle of Ponte Nuovo in May 1769 that the rule of Louis XV was formally established as far south as the Sardinia-facing Straits of Bonifacio. Paoli quit the island (albeit only for five years) and Corsica’s new phase as a French island effectively began.1 In the centuries preceding the Treaty of Versailles, Corsica had been conquered by a series of invaders seeking to capitalise on its strategic significance. During the Middle Ages, Pisa and Genoa had been the dominant forces in this part of the Mediterranean, and control of Corsica had been in the hands of both city states, as well as under the sovereignty of the Kings of Aragon during the fifteenth century and of Henri II of France a hundred years later. A pattern of rule shared between Pisa and Genoa, despite the occasional Aragonese or French interlude, meant that Tuscan Italian was established as the H language in the island’s diglossia and, at the same time, as evidenced by Nesi (1994, 18), Corsican – another Italo-Romance language – fulfilled the functions of a traditional L language. By the time French troops landed on the island, language practices on Corsica corresponded to Fishman’s revision of diglossia (1967), which acknowledges the merging of bilingualism with diglossia. Many Corsicans had access to both Tuscan Italian and Corsican, and accepted the domains in which each language was to be used. As observed elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004b, 135), not all Corsicans needed to use the H variety, Tuscan Italian, largely because their profession, pastimes or habitat rarely, if ever, required them to use the H domains. Given that Corsican and Tuscan Italian are generally accepted to be mutually comprehensible, communication was possible without formal training in Tuscan Italian. In terms of language ideology, or the beliefs held by people with regard to languages and language use, the majority of islanders considered Tuscan Italian prestigious. At the same time, there is no evidence of a devaluation of Corsican because of its L position within the diglossia. Before the Treaty of Versailles, Genoa and Pisa had left local administration in the hands of the Sgio, a grouping of notable families who had emerged, largely as

R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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a result of their own political manoeuvring, as prominent landlords.2 Certainly, there was minimal superintendence from either Pisa or Genoa through the Middle Ages and it is probably not an overstatement to describe much of the island, especially away from the handful of urban centres, as lawless at this time. Uprisings, revolts and attacks by pirates, Saracens and invading forces marked the centuries of the Middle Ages, all of which events, in their turn, impacted upon the language behaviour of Corsicans. What these years lacked, however, was the deliberate manipulation of practices that has characterised the language situation on Corsica over the past two-hundred and fifty years. This state of affairs changed, although not dramatically at first, after the French victory at Ponte Nuovo. For at least the next century, the French State, both the Ancien Régime and the post-Revolution republics, emerged as the key player in language policy on Corsica.

2.2

Corsica and the Ancien Régime

It is inaccurate to suggest that, after the purchase of the island, the Crown left Corsica unattended until the Revolution prevented the monarch from taking any further interest in the government of France. As with other acquired territories, Corsica became a pays d’Etats and, although low-level administration remained in the hands of Corsicans, a Governor and an Intendant were installed to manage the island, somewhat after the fashion of the methods of government employed previously by Pisa and Genoa. The Intendant and Governor created a new nobility drawn largely from the ranks of the Sgio, who swore allegiance to the King and whose creation, as will be illustrated below, prepared the ground for the further assimilation of Corsica into France. The language practices of this new nominal ruling class are interesting; Carrington (1984, 104) asserts that, in Sartène, nearly a third of those who took the pledge of allegiance were illiterate. This does not mean, however, that they were not bilingual in Tuscan Italian and Corsican, its sister language. Counter to one nationalist perspective that suggests that all Corsicans have always resisted the French, it is possible to chart the emergence of a social group that appeared loyal to France, and which changed its language practices to suit its newly found position in society. As witnessed in other places and at other times, societies – or parts thereof – have chosen to change their language practices to respond to an emerging dominant force.3 On Corsica this phenomenon manifested itself in the shift to French for reasons of social advancement. This process of language shift, which has its deepest roots on Corsica from the establishment of a formal system of French governance, is not directly in response to a language policy or to language management but, as will be analysed through this chapter and the next, is undertaken by a certain section of society for economic and social reasons. These motivations continued to influence language practices on Corsica through into the twentieth century. It would, however, be misleading to suggest that the last decades of the Ancien Régime saw rapid shift away from the Tuscan Italian – Corsican diglossia to

2.2 Corsica and the Ancien Régime

13

monolingualism in French. In terms of language practices on Corsica, the majority of urban, educated Corsicans were bilingual in Tuscan Italian and Corsican. Tuscan Italian was used for the traditional H domains of a diglossia, including trade and aspects of high culture. Beyond the urban centres, such as Ajaccio, Bastia, and Corte, most Corsicans had little need or opportunity to speak Tuscan Italian. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that Tuscan Italian was not heard outside the island’s towns. By contrast, the absence of French outwith Corsica’s towns is particularly noteworthy. The slow penetration of French into the island’s interior meant that, as elsewhere in France, monolingual speakers of the heritage language continued to live and speak as before, their existence not affected detrimentally by a lack of knowledge of the newly introduced language. Given the limited spread of French during the Ancien Régime, its effects were not felt across the entire island. This, consequently, had an impact on language attitudes in rural areas not exposed to French from the earliest days. Casta (1995, 135) emphasises the different language beliefs of the island’s population: If French was not the Corsicans’ mother tongue, Italian was not either, despite the fact that it was understood by one and all. Nevertheless, the distinction had always been made between the lingua dei signori (Italian) and the lingua dei pastori (Corsican). From this should be inferred that Italian, used by educated people, was considered as more distinguished than the language of the shepherds.

It is perhaps most appropriate to suggest that the majority of Corsicans, excepting those who formed the island’s new elite and who benefited in a number of practical ways as a result of their freshly pledged allegiance to the King,4 were ambivalent towards the French language. As far as we can establish accurately, language beliefs towards both Corsican and Tuscan Italian were positive at this time. Corsicans understood the domains reserved for Tuscan Italian, which enjoyed a level of prestige not yet eclipsed by French. Jaffe (1999, 71–72) summarises language beliefs towards Tuscan Italian: ‘Italian was a register of poetry and sophistication; it was also the language of formality and solemnity, spoken in the church and in the courts. The urban elite spoke Italian, which was referred to as speaking in crusca after the Accademia della Crusca, the Italian language academy founded in the sixteenth century.’ Given these assertions, we can see that Corsica, at the time of the French purchase, conforms to the traditional model of diglossia as modified by Fishman (1967). Corsica was integrated into the kingdom of France by the Code corse. In terms of language management, however, the Crown was largely non-interventionist, satisfied that those who wielded power could communicate in French. From the start of this new phase for the island, Tuscan Italian was acknowledged by the Intendant as a principal means of communication between the Crown and the islanders. This was demonstrated by the translation of the fourteen volumes of the Code corse into Tuscan Italian. Furthermore, as noted by Fusina (1994, 25), ‘The fact that this important publication was still in two languages in 1790, that is twenty years later and under a new regime, speaks volumes about the slowness of the acculturation process undertaken there.’ This act of language management responds directly to language practices on the island, confirming Spolsky’s understanding of the interrelationship between the three components of language policy (2004, 5).

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Marchetti (1989, 101) highlights two pieces of legislation (one from June 1768 and the other from September 1770) which confirm the formal acknowledgement by the Crown that islanders might not be expected to speak in French. These two measures sought to permit the use of interpreters and texts in Italian for ease of communication. They also stressed that all records should be kept in French and that the provisions of the decrees were temporary until such time that Corsicans could engage with the representatives of the Crown in the King’s own language. In incorporating Corsica into France one of the first examples of language management of the modern era, the Edict of Villers-Cotterêts, was, as with all other territories acquired by the King, to be extended to apply on the island. Much has been written about the scope, the strengths and the weaknesses of the Edict. For the purposes of this study it suffices to acknowledge that, according to the Edict, French was to be the sole language of the law courts – a measure aimed at ousting Latin as a language of administration in France, rather than suppressing the heritage languages.5 However, Schiffman (1996, 84) questions the extent to which the Edict was applied in practice within the new territories of France. It is safe to assume that if this measure was largely ignored in the areas highlighted by him – namely Brittany and Alsace – it was more than likely also disregarded on Corsica. In 1787 a measure was introduced to create a network of municipal councils across France that exists to this day. This measure actively reinforced the impact of the Edict. As Schiffman (1996, 93) notes, ‘a person could not make a contract, write a will, register a birth, get married or die without having it done in French.’ Although, as referred to above, Fusina suggests that the processes of assimilation were slow to take effect, devices for changing language practices were clearly put in place on Corsica. These pieces of legislation were not the only mechanisms of language management as the Crown recognised the role that could be played by formal education in the integration of Corsica into the Kingdom, and offered a number of scholarships with which islanders were able to study on the mainland. As noted in the introduction to this case study, education (and, by extension, language-ineducation policy) has had enormous significance for language beliefs and practices on Corsica. However, despite these measures and the social changes felt in the towns of Corsica, there was little real shift in either language beliefs or language practices during the final decades of the Ancien Régime.

2.3 2.3.1

The Revolution of 1789 The Revolution on Corsica

The Revolution was one of the biggest upheavals in the modern history of France and Corsica was not sheltered from the effects of this cataclysm by the Mediterranean Sea. According to Carrington (1984, 293), the Revolution was embraced on the island since a majority perceived it ‘liberation from a oppressive regime, not a class

2.3 The Revolution of 1789

15

struggle’. This fervour for the toppling of the Crown did not, however, translate into unconditional support for the new social order, something which, as will be considered later, can be seen to have contributed to the manner in which language management mechanisms were imposed by the new Republican regime. Less than a year after the uprising in Paris, Paoli returned to Corsica from England and was elected to high office in the island’s emerging new order. Paoli enjoyed the loyalty of the majority of the islanders, but the new Corsican nobility did not welcome his homecoming and, within a matter of months, Paoli was accused of counterrevolutionary behaviour. Key members of the new ruling class, including the Bonaparte family, left the island, abandoning French troops to hold the northern towns. Paoli appealed to Britain, who sent warships to attack French posts, leading to the defeat of the French, with control of the island passing to Paoli and the proclamation of the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom.6 These actions confirmed the separatist intentions of the Corsicans in the minds of the revolutionaries in Paris, and clearly inspired Barère in 1794 to complain in his oft-cited speech that ‘counter-revolution speaks Italian’. Although Paoli and representatives of the British government quickly fell out, and Paoli left the island (shortly followed by the British Viceroy), Corsica had drawn attention to its peculiarity within France – something that would not be tolerated by Paris.

2.3.2

The Revolutionaries and Language Attitudes

If the Crown can be said to have been relatively non-interventionist in terms of language management, those who succeeded Louis XVI did not shy away from seeking to manipulate language behaviour and language beliefs. Before we turn our attention to the methodologies of France’s language management strategies, it is helpful to understand the motives and reasoning behind the dramatic change in the new French State’s ideological position. The new political establishment made direct connections between the diversity of languages spoken across France and the Ancien Régime. Schlieben-Lange (1977, 101) observes, ‘it was one of the aims of the Revolution to abolish everything that was remotely connected to a feudal state of affairs and to equalize all Frenchmen even in so far as their language was concerned.’ From the outset of the Revolution, the heritage languages of France were portrayed as the adversaries of French, thereby preparing the ground for a conflict between the national language and the languages spoken by Frenchmen from Flanders to the Basque country, and from Brittany to Corsica. As the Revolutionary movement evolved into two main factions, the Jacobins and the Girondins, the Jacobins turned against the heritage languages and vilified their speakers as perpetrators of one of the worst contemporary crimes: the opposition to national unity. The leaders of the Revolution sought to cast a new Republic, a new political order and a new united nation. This over-arching aim was to have an impact at all levels of policy, including language, which was to become a tool for the Nation and subordinate to it (Lachuer, 1998, 21). One method by which the new political order

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intended to achieve the creation and survival of the nation was by attempting to take all relevance and importance away from the regions and to focus instead upon France.7 These are the first signs of the centralising tendency that has come to characterise government in France. This creation of a national identity required conformity in all aspects of French life, including administration, financial systems and culture, the latter of which includes the particularly symbolic – and, by extension, emotive – issue of language (Kuter, 1989, 77). Against the background of such a centralised political ideology, the period immediately after the Revolution was marked on Corsica by the complicated and slow process of assimilating the island into France. Successive governments pursued various strategies in their attempts to achieve this goal in a number of different areas, including political, economic and social cultural domains. These years were marked by the retreat of Tuscan and the rise of French in key domains, most notably in education, in literature and in the political administration of the island. As argued elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004b, 137–138), this assimilation process can only be understood in the context of the detachment of the island from an Italian sphere of influence. The gallicisation of Corsica, as will trace below, was undertaken at the expense of the island’s commercial, cultural and linguistic relations with the Italian peninsula. Most relevant to this case study is the manipulation of language behaviour on Corsica, by which the Tuscan Italian – Corsican diglossia evolved into a triglossia, which included French as a subordinate, then dominant, second H language. The next phase was the establishment of a new diglossia with French as the sole H language, and Corsican as the L language. This was, however, a leaky diglossia, and domains usually associated with Corsican were transferred to the H language over the course of the twentieth century. This process has led to the current situation, where few would deny that French is the language of both traditional H and L domains, and where Corsican holds on in some social networks, but not to the extent that it did when Paoli left the island for the first time. For the rest of this chapter, we shall trace the change in language beliefs on the island that occurred partly, but not wholly, as a result of language management. We shall also examine how this development impacted on actual language practices.

2.4

Language Management in a New France

The well-established links between Corsica and the Italian peninsula, and the slow progress made by the Crown to assimilate the island into France, encouraged the new French State to incorporate the island fully into the republic. In the light of Corsica’s fifteen years of independence, the demonstration of loyalty of the islanders to Paoli rather than to France, and the founding of the short-lived Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, Paris was concerned about the political allegiance of Corsica. Amongst other factors, these three realities gave rise to the belief that Corsica, like other peripheral parts of the new republic, was susceptible to a counter rebellion and keen to regain independence. Nevertheless, as suggested by the results of the report by

2.4 Language Management in a New France

17

l’Abbé Grégoire which calculated that a mere eighth of the nation spoke French,8 it was clearly impractical (although possibly counter-intuitive) to pursue a Frenchonly language policy in France, especially at a time of heightened instability. Language management at the earliest stage of the post-Revolution age had to factor into its plans a response both to the perceived real fear that France’s heritage languages could emerge as symbols behind which ethnic groups could unify, and to the inability to reach the whole nation in French alone. On Corsica, the heritage language had not been used as an official language; proclamations, documents, official announcements and records were produced in Tuscan Italian, whereas Corsican was the language reserved for informal, family usage. In Paris, as early as January 1790, a decree was passed which permitted the translation of documents into languages other than French (Grillo, 1989, 35). On Corsica, this measure meant preparing the decisions and publications of the Revolution in Tuscan Italian, not Corsican. The revolutionaries were, at the very least, equivocal towards France’s heritage languages in the period immediately following the Revolution. Although there was no support for considering the languages of France as co-official languages (with French) for the new Republic, there was an acknowledgement of the need to employ the heritage languages in order to extend the use of French. Wardhaugh (1987, 101) remarks that: When the French Revolution occurred it was necessary at first for the revolutionaries to ignore the fiction that French was spoken everywhere in France. They wanted to be sure of support everywhere. […] on 2 October 1790, another decree required that such official declarations be read in French at the end of Sunday mass. There was therefore some ambivalence during the early years of the revolution about how the different languages of the country were to be treated.

This pragmatic practice of using the languages spoken across France was initially considered as the best way to make the citizens of a new France sympathetic to the fledgling Republic. However, as the political debate between the Jacobins and the Girondins tipped in favour of the former, this apparent tolerance of the languages of France came to an end. In September 1791 it became apparent that, in the light of continued language practices in places such as Corsica, a reversal in language management of the provinces was imminent. Giacomo (1975, 18) cites Talleyrand as the author of the first proposal to deplore the continued use and existence of the ‘patois’ and to encourage the founding of schools to teach French to all children in France. The realisation of this recommendation was still one hundred years away, but we can detect here the early indications of the significance of language-ineducation planning within France’s language management strategies. In the space of a few years after the Revolution, language management – as decreed by the governing bodies which emerged during this tumultuous period – reacted against a previous tolerance of continued language practices. The motivation for this change in direction is clear: in order to take part fully in the democratic processes of modern French life, all citizens were deemed to require a common language, and that language was to be French (Posner, 1996, 212).9 The restrictive language management projects embarked upon at the end of the nineteenth century in France were justified on the grounds that freedom and full rights for citizens

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could only be guaranteed by equality, and that this equality would be achieved through, amongst other things, the prescribed use of French. As has been noted by others such as Temple (1994, 194), this restrictive ideology sat at odds with freedom, one of the central pillars of the Revolution. This freedom did not extend to the freedom to decide one’s own linguistic behaviour; instead, the new Republic would limit the rights of Corsicans, Bretons, Basques, Catalans and others living in France on the pretext of assuring their equality. Hagège (1987, 196) suggests that this new direction in language management was not motivated by high-minded principles of freedom, equality and citizenship, but rather by a perceived need to crush opposition to the new political order. This opposition, encouraged by royalists and the Church, spoke to the population of rural France in what Hagège calls ‘local languages’, confirming for the revolutionaries the belief that counter-revolutionary forces agitated against the Republic in Breton, Flemish, Occitan and Corsican. By 1794, in order to extend the use of French, legislation was brought forward to enforce its use and to overturn all previous language laws and decrees which sought to make use of the minority languages of France. As demonstrated by l’Abbé Grégoire, francophones were rare, especially in southern France and in areas of strong individual identities such as Brittany. Lachuer (1998, 39) suggests that the new administration was illadvised in its abandonment of support for the heritage languages in the pursuit of broadening the base of francophones since this strategy ignored the needs of France’s population. The Jacobin ideal of one national language for one united nation, however, was understood as a fundamental component of the new Republic and an organised attack on France’s heritage languages was to mark the French State’s language ideology for the next two hundred years.

2.5

Post-revolutionary Language Management – a Corsican Perspective

Considering the rapid evolution of language attitudes in Paris since 1789, let us examine the impact of the developments in language management and language practices on Corsica that followed the Revolution. As discussed above, this period marked the transition from a Tuscan Italian – Corsican diglossia to a French – Tuscan Italian – Corsican triglossia and eventually to a French – Corsican diglossia. As the profile of French rose in Corsica’s linguistic repertoire, Tuscan Italian began its retreat. In addition to its progressive weakening within the political arena, the influence of Tuscan Italian steadily diminished in education and high culture. Within the domain of education, the decisions taken by the Crown had had mixed effects. On the one hand, the King had closed the island’s only University at Corte as well as the schools and seminaries founded by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. At the same time however, three schools which would, for the first time, teach French (alongside the humanities, rhetoric and philosophy) were opened in Ajaccio, Calvi and Cervione (Marchetti, 1989, 102). In so doing, the Ancien Régime began secondary education teaching of French, but – possibly

2.5 Post-revolutionary Language Management – a Corsican Perspective

19

unintentionally – ensured that tertiary studies would be undertaken in Tuscan Italian, since the nearest university henceforth was to be found in Pisa, on the Italian peninsula. By the end of the nineteenth century, education remained a preserve of Tuscan Italian on Corsica. As Carrington (1984, 198) comments, ‘what little learning existed on the island was concentrated in Bastia, with Italian as its language.’ The failure of the revolutionaries to re-open the University at Corte meant that Corsicans who wished to continue their education had to leave the island. Those who followed this path normally enrolled in Pisa to the extent that, in 1830, a quarter of students at Pisa were Corsicans (Marchetti, 1989, 77). Despite the legislation in Paris and the founding of the French-language schools, Italy continued to provide an intellectual point of reference for the educated of the island. Thiers (1989, 32) notes that Corsica was ‘largely anchored in the cultural and ideological sphere identified with the Italian language.’ In terms of language management therefore, the evolution of language-in-education planning did not achieve the short-term goal of dramatically increasing the numbers of French speakers on Corsica. Those who passed through the island’s schools were normally the children of the new Corsican nobility, that is, those who were already undergoing some degree of assimilation. For practical reasons, during the nineteenth century Corsica looked to Italy for more than just higher education. Given the proximity of the island to the Italian peninsula, especially in comparison with the distance to the French mainland, Corsica maintained strong links with Pisa, Genoa and Livorno. Since Corsica was effectively cut off from France during the winter months, the island depended on Italy for supplies, both in terms of produce and of books and newspapers. In providing commodities to the island, Italy maintained its role in the economic life of Corsica, perpetuating the usefulness of Tuscan Italian in communication between supplier and buyer. Despite language management designed to create a society monolingual in French, it is possible to see how the diglossia on the island evolved to admit French but, initially, not at great cost to Tuscan Italian. As in other speech communities, we can detect changes in language practices and language beliefs on Corsica within the domain of high culture, although again, the arrival of French on the island did not immediately dislodge Tuscan Italian from its privileged position. The Corsican intelligentsia did not swiftly abandon Italian and, as Jaffe notes above, it remained the language of poetry and song. A number of journals and newspapers, such as the Giornale Patriottico di Corsica and Gazetta Corsa, continued to be printed in Italian. Even Le Journal du Département de la Corse, edited by the island’s prefecture, appeared in both French and Tuscan Italian (Marchetti, 1989, 72). In terms of the language for the production of poetry and song, writers and poets who habitually wrote in Tuscan Italian did not immediately abandon the language and compose all their post-Revolution work in French. Some poets, such as Viale, refused to switch to French, although Thiers (1977, 30) suggests that this decision was motivated more by a rejection of Romanticism than an ideological opposition to French. French was not, however, long ignored as a medium for creativity and authors and poets began to use it during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Yet again, we can see that language management did not have an immediate effect on the practices of islanders. There is also no evidence to

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suggest that writers switched to French as a result of mechanisms imposed by the revolutionaries. Without language attitude surveys it is not possible to explain fully the motivation for the change in practice, but it appears that as French Corsica became a reality, islanders within artistic circles chose to modify their own language practices. At this stage it is important to draw attention to the fact that changes in language practices highlighted here – namely those in the fields of politics and administration, high culture, the printed press and, above all, education – took place at the expense not of Corsican, but of Tuscan Italian. Since Corsican was never a language of formal education, government or literature, the rise of French in these domains took place not to its own detriment, but to that of Tuscan Italian. Folk literature and song continued in Corsican and their composition was sustained as an oral – rather than written – tradition. It is, therefore, inaccurate to suggest that language management in the nineteenth century, even during the height of la Terreur linguistique, had a detrimental impact on language beliefs towards Corsican, or its actual use by islanders. The linguistic battle that the Crown started half-heartedly, but which was espoused with zeal by the Revolution, set French against Tuscan Italian rather than Corsican. In practice, Corsican was not heard in the domains that the revolutionaries prioritised, such as the meagre school system on the island, in local councils, or in public proclamations. This context is particularly important to bear in mind in our examination of late-twentieth-century language policy, when language activists worked to introduce Corsican into these domains with which heritage languages had never been associated.

2.6

Empire and the French Century

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, sections of the islanders continued to illustrate the extent to which Corsica was not wholly loyal to the new French republic. Despite the division of the island into two départements in an attempt to control the island more successfully, revolts and uprisings continued to break out. Napoleon, whose family were ennobled during the last days of the Crown and who subsequently quit the island as Paoli established the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, passed through Ajaccio en route from Egypt to the French mainland, giving him a minimal personal overview of the state of the island. The relationship between Napoleon, Corsica’s most famous son, and his homeland is complicated. While there are apocryphal tales of Napoleon in exile on St Helena, yearning to smell once again the maquis of the island, he was also quick to suppress uprisings on the island, and did not display particularly positive language beliefs towards Corsican. Although tax concessions granted to the island may well have brought material benefits to the nobility and the trading classes, insofar as language management is concerned, Napoleon and the First Empire were not quite so benevolent. The Consulate and the First Empire sanctioned earlier gallocentric language management decrees, such as the decree of 20 July 1794 which forbade the formal recording

2.6 Empire and the French Century

21

of any act in a language other than French. At the same time, official publications continued to be produced in French alone. Although, as noted above, no official documents had been systematically written in Corsican, this intensified the process of drawing the island out of its Italian linguistic sphere. However, despite public appearances to the contrary, the administration in Paris recognised the peculiarity of Corsica and incorporated a delay into the application of language decrees on the island (Fusina, 1994, 31). This tacit acknowledgement of the unusual status of Corsica within France is one of the few examples of explicit language management in the first half of the nineteenth century. In appreciating the singularity of the island, the State may well have had an impact on language beliefs. Although in terms of Corsican language practices, little changed for the majority of Corsicans, this recognition confirmed the understanding that islanders were not identical to French mainlanders. The sense of a difference between mainland France and Corsica henceforth pervaded relations between the island and successive governments in Paris especially during the twentieth century. During Napoleon’s reign, Corsica was subject to the legislation enacted in Paris, one significant measure being the reform of national administration. Henceforth, any aspiring civil servant needed to demonstrate a mastery of French in order to have their posting confirmed. Lodge (1993, 215) notes the value of Napoleon’s modern state infrastructure, and concludes that this kind of policy was more effective in both extending Paris’ control into the provinces and modifying language practices than the measures introduced as part of the Empire’s language management. Less successful than the civil service at diffusing French across France was the army. Although the role played by the armed forces and by warfare became much more significant in the twentieth century, during Napoleon’s Empire, language practices within the ranks changed little. Weber (1977, 299), who has gathered data on the speech of demobilised servicemen, surmises that many men resumed the use of their heritage language on returning to their homes. Given that Napoleon’s army included regional battalions, many servicemen did not even bother to learn French. Nevertheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, language practices on Corsica were clearly changing. It is therefore relevant to examine the causation for this transition, via a triglossia, from one diglossic community to another. A number of significant extra-linguistic factors played their part in modifying language beliefs to such an extent that language practices actually changed. Indeed, the following pages will advance the opinion that it is a mistake to view the creation of the French – Corsican diglossia solely as the result of relentless language management from Paris, since the roles played by these extra-linguistic factors are of considerable relevance. One factor that played an important role in changing language beliefs was the dramatic advance in communications in the late nineteenth century, not only on the island itself but also between Corsica and France. As noted earlier, at the time of the Revolution, Corsica was almost inaccessible from France during the winter months. Through the hardest of seasons, links between Corsica and mainland Europe were made through the ports of Tuscany and, unsurprisingly, this served to perpetuate the bonds between the island and its Italo-Romance neighbours.

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As transportation developed, it became easier to connect Corsica to France via Nice, Marseille and Toulon and this meant that supplies and, significantly, news – including journals and newspapers – could reach Corsica even in the depths of winter. One consequence of this was the repositioning of the island within a French (as much as an Italian) sphere of influence. Improved communications had a secondary effect upon language practice on Corsica. As it became easier to travel between the mainland and the island, economic migration accelerated. Islanders – oftentimes young men – quit agro-pastoral Corsica and its subsistence farming in order to find work in the burgeoning industrial centres of mainland France. This phenomenon was not limited to Corsica, and the removal of men from a given territory during the one hundred and fifty years leading up to the Great War had a detrimental effect on the use of France’s heritage languages. The impact on Corsican caused by this change in demographics has not yet been fully explored, although its effects can be seen to have been felt most keenly during the first half of the twentieth century. Emigration from the island gathered pace due a combination of circumstances including conscription and factors which made life on the island more difficult: the hardships endured by the majority of agricultural labourers and the overpopulation of fertile micro-regions – namely the Balagne and the Castagniccia. At the same time, considerations beyond the shores of the island, including the demand for manpower to operate the factories of mainland France and the need for citizens to run and manage the country’s colonies, encouraged those already frustrated with island life to quit Corsica (Evêché d’Ajaccio, 1996, 45). As industrialisation gathered pace across Europe, Corsica appeared to be exempted from the developments witnessed elsewhere, which meant that the island did not become a linguistic melting pot, a process experienced by urban centres in mainland France. The fact that this exemption for Corsica did not directly influence language practices was countered by the emigration from the island of young men, the demographic category most often associated with minorised languages in bilingual and diglossic communities.

2.7

2.7.1

Language-in-Education Planning in the Nineteenth Century The Napoleonic Era

One of the aims of this book is to assess to extent to which language-in-education planning for French has been a particularly successful tool in modifying both language beliefs and language practices on Corsica. The significance of the education system in this change has not emerged recently, although it is fair to note that the school system and language-in-education planning were not developed to their full potential until the turn of the twentieth century, something to which we shall return. We have already seen how the Ancien Régime dabbled in language management

2.7 Language-in-Education Planning in the Nineteenth Century

23

within education and began the long campaign in the classroom to bring about the desired shift from Tuscan Italian – Corsican to French. The notion that the school system is a forum for potential conflict has been emphasized elsewhere. Amara and Mar’i (2002, 12) highlight this when they discuss their belief that: ‘They [education systems] are affected by the educational and general policies and ideologies of the State on the one hand, and the identity repertoire of the various ethnic groups with the polity on the other.’ On Corsica, the ideology of the State was that national unity is to be prized above regional identity and this unity should be achieved through monolingualism in French. This contrasts starkly with the language ecology of the islanders, all of whom spoke Corsican, some of whom spoke Tuscan Italian but relatively few of whom (outwith the urban centres or beyond the privileged middle classes) spoke French. Language-in-education management requires school children to improve their proficiency in a given language (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr, 2003, 217). On Corsica, the language ecology was something that successive governments since 1768 have sought to change in order to stress the importance of French and marginalize first Tuscan Italian then Corsican. Corsican, like other heritage languages across France, continued to be used as a vehicle for the teaching of French, although Corsican, like Basque, Breton and Occitan, was never considered as a genuine rival or potential replacement for the standard language. The use of these heritage languages was seen as nothing more than a means to an end. During Napoleon’s reign, success in establishing French as a language for children across the Empire was limited, notably because relatively few children attended school. The measures that might be understood as attempts to remedy this situation include the founding of the Grandes Ecoles and the lycée system. However, not only are these two levels of schooling for young people rather than infants, the constituency for both types of educational establishments was limited, usually to the social groups who already looked favourably on all things French. Whilst the Grandes Ecoles and the lycées are important elements of the developing education system in France, their impact in changing language practices in favour of French was modest. Those who attended these establishments, especially the Grandes Ecoles, did not need, in the eyes of the Empire, to change their language beliefs, since they were already convinced of the prestige and superiority of French. During the early part of the nineteenth century, there were still few schools on Corsica; in 1821, there were 343 schools on the island and in 1884, by the time that the Ferry reforms in education were being felt on the island (see Chapter 3, pages 28–29) there were almost 800 schools, although many of them comprised of only one class in which all children from the surrounding area were taught together. As we intend to establish throughout the rest of this book, the formal education system was exploited to accelerate the assimilation of the island into France by means of changing – at times, ruthlessly – language practices and language beliefs. Despite the inclusion of French in the timetable of the island’s limited schools network, education remained rooted in the Italian sphere of influence. Educated Corsicans continued to look to Tuscan universities for higher education, making it necessary to have a sound mastery of Tuscan Italian, rather than French, to succeed at university in Pisa. This need for Tuscan Italian was reflected in a general reluctance to disengage from the orbit of

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Italian high culture which was also mirrored by the attachment of some – but not all – authors and poets to Tuscan Italian. This persistence with Tuscan Italian was, according to Fusina (1994, 41), maintained by the island’s cultural elite who spoke out in favour of what he refers to as ‘la materna favella’. Not only was education strongly influenced by this Italian cultural ideology, but few children in the towns, let alone those in the rural heartland of the island, attended school on a regular basis. As highlighted above, not only were communications across the island difficult and dangerous (thereby preventing some children from making the journey to an educational establishment in Ajaccio or Bastia) but also there was a long-standing expectation that the sons and daughters of Corsican families would work on the ancestral small-holdings, rather than learn French in a classroom.

2.7.2

The July Monarchy and the Second Empire

There is little evidence of a serious engagement by the new political order with the harder questions of language-in-education policies during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1831, le Comte de Montalivet, Minister for Public Instruction, authorised a practice that had been taking place since the Ancien Régime by acknowledging that Breton should be used in order to teach French as effectively as possible to school pupils in Brittany (Lachuer, 1998, 55). Although this pragmatic approach was never intended to bestow an especial status on Breton, it establishes that, half a century after the Revolution, French was still by no means a language in everyday use in all parts of France and her dependents. Two years later, the then Minister for Public Instruction, François Guizot, introduced a law to found a primary school in every commune in France. However, Paris failed to commit itself fully to this measure and did not make schooling free or compulsory. According to Lodge (1993, 217), this action betrays a lack of commitment to the stated aims of language management that can be dated back to the rise of the Jacobins. Language-in-education planning was not a high priority during the Second Empire, although the most significant measure introduced during this time did advance the method by which French was able to start to squeeze out the heritage languages. In 1853, Napoleon III oversaw the banning of local languages in a decree whose wording exemplifies restrictive language management. The decree, which stated that French should be the only language used in schools, advocated punishments for both schoolmasters and pupils who contravened this measure, thereby galvanising what Giolitto (1984, 74) refers to as the ‘enormous undertaking of linguistic unification’. Despite such a clearly worded decree from the Empire, the teaching of French was not fully effective and the heritage languages persisted as the vernaculars of the home, of the village and of the town. The extension of French was sluggish, to the extent that, as Weber (1977, 501) records, by 1863, one fifth of France’s population of 7.5 million still knew no French. By the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, France was nowhere near achieving the linguistic unity in French that had been advocated since the

Notes

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Revolution. It is true that significant sections of French (including Corsican) society had changed their language practices and used French as their first language. However, language management as undertaken by the different regimes following the Revolution, including the Empire founded by Napoleon, the Corsica-born embodiment of France, was not carried through to its full conclusion, to the extent that the measures enshrined in legislation lacked the provisions to be able to modify language beliefs and, above all, language practices. Almost one hundred years after the Revolution, and despite the urgency with which language ideology was debated, French remained the second language of considerable parts of France, including Corsica.

Notes 1. For a useful historical summary of this period, see Arrighi and Pomponi (1997, 70ff.) 2. Carrington (1984, 66–68, 104) describes this social class at length and charts their rise and fall. 3. See, by way of example, Landau and Kellner-Heinkele (2001, 5, 37, 38) who demonstrate comparable behaviour in Azerbayjan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan during the Soviet era. 4. Arrighi & Pomponi (1997, 80, 81) highlight the rewards of preferment and land bestowed upon those on the island who paid homage to the King and his Council. 5. Grillo (1989, 47) and Hagège (1987, 195) amongst others discuss the Edict at greater length. 6. The attacks on Calvi in the north of the island also resulted in the British naval hero Nelson famously losing an eye. 7. Beer (1977, 144) contrasts the policies of the Crown and the Revolution with regard to the regions of France, especially those on the periphery: ‘The monarchy had been centralized more than any other in Europe, but each province has a special status based on the terms of its union with the crown. The Revolution abolished all these special statuses and replaced the provinces with departments, ruthlessly subjecting all of France to the rule of Paris.’ 8. See Lodge (1993, 198–200) or Schiffman (1996, 98) for a synopsis of the compilation of Grégoire’s report and his aims. 9. This is a rationale that has been referred to previously with regard to an expectation that the Arab community of Israel would learn Hebrew in order to exercise their citizenship rights and responsibilities (Amara & Mar’i, 2002, 56).

Chapter 3

3.1

The Third Republic and a New Century

The Second Empire collapsed at the end of the Franco-Prussian War with the capture of Napoleon III at Sedan and, with its fall and the creation of the Third Republic in 1871, France embraced the ideals of Republicanism once more. The new government’s drive for linguistic and political assimilation across France was a renewed attempt to bind the nation together and to reaffirm the Republican values espoused by the State. Measures were introduced whose effects were initially felt on the mainland and subsequently on Corsica. Within the parameters of language policy on Corsica, the period covered by the Third Republic saw the climax of the model of French language management as outlined thus far. Having, over the course of the nineteenth century, successfully challenged Tuscan Italian for supremacy within the island’s diglossia, the new regime oversaw the widespread start of a language shift from Corsican to French as the home language on the island. Despite attempts to resist the supremacy of French, the national language reached all corners of the Republic. This period can be viewed as the culmination of the ‘French and French alone’ language ideology, although it is important not to overlook extra-linguistic factors which enhanced the position and status of the national standard: the birth of the new Republic coincided with the acceleration of industrialisation and the on-going modernisation of western Europe, both key factors in language shifts across the continent. We shall examine the mechanisms employed and exploited by the most dominant agent in language policy in France – the State – and demonstrate how these devices changed both language beliefs and language practices on Corsica. This chapter characterises the final elements of the contextualisation of a sea change in the dynamics in language policy on Corsica which took place during the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, this chapter will seek to demonstrate how Corsica’s unique position and history within the French Republic played a significant part in the language practices of the islanders. In outlining what we know of language beliefs during the Third Republic, we shall recognise the significant developments which served to fashion the islanders’ – and, in particular, the language activists’ – response during the latter part of the twentieth century. R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

27

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Chapter 3

In terms of language management, the founding of the Third Republic resulted in no change of direction from the administration that had gone before. From Paris, the French State continued its monolingual language ideology unwaveringly. The loss of the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia realised a fear that had existed in France since the Revolution – that the integrity of the country could not be guaranteed. The transfer of sovereignty of these two regions demonstrated that peripheral parts of the nation were liable to secession, albeit in this case as part of an international treaty. This served to give support to a perceived necessity in Paris for unity in the face of external threats. In the eyes of France’s new ruling classes, this unity would be facilitated by the establishment of a modern, monolingual nation state. There were, therefore, no calls to change the kind of language management advocated by successive Paris governments since the Revolution. Language-in-education strategies continued to tolerate French and French alone in France’s schools, although, as we will see below, the application of this particular tactic was not as straightforward on Corsica as it might have been on the French mainland. Simultaneously, the programme of building state schools continued and a representation of the government in Paris arrived in the remotest communes of France, including the Corsican interior.

3.2 3.2.1

Ferry and Language-in-Education Policies The National Stage

The watershed in language-in-education planning came during the Third Republic. Jules Ferry, Minister of Public Instruction, successfully addressed the question of how to utilise the national education system to benefit the aims of this Republic with a series of education laws between 1881 and 1882. Since the Revolution, attempts had been made to create a successful education system, but schools had failed to achieve their potential because of the financial burden placed on parents and the lack of a legal obligation for children to attend. Ferry instituted an education system that was to be free, obligatory and secular and whose impact, as we shall see below, was to be considerable. Schools became local centres for the gallicisation of France, where the principles of the Republic were taught and whence the French language was to be spread (Lachuer, 1998, 47). In creating this school system, the Third Republic stressed the importance of the schoolteacher and shifted local power within communities away from the parish priest, scourge of the anti-clerical Establishment, and onto the shoulders of the instituteur, who has since become an iconic figure in France’s heritage. Instituteurs, immortalised as ‘the black hussars’,1 were posted to most communes in France to establish a network of schools. Given their status as civil servants and their prestigious training, instituteurs were perceived as the embodiment of the State and found themselves at the forefront of bringing Ile-deFrance French to the entire population. They were also expected to be standard bearers for national unity, using French as their only language and thus putting into

3.2 Ferry and Language-in-Education Policies

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practice the Jacobin ideal of equating one nation with one language. In essence, the school teacher was to personify the modernisation of France – by which was understood the centralisation of a modern State through its one national language (Genouvrier, 1986, 31). In terms of language policy, the creation of this free and compulsory school system meant that the Third Republic, building on language laws established since the Edict of Villers-Cotterêts, embarked upon a twofold strategy within education. Schools aimed to effect a substantial change in language beliefs by undermining France’s heritage languages and demonstrating the usefulness and modernity of French. At the same time, the school system deliberately sought to manipulate language practices by forbidding the use of languages other than French and by punishing children who uttered anything in the heritage language. For the first time, because the State had finally established the proper mechanism by which it could directly and incontrovertibly do so, language management in France was having a direct impact on both language beliefs and language practices.

3.2.2

The Corsican Dimension

At this stage in the evolution of language policy on Corsica, it is important to review language practices in education on the island. As discussed in Chapter 2, through the Ancien Régime and into the early years of Republican France, education on the island remained a domain in which Tuscan Italian was used. There were few educational establishments on the island, and those that existed were attended by the island’s elite, whose first language in the classroom would be Tuscan Italian. That the infrastructure for which Jules Ferry had legislated took longer to establish on Corsica than on the mainland was due, in no small measure, to the difficult topography of the island, with its scattered and difficult to access mountain villages. Such were the difficulties attendant in reaching the isolated villages of the Corsican interior that, when schools were built, they often represented the first contact between Corsicans and the French State. By the end of the nineteenth century, a key effect of Ferry’s reforms was that children of all social classes were expected to attend school. Beyond the urban centres of Ajaccio and Bastia, this meant that children whose families had received no formal education and who would rarely, if ever, have had recourse to Tuscan Italian in their daily lives, entered the H domain of the state school system. The elimination of Tuscan Italian from its H position may thus be seen to have been achieved not by the changing of language practices of generations of schooled families but by the introduction of State-funded universal education. Attendance at the new schools across the island was not as universal as Ferry and his supporters had intended. Pellegrinetti and Rovere (2004) suggest that, by the end of the nineteenth century, 6,000 of the 38,092 children registered in schools on Corsica were regularly not attending, with records citing the poor state of some of the buildings and the need of an extra pair of hands at home to help mind livestock or to harvest olives or chestnuts as reasons for absenteeism. Those who did attend school regularly were not taught solely in French. As is testified in reports by schools inspectors, schools were not vacuums in which no Corsican was heard. Combined with

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strategies – such as the establishment of the French civil service on the island – to disengage the island from an Italian cultural sphere of influence, the admission of non-Tuscan Italian speakers into the school system and the strict rules on language practices in schools sealed the fate of Tuscan Italian in the island’s triglossia.

3.3

Corsica’s Linguistic Landscape

In terms of language practices on the island, one of the key domains in which Tuscan Italian was used, until the aggressive gallicisation of the island, was in writing. This meant that whenever language appeared in writing in the public sphere on Corsica, it would have been in Tuscan Italian. In other words, until the end of the eighteenth century, Tuscan Italian prevailed in the island’s linguistic landscape. The linguistic landscape is emerging as an important mechanism in language policy, whereby the public space of a given territory is managed by public authorities or individuals and consequently marks the power relationship between languages in contact (Shohamy, 2006, 112). This manipulation of the linguistic landscape has been examined in recent case studies in Canada, Israel/Palestine and Japan, and its significance has been highlighted within language policy (Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Ben Rafael et al., 2006; Shohamy, 2006; Backhaus, 2007). The linguistic landscape of a given territory can be managed by ‘topdown’ items, introduced into the public space by officials from national or comparable bodies, and includes names of buildings, sites, institutions and road signs. At the same time, ‘bottom-up’ items, produced by small businesses and members of the public, compete to mark the public space with signs for shops, offices, factories and also private announcements (Ben Rafael et al., 2006, 14). Together, ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ items constitute a symbolic representation of languages in contact. As well as changing the education system in France fundamentally, thereby starting the transformation of language beliefs and practices on Corsica, the Third Republic accelerated the gallicisation of the linguistic landscape on the island. Attempts to govern Corsica’s linguistic landscape have been recorded during the period and can be seen to be closely linked to local perspectives towards the French State. During the Second Empire, a strong Bonapartist tendency had emerged on Corsica (Arzalier, 1990, 32) and within the Corsican political elite, the Bonapartists were in direct conflict with those who sought to establish definitively a Republic in France after the fall of Napoleon III.2 It is important to clarify that this political struggle was not a battle between pro-French and anti-French groupings, and was not a forerunner for the nationalist movements which have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. However, the Republican movement used the public space on Corsica in a way which reinforced the language ideology of the Third Republic, not only by actualising Republican philosophies but also by following the long-established language attitudes of the State. For example, the credo of the Third Republic was consecrated with the establishment of the annual 14 July celebrations to commemorate the liberation of the Bastille prison in Paris.3 The public space was marked in ways not dissimilar to those used today across France, including the display

3.4 Extra-linguistic Factors in Language Beliefs and Practices

31

of tricolour flags and the staging of parades and firework displays. Importantly, however, the French language appeared in this public space with the erection of shields emblazoned with the initials ‘RF’ – République française (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 125, 126). This small signal exemplifies the emergence of the linguistic landscape as an important mechanism within language policy on Corsica.

3.4

Extra-linguistic Factors in Language Beliefs and Practices

By the end of the nineteenth century the three-way relationship between Tuscan Italian, French and Corsican had been transformed. Over the course of this century, French had, in part because of its central role in language-in-education planning, established its position within a new triglossia and neutered its rival H language. French governed the domains of administration, the civil service and the judicial system on the island, and francophones were appointed to all the significant posts within these areas. Despite having been used in these areas for centuries, Tuscan Italian was forced out of the domains normally reserved for an H language. The urban elites and middle classes, although by no means as numerous as their equivalents across mainland France, used French extensively, as evidenced by what has been described as the ‘golden age of the island’s press’ (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 152). Over two hundred French-language titles appeared in print during the Third Republic, suggesting a viable market for such publications. This urban middle class were not only able to read in French but prepared to pay for newspapers in the language of the Republic. Language practices for this section of the island’s population changed decisively over the course of the nineteenth century, when Tuscan Italian was abandoned in favour of French. It is not clear, however, that this change resulted from the language management strategies emanating from Paris. For the majority, Corsican remained the L variety, although it now belonged to a different branch of the Romance family to the H language. Up until the time of the Great War, the use of French for L functions, such as everyday conversations, would have seemed unusual, even amongst those whose professional lives required French (Marchetti, 1989, 204). As a policy pursued by the French State, the gallicisation of Corsica had stumbled through the nineteenth century, although language beliefs and practices with regard to Tuscan Italian had changed irreversibly and French had managed to emasculate its first linguistic rival. Nevertheless, despite Tuscan Italian’s retreat from linguistic practice, the new Republic of Italy remained a point of reference for Corsicans into the twentieth century. Although language beliefs and practices for Corsica’s elite and middle classes changed decisively over the nineteenth century, Corsican was not removed from the island’s linguistic repertoire. Even as late as the middle of the twentieth century, it was not unusual to find monolingual corsophones in the island’s interior. However, it is clear that language beliefs were modifying and, to understand this shift in favour of French, it is important to show how language management alone was not responsible for this development. A number of significant extra-linguistic

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factors had a direct impact on language beliefs which, in many cases, prompted a change in language practices. Some of these factors can be broadly described as economic, but it is unwise to dismiss them as such without properly interpreting their circumstances. It is now broadly accepted that one of the most compelling reasons to change one’s own language practices is the potential for economic advancement. As the twentieth century advanced it became clear to most Corsicans that a mastery of French would lead to employment with security in, for example, both the home and colonial civil service or the armed forces. The establishment of the French civil service on the island meant that, for the first time, it became possible to earn a living by means other than working the land, which – on Corsica in particular – was a hard job under difficult circumstances. Colonna d’Istria (1997, 55) highlights the significance of the prospect of a regular income from a secure job: In one fell swoop, so to speak, for one of the first times in their history, Corsicans discovered that there was another way of earning a living other than by the sweat of their brow. They discovered the anaesthetic charms of subsidies, compensation, pensions – both civilian and military; they sampled the certainty of secure jobs, the virtues of a regular salary, the advantages of “social security”.

Given the acknowledged immovability of the French State, these advantages would only be on offer to those who would take them up in French. Those who sought to make the most of these opportunities, like the ‘new élite’ (Carrington, 1995, 14) before them, would change their language practices – and thereby their language beliefs – in order to benefit in the ways outlined by Colonna d’Istria. The decisions made by those seeking to join the civil service or the armed forces were also the decisions that, critically, they made for the next generation. The island’s fledgling middle classes could see the possibilities offered by French – as opposed to Tuscan Italian or Corsican – and also wanted their children to enjoy them. It is worth noting that work offered by the civil service, including those branches which managed France’s colonies, was particularly attractive to Corsicans. There are apocryphal tales of Corsicans running France’s Empire in all four corners of the globe but more reliable data is provided by Guigue (1965). Although she does not claim that all of those she has identified were civil servants, she notes that, according to the 1948 census of Algeria, 37.3% of the non-Muslim population of that particular colony were born on Corsica. Throughout the duration of the Third Republic, the potential benefits of using the French language highlighted above were extended beyond the usual hubs of Ajaccio and Bastia thanks to the continuing improvements in communication on the island and especially with the construction of the island’s railway. Transportation had begun to have an indirect impact on language beliefs from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards as improved communications, both on Corsica itself and between the island and mainland France, had strengthened the links between the State and its island territory. Arrighi and Pomponi (1997, 100) describe the visit to the island by Napoleon III aboard a steamship in 1860 as a demonstration of the fact that Corsica was moving into a French sphere of influence. With the creation of the railway on Corsica, some time behind the expansion of the rail network on the mainland, the French State

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was brought to small and isolated staging posts on the route between Ajaccio and Bastia, via Corte. Pellegrinetti and Rovere (2004, 119) note that the establishment of this line – and its branch line that linked Corte in the interior to Calvi on the north-west coast – was viewed as a strategy for encouraging the attachment of Corsica to the Third Republic and the government in Paris. Indirectly, the arrival of the railway took the French language to parts of the island’s interior in a way that complemented the arrival of the instituteur. Even before the Ajaccio-Bastia line was completed, French President Sadi Carnot visited the island and travelled part of the way between these two urban centres by train, physically reinforcing the presence of France in rural Corsica. The entire length of the route was operable from December 1894, and this achievement was celebrated with banners, flag-waving, and speeches – delivered to honour the Republic and the Prime Minister, and in French, not Corsican (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 120). We have already noted in Chapter 2 that the armed forces and the wars in which they engaged were not particularly successful in helping implement a language shift from Corsican to French during the eighteenth century. The Great War, however, had a considerably different effect, both in terms of language practices and language beliefs. The conduct of Corsicans serving in the Great War – the undisputable demonstration of loyalty to France made by Corsican soldiers – also had an impact on more general attitudes to the island. Corsicans distinguished themselves in numerous battles, including those of the Somme and Verdun. Figures vary for the number of men who enlisted in the army. Colonna d’Istria (1997, 69) writes that up to 50,000 Corsicans volunteered to serve whereas Pellegrinetti & Rovere (2004, 219) put the figure at almost 40,000, in addition to the 2,500 men already serving professionally. The tally of Corsicans who lost their lives during the four years of conflict is somewhere between 20,000 (Carrington, 1984, 295) and 25,000 (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 226). The proportion of those who died in action is particularly high, reaching 37.5% according to Pellegrinetti & Rovere (2004, 226), a significantly higher figure than the national average of 16.3%. This enormous loss left a profound impression on Corsica in emotional and also in economic terms. The depopulation of the island, especially the interior, had a significant effect on the economic life of Corsica which, as recorded in government reports before the Great War, was already in difficulty. The labour lost by the enlistment of thousands of men also changed the role of women on Corsica, as across Western Europe, at this time. The departure of men accelerated the process of language shift on the island. It is now almost axiomatic to assert that men are usually associated with local dialects and are reluctant to abandon low-status speech forms, whilst women tend towards the standard. As a result of the shift in gender balance on the island, language beliefs were susceptible to an even more dramatic shift away from Corsican and towards the national standard. There are no data on Corsican language beliefs during this period, but it is fair to reason that the social upheaval that was the result of the war was part of the causation for the widespread shift to French and away from Corsican (even as an L language). At the same time, in the ranks of France’s army, language beliefs were also susceptible

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to change. As already observed in the Franco-Prussian War, due in no small measure to the existence of local and regional units in which the soldiers served alongside other citizens from their own regions, the armed forces were not particularly successful as a school for French. The Great War, with its unprecedented number of casualties and fatalities, forced a change in the way units were formed in the army. Weber (1977, 78, 79) draws attention to the fact that, ‘At the start [of the Great War] men were mustered into local units and so could rely on their familiar patois. But as the war went on, new units were set up with the survivors of decimated ones and old units were bolstered with recruits from every corner of the country. Men had no choice but to speak French. And they did. Many continued to do so at home on leave or after demobilisation.’ For victory, it became crucial that the armed forces used French. Non-francophone citizens who enlisted for military service soon realised that France’s heritage languages were stigmatised, their speakers deemed backward peasants. Language practices in the armed forces changed not as a result of direct language management but because of the negative attitudes towards the heritage languages held by men in the front line. In her analysis of Breton, Kuter (1989, 81) observes how this change in language beliefs occurred: The lack of French which had been a problem in schools was once again a social handicap in the army. Most Bretons entering the army learned that without French they were powerless. […] World War I is cited as an important turning point in the use of Breton. Returning soldiers tended to switch to French within their family, hoping to spare their children the humiliation and lack of power they had suffered in the non-Breton world.

In addition to being motivated by a desire to improve the status of their families, servicemen, because of the esteem in which they were held after the war, endowed the national standard with some distinction on their return to their homes. This is another extra-linguistic factor which modified language beliefs by raising the prestige of French and was not limited to Breton but felt in all corners of France where a heritage language was spoken.

3.5

Language Activism and the Seeds of Regionalism

A main aim of this study is to demonstrate that the status and position of the languages used on Corsica at the beginning of the twenty-first century are not solely the result of dictatorial language management on the part of the French State. A significant factor contributing to contemporary language behaviour on Corsica is the existence of dedicated language activists whose prominence in popular mythmaking appears to date from the 1970s. In fact, although it achieved its greatest exposure at the end of the twentieth century, the question of the fate of the Corsican language was first publicly articulated at the end of the nineteenth century. With the publication of a weekly journal dedicated to Corsican affairs in 1896, language activism on Corsica emerged and began its long-standing influence on language

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policy as we understand it in this case study. Santu Casanova (who was baptised Pierre-Toussaint Casanova but preferred to use the corsicanised version of his name) launched A Tramuntana fresca e sana to criticise what he perceived to be the deplorable state of Corsica’s economic, political and social standing, castigating the French Republic for its mismanagement of the island and highlighting the damage caused by the centralising, gallicising tendencies of the State. Notably, Casanova produced A Tramuntana – named after a cold and dry northerly wind – in Corsican, a decision which set the journal apart from the flourishing French language press on the island. Although Casanova’s reputation and prominence have not weathered well, on account of his xenophobia, anti-semitism and enthusiastic support for Mussolini, his personal significance as Corsican’s first language activist, and that of the tradition he established should not be trivialised. Language activism has been a feature of the language situation on Corsica from the end of the nineteenth century and has played a key part in what we understand as language policy on the island. It has shaped language beliefs since the days of Casanova, especially during periods when the prestige of Corsican was waning. In terms of language practices it has embraced – to differing degrees at differing times – the use of the heritage language. Finally, it has directly influenced language management as pursued by the French Republic, and its supporters have engaged in the revitalisation and normalisation of Corsican over the course of the past century. As a phenomenon at the end of the nineteenth century, language activism was not limited to Corsica and comparable fledgling movements developed in Brittany and the Basque country. Within the context of this study, the work of Casanova is worthy of discussion, not least because he remains the emblematic founding father of Corsican language activism. One of the most significant acts undertaken by Casanova was to carry Corsican out of its traditional domains within the diglossia and to use it within the symbolic H domain of formal writing. As outlined above, until the application by the Ancien Régime of language laws, anything written on the island was likely to have been written in Tuscan Italian. It would certainly have been particularly unusual to write in Corsican, something which makes Casanova’s actions particularly significant. The production of A Tramuntana in Corsican promotes the heritage language within the island’s diglossia and increases its power in its relationship with the H language. While this act does not threaten French, it does serve to increase the prestige of Corsican and demonstrates to islanders and mainlanders alike that the heritage language is not limited to oral use. Although comparatively limited in its readership (and therefore not pretending to affect all islanders), the appearance of A Tramuntana did change language practices amongst its readership in that, perhaps for the first time, its audience read in Corsican. The symbolic implication of A Tramuntana and of the ideas expressed in the journal by Casanova was that the heritage language emerged as a key marker in the cultural identity of Corsica (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 235). In direct contrast to the Republic’s mantra of ‘one nation, one language’, the use of the heritage language to define Corsican identity initiated the successive movements that have come to be known as regionalism, autonomism and nationalism.

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Although the Great War can be seen to have had a positive impact on language practices and beliefs towards French, extra-linguistic factors again contributed to the status of Corsican in the period between the first and second world wars. The collective bereavement born out of the slaughter of the Great War, the increasing economic hardships, and the accelerated depopulation of the island caused by economic emigration, nurtured a feeling of uneasiness and dissatisfaction on Corsica at this time.4 Whilst the French language enjoyed a higher prestige thanks to the social and economic benefits it brought to those who spoke it, the climate of discontent nourished the growth of what subsequently became known as regionalism, an ideology which has had a significant bearing upon language policy. Despite the appearance of a few editions in 1919, Casanova’s A Tramuntana had, to all intents and purposes, ceased publication in 1914. Casanova’s role within island life was filled by another notable language activist, Petru Rocca, who positioned himself as Casanova’s heir. Rocca became another key language activist in the pantheon of dedicated supporters of the Corsican language. He published – first in Paris in 1920 and then in Ajaccio two years later – A Muvra, a successor journal to A Tramuntana, named in symbolic honour of the goat, a creature found across Corsica. A Muvra criticised the French Republic for its mismanagement of the island in terms comparable to those used by Casanova. Rocca conceived (as part of his political movement Partitu Corsu d’Azione) the philosophy of le corsisme (best translated as ‘Corsicanism’) which sought to reinvigorate Corsica intellectually, socially and economically. In terms re-employed by autonomists and nationalists across the twentieth century, Rocca attacked France and the spirit of the Revolution for ruining the island’s economy, for depopulating the interior, for secularising a devout community and for spilling Corsican blood in the name of the Republic (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 243–244). Just as Casanova invoked the Corsican language as part of Corsican identity, after thirty more years of accelerated assimilation Rocca highlighted what he perceived to be the superiority of the heritage language and called for its formal teaching within the school system, the first of such claims that would become a central pillar of nationalist demands throughout the century. In 1924, Rocca also instituted the celebratory rallies known as merendelle which, based on the tradition of Easter Monday picnics, grappled with issues of linguistic or cultural identity. These meetings sought to debate language and other matters with a view to guiding both language attitudes and practices, and were events where, for example, the regularisation of Corsican spelling was discussed (Fusina, 1994, 117). In the interlude between the two world wars, regionalism established itself on the island and promoted the Corsican language as part of its manifesto. These regionalists, with their use of Corsican, attempted language management in favour of Corsican. Imitating the mechanisms used by the French State, the poet Antoine Versini (who took the pen name Maistrale) founded a Corsican language academy, L’Academia corsa, in Ajaccio while, in Bastia, the language societies Lingua Corsa and Salvatore Viale (named after the Corsican poet who produced work in Corsican) were set up. Committed language activists established organisations which acknowledged the minorised position of Corsican in island society and

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aimed to defend the language. Without the authority of the Republic, language management was never going to succeed to the extent of strategies pursued by successive French governments. Nevertheless, these associations and bodies did much more than merely ape their French-language counterparts. From the establishment of A Tramuntana, momentum had been gathering for the promotion of Corsican and was having some limited effect upon language practices and beliefs. While support for the regionalist movements, whose rhetoric became increasingly autonomist, was not particularly widespread, the profile of Corsican was lifted above the position it had enjoyed during the nineteenth century. Although Corsican was not threatening to fill the space left by the neutralisation of Tuscan Italian, language activists were demonstrating with increasingly loud voices that the heritage language was an asset not a hindrance. The recital of Corsican folk songs, proverbs and tales flourished at this time (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 240) and A Muvra, despite its autonomist leanings, was taken by thousands of Corsican households who enjoyed its representations of Corsican cultural identity (Arzalier, 1990, 48). Coti (2007, 105) argues that it was the island’s educated middle class that constituted the greater part of the readership of A Muvra but adds that the journal was also taken by the rural and urban upper working classes as well as priests. A Muvra was particularly important, within the frame of reference of this study, in its publication of material in Corsican. In addition to recording proverbs and sayings, A Muvra was a major repository for poetry in the heritage language, as well as a sponsor of translations of classic works, such as plays by Plautus (Coti, 2007, 110). The journal also managed its own small theatre company, U Teatru di a Muvra, that staged plays in Corsican. As such, the magazine made significant contributions to the recording and dissemination of written and spoken material in the heritage language, confirming its position as a key collection of language activists.

3.6

Language Beliefs and the Spectre of Mussolini

The 1930s on Corsica constituted yet another period of upheaval, change and instability. The autonomists, speaking in Corsican, began to change the nature of their use of the island’s heritage language. Instead of serving merely as one of the languages of communication for L functions, using Corsican started to become a political gesture – an attribute that its use can still retain today. To speak Corsican outwith a domestic environment identified the speaker with a specific political standpoint. Desanti (2001, 103–105) argues that, as the outbreak of war approached, the language activists and, more specifically, authors writing in Corsican, divided into three distinct groupings. Petru Rocca’s journal A Muvra was initially identified with the ‘Corsicanists’, regionalists who lamented what they saw as the unquestioned assimilation of the island and its culture into metropolitan France. The second category included activists who cherished Corsica’s peculiarity, accepting the island’s position within France, rather than perceiving Paris as an oppressor. This movement,

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known as the ‘Cyrnéistes’ (after the Greek name for the island, Kyrn), was associated with the production of the journal L’Annu Corsu (The Corsican Year). According to Desanti (2001, 115), L’Annu Corsu initially presented itself as an anthology of regionalist writers. However, when regionalism became inextricably linked with the more extreme A Muvra, the journal’s title was translated into French and published as L’Année Corse. The final grouping of language activists and writers comprised those who subscribed to irredentism. Irredentism, Mussolini’s philosophy of the reclaiming of lands – such as Corsica, Nice, Savoie and Tunisia – which, he argued, had been taken from Italy (Colonna d’Istria, 1997, 132), found support amongst Corsica’s elite. Rovere (2000, 35) argues that irredentism on Corsica emerged from the Corsicanist movement and badly damaged its reputation by embracing a stance that was anti-Semitic, anti-Communist and prejudiced against those known to be freemasons. Irredentism was firmly rejected by those who identified themselves with both Corsican cultural identity and the French nation. Such figures included Maistrale who quit the muvristes when he feared that A Muvra’s links with irredentism were becoming too close. It is reasonable to assert that, during the inter-war period, language activists helped shape language beliefs through their associations with the various different political movements of the period. Martel (2001, 9) describes the heritage languages of France as being at a ‘dangerous crossroads’ at this time, since some language activists were susceptible to movements – such as Fascism – association with which, we can identify with hindsight, posed a threat to the status of the languages. It is clear that Corsican can be included amongst those languages whose speakers and supporters had difficult decisions to make at this time. Martel highlights the potential attraction of the enemy of one’s own enemy, especially given the linguistic and geographic proximity of Italy to Corsica and in the light of language management in favour of French, to demonstrate the reasoning of Corsican language activists who supported irredentism. However, while Pasqualini (1990, 60) argues that a large number of Corsicans, notably the island’s intelligentsia, were sympathetic to irredentism, Arzalier (1990, 63) concludes that only a minority of islanders were interested in greater ties with Italy. As the 1930s advanced, A Muvra, from its original ideological position, became increasingly identified with irredentism. In 1931, for example, the journal’s almanac featured the image on its cover of Corsica as a woman in chains, looking towards Rome for help (Ory, 1980, 170). While the language activists and regionalists were aligning themselves with these three loosely defined movements, it is necessary to recall that, by the 1930s – if not since before the turn of the century – Corsica was a French island where the majority of the population considered themselves to be French citizens, as well as Corsicans. It is important, therefore, not to allow the manoeuvring of these three groupings to distort the widespread identification on the island of Corsica with France. Corsicans in the main saw themselves as part of la Grande Patrie, even if distinguishing characteristics, such as their L language, differentiated them from their compatriots in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Biarritz and Besançon. This attachment to France was not merely theoretical, since there is evidence that, as tensions escalated across Europe, Corsicans demonstrated the depth of their bond with France. In December 1938, islanders publicly declared their loyalty to France in what has

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become known as ‘the Bastia sermon’. Thousands of Bastiais gathered at the city’s memorial to the fallen of the Great War to declare their resolve to live and die as citizens of France (Arrighi & Pomponi, 1997, 110). That this popular demonstration has become known as ‘the Bastia sermon’ detracts from the fact that, simultaneously, identical declarations were being made across the island in Ajaccio, Corte, Bonifacio and Propriano, bringing a total number of 50,000 Corsicans, according to Pellegrinetti and Rovere (2004, 294), onto the island’s streets to display their attachment to la Grande Patrie. Therefore, despite the significance of the machinations of the three movements identified by Desanti, the principal frame of reference for the island’s population at the outbreak of the Second World War was that of an island firmly anchored within the French State. Language beliefs during the 1930s were influenced by the relationship that existed between the island and the Italian peninsula. As noted above, despite the emasculation of Tuscan Italian within the linguistic repertoire on the island, Italy retained a noticeable influence over Corsica. This leverage was maintained by a number of methods. Mussolini subsidised two high-quality magazines (Corsica Antica e Moderna and l’Archivo Storico di Corsica) which had a limited readership on the island, but a greater audience in Italy. Mussolini’s son-in-law, Ciano, devoted one page a week of his Italian daily Il Telegrafo to news from Corsica (Arzalier, 1990, 63) and L’Almanacco Popolare di Corsica was also published in Italy. It is even alleged that Mussolini’s agents supported A Muvra financially at this time, although evidence for this is lacking (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 247–248). What can be substantiated is the provision of a small number of bursaries for Corsican students to study in Italy, thus continuing the long tradition of islanders completing their education on the Italian peninsula. During this decade, it is possible to detect in France a perceived connection between the Corsican language and Italian irredentism, a myth that Coti (2007, 289–301) seeks to dispel. Fusina (1994, 86) notes the ‘easy confusion’ between language activism and the claims of Italian irredentism. Under such circumstances, language beliefs towards Corsican were liable to further pressure. Already set against the ascendancy of French and its post-war prestige, Corsican could be seen to be in opposition to French at a time when the heritage language was identified with Mussolini’s actions. The French language had provided those who spoke it with an opportunity to earn a regular income and achieve financial stability. Corsican itself had become the minorised language in a diglossic relationship with French. In pitting Corsican against French and in transforming the speaking of heritage language into a political statement in itself, positive language beliefs towards Corsican (and subsequently language practices) were challenged by those on the island and the mainland who recognised the hegemony of French.

3.7

War, Occupation and the Myth of a Latin Brotherhood

The Second World War was the cause of unparalleled upheaval across France. Much has been published on the progress of the war in civilian France, many examinations into Vichy France have appeared and France’s mistakes and successes

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have been analysed at length. It is important, however, to trace how the conflict also served as a context for language policy and came to affect the three strands of language management, language beliefs and language practices. The threat of war had appeared on the horizon sometime before 1939 and the increased tension this created both on the island and between sections of the Corsican and Italian populations had an impact on language policy. By the time Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the politically active on the island, in addition to the mainstream parties, were able to identify themselves with one of the three strands of regionalism described above. Of these strands of regionalism, irredentism was, according to the majority of scholars, a minority position but was not discredited until later during the war and not before some Corsicanists had moved to join the movement. The majority of islanders saw themselves as French and this identity provides an essential backcloth to the evolution of language policy during this bleak period. After the rapid capitulation of France, the armistice signed with Hitler’s Germany divided the country into two basic sections with some smaller partitions including the occupation of a strip of south-eastern Alpine France by Mussolini’s Italian troops. Despite the overtures made by Fascist Italy, which dated from 1938 when parliamentarians, led by Ciano, the Foreign Secretary, clamoured for the island and Tunisia to be claimed by Rome, Corsica remained part of unoccupied France under the terms of the armistice. A new France emerged from the peace treaty signed with Germany, whereby the ‘French State’ replaced the Republic and established its capital in unoccupied France at the spa town of Vichy. From there, Marshal Philippe Pétain, hero of the Great War, organised his National Revolution which was to be a transformation of western France. As part of this National Revolution, Pétain recoined the national motto of ‘Liberty, Equality and Freedom’ to focus instead in a new maxim on ‘Work, Family and the Homeland’. This new direction in the administration of France had a fundamental influence on language policy on Corsica. The preoccupations of the population of Corsica were different to those of the majority of the islanders’ mainland compatriots during the first years of the 1940s. On Corsica, the greatest fear was occupation by Mussolini’s Italian troops rather than the threat posed by the Nazis. Corsican attachment to and faith in Pétain was borne of the hope that he alone would prevent the Italian invasion of the island (Chaubin, 2000, 6). This conviction was the most significant preoccupation on the island, although the policies pursued during the earlier years of the National Revolution resonated to a certain extent amongst the islanders. Although the Vichy regime had many challenges with which to contend during its short existence, Pétain and his government tackled a range of social issues which exemplified the administration’s interest in its domestic priorities. Although by no means a regionalist in the terms that we have seen thus far in this case study, Pétain did encourage the regions in a way that was not seen during the zealous centralising years of the Third Republic. Not only did Pétain personally demonstrate support for the Occitan movement when it celebrated the anniversary of Frédéric Mistral’s birth (Jackson, 2001, 150) but Vichy engaged in language management favourable to the heritage languages. The teaching of optional classes in the heritage languages

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was permitted and aspects of local cultures were to be incorporated into school timetables as part of the regionalist agenda of the Pétain Revolution. Gregory (1995, 128) records the support for the teaching of Corsican and the island’s culture given by M. Martini, headmaster of the Ecole du Centre de Bastia in a newspaper article of 1942. During the Third Republic, it would have been unthinkable for a ‘black hussar’ to declare publicly their support for formal appearance of a heritage language in a classroom. These were, however, exceptionally unusual times. It is important not to misrepresent Vichy France as a champion of Breton, Basque or Catalan, nor was this wartime interlude particularly propitious in terms of language beliefs or language practices. Coti (2007, 162) notes that on Corsica, autonomism was not tolerated and Rocca disappeared from the political scene, imprisoned in 1940 for his unpatriotic writings in A Muvra dating back to 1938. Furthermore, the support for regionalism by a regime which was discredited after the end of the Second World War did not serve the cause of the heritage languages well during the late 1940s and the 1950s. Pétain’s Vichy encouraged a return to time-honoured ways of life which included an emphasis on agriculture rather than industry and on tradition rather than modernity (Gregory, 1995, 126). Such principles resonated particularly strongly with regionalists on Corsica since they characterised the traditional Corsican existence that was rapidly being dismantled by the advances of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the impact that such an agenda had upon language practices and language beliefs was tempered significantly by the conditions of the time. Within the context of a threatened occupation which only a few perceived as unification of a Latin brotherhood (see, for example, the cases highlighted by Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 293) and set against the prospect of disappearing supplies of provisions, the use of Corsican was not a high priority amongst islanders, although this attitude did not necessarily represent language beliefs during the Second World War. Such a visible lack of commitment to the heritage language should not be understood as ambivalence amongst Corsicans towards the Corsican.5 It is much more appropriate to recall that the fate of territories annexed by the Axis powers was well known across Europe (thanks to bodies such as the BBC) and Corsicans did not wish to endure another colonisation by an aggressive neighbour. There is no evidence that language beliefs towards Corsican changed as a result of the linguistic closeness between the heritage language and Tuscan Italian. On the other hand, an identification with French (which would inevitably come at a cost to Corsican) was a statement of beliefs in itself, since it not only reinforced a sense of unity during the earlier years of the Vichy regime, but later the French language came to be associated with de Gaulle’s Free France and the Resistance movements which emerged across the country. Language beliefs towards French, therefore, rose amongst those who continued to resist the irredentist calls for Latin unification across the Tyrrhenian Sea. French was already held in high esteem by the majority of the islanders and used for virtually all formal interactions. In the political arena, most of the administration of the island was undertaken in French. However, as French came increasingly came to represent the values cherished by Corsicans rather than those espoused by Hitler, Mussolini and their supporters, the national

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standard began to eclipse the heritage language in L domains, as language practices evolved in the towns and also in the villages. There is no evidence that Corsican was discredited to any particular extent, either before or during the Italian occupation of the island. Part of Pétain’s strategy for organising the new ‘French State’ was the creation of units of men, some of which were paramilitary, others comprised of veterans. The young were not excluded from these organisations and ‘The Companions of France’ were founded on the island as a youth movement. As Gregory (1995, 108) notes, these movements had Italo-Romance mottos – such as «Sempre nanzu!» (‘Forever forward!’ in Corsican) or «Morte al nemico!» (‘Death to the enemy!’ in Italian) – and were named after heroes from Corsica’s past, such as Sampiero, the notable Corsican soldier and mercenary. The profile of Corsican, therefore, was maintained in the linguistic landscape by Vichy France, despite the dwindling support for the Marshal and his regime. At the start of the war, Italy had formally established eleven legations on the island (Coti, 2007, 67), famously referred to by the Corsican Commandant Paul Silvani as ‘the punch in the back’ (Chaubin, 2005, 19). In nominally establishing a power base on the island, albeit surreptitiously, the Italians were accused of betraying their Latin brothers. In November 1942, despite the French State’s claims to the contrary, Italian occupying forces arrived on the island and the difficult period of occupation began. The unification of Latin brothers, envisaged by Corsican irredentists, did not materialise, and the Italian occupation of the island was not considered by Mussolini’s fascists as a liberation of a people subjugated by France, but merely as a strategic territorial gain (Coti, 2007, 102). Within months, the Italian secret police, the OVRA, were established on the island and running a campaign of surveillance and intimidation, often carrying out reprisals for skirmishes between the fledging Resistance and the Italian troops (Chaubin, 2000, 13). As the occupation was consolidated, the 80,000 Italian soldiers, supported by 10,000 German stormtroopers (Silvani, 1976, 20) began to starve the island by demanding supplies for themselves. The combination of the Occupation, the violent reprisals and the requisitioning of food crystallised attitudes on the island. All things associated with Italy were discredited, including the Italian language, thereby signalling – if final confirmation were needed – the permanence of the end of the island’s triglossia. Tuscan Italian represented the hardships of the war and occupation and was tarnished in terms of language beliefs on the island.6 The occupation lasted less than a year before Corsica became the first département to be liberated by Allied troops moving northwards from Africa. This period in the island’s history had seen a definitive close to the influence of Italy over the island. In the post-war period, and as a product of contact with French rather than Tuscan Italian, Corsican looked in the main to French for borrowings. This war also confirmed the commitment – already demonstrated in the Great War – of the island to France. As far as language policy was concerned, however, the Second World War had a direct impact on language beliefs and language practices. For the first time, the act of speaking French became a demonstration of loyalty to a greater cause and subsequently came to represent an identification with the values of the Liberation and France’s future. Whilst it cannot be argued with any confidence that the Second

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World War damaged language beliefs towards Corsican or detrimentally changed language practices for the heritage language, these few years of war clearly enhanced the position of French in both these areas of language policy.

3.8 3.8.1

The Post-war Period Language Management from the French Republic

After the Liberation, there was no need for further language management in the form of legislation. The understanding of French as the sole language of an undivided (and even reunited) nation was critically important as France began to rebuild its fractured society. On Corsica, as the number of corsophones declined, the advances made by the language activists before 1939 were forgotten but not necessarily lost. The management of the linguistic landscape reaffirmed the relationship between French and Corsican, with French dominating the public space as never before. Corsicans who had distinguished themselves in the name of France during the conflict, such as Fred Scaramoni (an early member of the Resistance who committed suicide in prison to protect the movement), were commemorated with roads named in their honour. Statues were built, squares renamed and the position of French within the diglossia was reaffirmed. In addition to the war memorials erected after the Great War, Corsica’s human sacrifice was affirmed in the construction of monuments in the villages and towns of the island. The liberation of Corsica, the first French department to be freed from occupation, was followed, as elsewhere in France, by recriminations, accusations of treason and summary executions. The parts played by the muvristes during the war were examined at what Arzalier (1990, 207) refers to as ‘the trial of the irredentists’. The key muvristes, including Rocca, Eugène Grimaldi, Hyacinthe Yvia-Croce and Dominique Carlotti, were accused of treason and tried in Bastia. The Corsican language itself was not on trial, but the peculiarity to which it drew attention did not chime with the spirit of the Liberation which stressed national unity above all other virtues. One of the distinguishing features of the muvristes on trial was their commitment to the Corsican language, thereby turning the heritage language, especially one linked albeit tenuously with the occupying forces of the defeated enemy, into the elephant in the court room. Grimaldi was sentenced to death, Rocca condemned to fifteen years of hard labour in Guyana, and the goods of the A Muvra press were confiscated. Language beliefs towards the heritage language, against the backdrop of a united France emerging from the dark days of the war, were not explicitly tarnished, although the prestige of French was at its peak. Corsica was firmly anchored within the French Republic. The disappointments felt by the small minority who were sympathetic to Italian irredentism before the war marked the end of any aspirations for a renewed link between the island and the peninsula. For the second time in three decades, Corsicans had distinguished themselves on the battlefields in the name of France, and the arrival of de Gaulle on Corsica in 1943 (whose first words in public were ‘Long live French Corsica’) sealed the union between

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the island and the Republic (Silvani, 1976, 32). Linguistic practices had changed, to the extent that, after the war, a dim view was taken of speaking Corsican (Gauthier, 1982, 114). Although it is suggested that there were still islanders monolingual in Corsican in the decade or so after the Second World War (Judge, 2000, 66) it is clear that French had established itself definitively as the H language within the island’s diglossia. Autonomism and nationalism, which both espoused the promotion of Corsican before the Second World War, were ‘morally indefensible, politically ruined’ (Arzalier, 1990, 207). However, while the reputation of autonomism may have been blackened, language activists continued to promote Corsican with the view to nourishing positive language beliefs and changing language practices in favour of the heritage language.

3.8.2

Post-war Language Activism

It is wrong to suggest that language activism was quietly dropped after the Liberation, as might be inferred from Arzalier’s conclusion on the state of autonomism. National unity after the crises of war and occupation may well have been the motif of post-war France, but regionalism persisted in the corners of France in the places where it had simmered for the previous fifty years (Alsace, Brittany, the Basque country) despite the fact that some, such as Grin (2003, 55) perceive postwar Europe as inhospitable to regionalism. The existence of regionalist movements is part of a phenomenon in Western Europe referred to by Smith (1991, 125) as ‘the third wave of ethno-nationalism’. Their interest in heritage languages is important for this case study in that, at a time of national unity and of a focussing upon France as a united entity, the regionalists still managed to contribute to language policy on Corsica. The French State, which had spent centuries combating heritage languages, found itself contending with organised resistance to its language management tactics. This is not to argue that the regionalist movements that established themselves across France were primarily concerned with language policy. Their growth came as a response to the centralising tendencies of the French State and their demands called for an acknowledgement of the regional diversity, especially the development of regional hubs across France. The problems and difficulties experienced in these regional bases, such as the depopulation and declining economic strength felt on Corsica, spurred regionalists on to make demands which included, but not necessarily concentrated on, the heritage languages. Language activism, including a focus on emblems of cultural identity, could well be understood to be incompatible with the post-war ethos of national unity. Neville (1987, 149) questions the emergence of language activism in the 1940s and 1950s, ‘Was it the War, Vichy, Occupation, a return to one’s sources in an uncertain world, Liberation euphoria, the realisation that linguistic diversity is not a sign of treason, that linguistic richness leads to national awareness?’ The paradox highlighted by Neville is that on the one hand, a belief was held that, in order to bring about France’s revival after the war, national unity was to be prized above everything, whilst on the other hand, Liberation was equated with freedom and an opposition to

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tyranny and domination. In an echo of analyses of the spirit of 1789, it followed that the freedom identified with the Liberation should include a freedom to use one’s heritage language, something which ran counter to the State’s drive for unity and collective healing. Dressler and Wodak-Leodolter (1977, 34) reason – in their case with reference to Brittany – that regionalism awoke animosity against France’s centralising tendencies, rather than changing language beliefs and practices in favour of heritage languages. This conclusion notwithstanding, regionalism included a desire to modify the language practices of citizens across France and the remainder of this case study will be contextualised by the struggle undertaken by language activists to revitalise Corsican.

3.8.3

The Islanders’ Response

Thus far, the part played by the inhabitants of the island in language policy on Corsica has only been examined incidentally. In an era of increased communication, the residents of Corsica responded to the language management mechanisms employed by the French State and to contemporary circumstances in a way that had a tangible effect upon their language beliefs and their language practices. French became increasingly prestigious for the positive things it represented, such as economic advancement, financial stability and, after the Liberation, freedom from fascism. In part because France extended its representation into the Corsican interior in the nineteenth century but also thanks to the fact that education in French was offered to all islanders, language practices had changed to the detriment of the heritage language. The effects of the two wars further enhanced the status of French. In response, adults made decisions on linguistic behaviour for themselves and for their children. Although the causation for language shift to French continued to evolve through the twentieth century, it is important to recognise that the islanders themselves, for some or all of the reasons outlined thus far, changed their linguistic practices. The shift away from Corsican can be explained by economic factors, language management which encouraged a shift and the manipulation of attitudes, but it must be acknowledged that the islanders decided to favour speaking French over Corsican. It is clear that the population was influenced by a combination of factors. In privileging French over Alsatian, Basque or Corsican, the men and women of France became, in the words of Le Coadic (1998, 202) ‘the school system’s zealous accomplices’ bringing about the collapse in the use of the heritage languages. Simultaneously, as the prestige of these languages diminished, French was further strengthened by a widespread belief in the so-called bon usage of French.7 Parents also responded to the stinging criticisms pronounced by the instituteur, as outlined by Jaffe (1991, 52) which included identifying corsophones with peasants and donkeys, in direct opposition to the distinguished professions of civil servants and soldiers. At the same time that language practices were changing on Corsica, islanders found themselves living through Carrington’s ‘period of stagnation’ (1984, ix) with

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a growing realisation that whilst mainland France was being rebuilt, the island was witnessing no similar renaissance. Economic emigration continued unabated, further depopulating the island and worsening the state of the fragile agro-pastoral economy on the island. Corsica lacked industry and what industry there was endured redundancies and closures (see Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 383–384 for a summary of the industrial setbacks). Despite a number of technological and infrastructure advances, it was still difficult to cross the island given the poor communications network. In terms of wealth, the island was the lowest ranked département in France for a host of economic indicators, such as average consumption of petrol and electricity, use of the telephone, level of bank savings, car ownership and income (Colonna d’Istria, 1997, 162). Language behaviour, in the face of this level of poverty, was perhaps not a high priority for islanders, especially given the mood for national unity focussed on France. This did not mean, however, that language activism was unimportant at this time and the 1950s were marked by an engagement by sections of the island population with some of the issues of language policy.

Notes 1. The term ‘black hussars’ was first used by Charles Péguy in 1910, marrying the image of their black clothing (required by law from 1879 to stress their seriousness and their lack of frivolity) with their regimented training and their almost military devotion to the moral and intellectual mission with which they were charged. 2. For a full discussion of the battle of wills to establish convincingly the Republic on Corsica, see Pellegrinetti & Rovere (2004, 23–93). 3. These festivities contrasted with the Bonapartist observance of 15 August – birthday of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, both of which resonated particularly with Corsicans since Napoleon is the island’s most famous son and the Virgin Mary its patron saint. 4. Even before the war, Clemenceau – in his capacity as President of the Council and Interior Minister – produced an oft-cited report into the state of Corsica and concluded that no other European country was able to understand fully the misery and impoverishment suffered on the island (Arzalier, 1990, 32). 5. This accusation of ambivalence towards Corsican amongst the islanders was resurrected during the late 1940s ahead of the drafting of the loi Deixonne; see page 48–49. 6. The hardening of language beliefs against Tuscan Italian for the wartime generations have been highlighted during discussions I undertook on the island as part of this and other projects. During the Liberation celebrations on the island in September 2005, a group of decorated veterans confirmed that after the Second World War, a very dim view was taken of speaking Italian on the island. 7. Ager (1990, 221) comments upon the significance of bon usage, noting that ‘through the twentieth century the belief in a bon usage has been maintained and strengthened through the publication of comment in the Press by distinguished and regular contributors, by the publication of grammars countering regionalisms […] and through the continued strength of the competitive system of recruitment to administrative posts and for entry to prestigious educational establishments.’

Chapter 4

4.1

The Loi Deixonne – Language Management Against the Grain

As far as the French State had been concerned, language management had long consisted of measures to defend, promote and extend the use of French across France to such an extent that France is now renowned for its clear language ideology and authoritarian management (Spolsky, 2004, 63). However, the regionalist movements had been consolidating their public support in the peripheral regions of France and, whilst not becoming the main political grouping in these areas, they were working for an acknowledgement of the country’s diversity, not least in terms of its linguistic composition. Despite central government’s insistence on national unity, regionalists from Brittany proposed a resolution in the lower house of the French parliament to protect the Breton language and culture as early as May 1947. Just over a year later, a number of Communists proposed a similar resolution for Catalan, including a provision for its teaching at university level. This was followed by a private member’s bill regarding Breton language teaching. At the same time, the Occitan movement lobbied for the teaching of heritage languages. In July 1949, Maurice Deixonne, a Socialist Member of Parliament, produced a report on the teaching of heritage languages which, two years later, became a law bearing his name. The loi Deixonne, articulated as a measure of democracy in the fashion of the Revolution and the Liberation, permitted the limited teaching of Basque, Breton, Catalan and Occitan in primary and secondary schools. It allowed the teaching up to three hours a week of the four heritage languages, but the teaching was optional for the teaching staff and the students – nobody could be obliged either to teach the language or to be taught it. Despite the caveats, the law ended the long-standing and unwavering language policy of marginalising all languages other than French in France. Much has been written about the loi Deixonne of 1951 (see Blackwood, 2007) and, despite the exclusion of Corsican from the provisions of the law, its significance is such that it merits examination here. In mainland France, the law only permitted the teaching of the four heritage languages in the areas to which they were attached. The Basque diasporas in Paris, Lyon or Marseille, for example, even if R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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they numbered in the thousands, could not request the teaching of Basque (Marcellesi, 1975, 12). Clearly, in terms of language practices, the loi Deixonne offered very little to language activists since the optional provision of a handful of hours of language teaching was not going to normalise the heritage languages, let alone reverse the shift to French. In terms of language beliefs, despite the limitation of the application of the law to the administrative areas related to the four languages, the loi Deixonne broke the long-held assumption that French and French alone had a place within the school system. Not only did this law pave the way for subsequent language management in favour of the heritage languages, but also, according to Ager (1999, 31), it marked the end of one hundred and fifty years of ‘systematic attacks on the use of the regional languages.’ Despite all the highlighted shortcomings, the significance – symbolic rather than practical – of this piece of legislation within our understanding of language policy on Corsica demands further evaluation. The absence of Corsican from this piece of language management is notable, although the reasons for its omission are not immediately transparent. Giacomo (1975, 22, 23) observes two principal reasons for the exclusion of Corsican – as well as Alsatian and Flemish – from the provisions of the law. First, the spectre of early twentieth-century irredentism had not been removed from the collective memory of the war and the Occupation. Giacomo therefore argues that permitting the teaching of Corsican would have re-affirmed links with Italy at a time when French national unity was cherished. Second, one contemporary perspective was to consider Corsican merely as a non-standard form of Italian, and therefore unworthy of a privileged position within the venerable French national education system.1 These two arguments are valid in a historical perspective but there are equally important reasons for the absence of Corsican from the loi Deixonne which are critically significant as part of our analysis of language policy on Corsica. Both the islanders and the language activists are responsible to differing degrees for the omission of Corsican from the loi Deixonne. Notable by their absence from the preparation of this iconic piece of legislation were Corsican elected representatives and language activists. The French Communist Party, who were the main partners in the coalition which drew up the law, were by no means absent from the political landscape on the island, polling 33% of the vote in the general election of 1946 (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 364) and a respectable 23% in 1951 (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 390). Nevertheless, as summarised by Fusina (1994, 110), elected officials from Corsica did not appear to support the claims made by language activists; ‘whilst Breton or Catalan politicians were clearly involved in the movement which led to the drafting of this law, one would search in vain to find any involvement in this debate by a politician from the island, as if the teaching of Corsican did not concern them or was of no interest to their electorate.’ This paucity of declarations of support from Corsican politicians reflects, according to Fusina (1994, 111), a greater focus on the economic crisis that bedevilled the island rather than an open opposition to the measures supported by the mainland language activists. This decision to concentrate on the rapid depopulation of the island – the population fell from 237,000 in 1936 to 175,000 in 1954

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(Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 385) – does not necessarily give the fullest picture of the language beliefs of islanders at this time. Such an argument suggests that, in the order of priorities, Corsicans rated economic development, an improved transport infrastructure and support for a declining agricultural base above matters of cultural identity. This may well be the case, but there is another argument that has been drawn out by Jaffe and others during surveys undertaken on Corsica. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, surveys have been conducted by various sociolinguists (such as Thiers and Jaffe) into the language beliefs of islanders, measuring and gauging the attitudes of Corsicans and other residents of the island to a host of issues surrounding the question of Corsican. In particular, Jaffe has examined the question of Corsican language teaching, something which has evolved over the past decades to include the mandatory nature of this teaching. One of Jaffe’s key findings has been that there has been a strong and stable opposition to the formal teaching of Corsican. Based on her own investigations on the island, Jaffe concludes that there is what she refers to as oppositional essentialism to the teaching of Corsican: one local perspective has been to regard the teaching of Corsican in schools as a ‘contaminating, deauthenticating act’ (Jaffe, 2001, 285, 286). Whilst not devaluing Corsican, there appears to have been a widely held point of view that the heritage language is a private and voluntary matter, rather than something that is part of the state apparatus as embodied by the national education system. Other reasons for a perceived lack of engagement with language management efforts for Corsican emerge over the second half of the twentieth century. These reasons may explain the exclusion of Corsican from the loi Deixonne, but this absence was to have an effect on language beliefs on the island, not least as part of nationalist rhetoric which has used the original provisions of this landmark legislation to demonstrate attitudes from central government towards the island.

4.2

Language Activism Influencing Language Management

From the late 1950s onwards, the language activists on Corsica emerge as increasingly fundamental to developments in language policy on Corsica in a way that their predecessors, such as the supporters of A Trumantana or the muvristes, had not been. The omission of Corsican from the loi Deixonne demonstrated a number of trends, including the priorities and attitudes of the island’s political class to the question of language management. The neglect of the Corsican language by elected representatives created a space within the cultural life of the island into which the language activists stepped. Their efforts since the loi Deixonne have driven language beliefs and, to a lesser extent, language practices on the island. The extent of their importance is demonstrated by their emergence as principal participants in the management of language issues on the island, lobbying for the heritage language and embarking on a dedicated programme of corpus language planning on behalf of Corsican. The dedication and enthusiasm of the language activists became clear during the 1950s as they organised themselves into societies

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and movements which began to lobby for recognition of Corsican and, ultimately, for a change in language practices amongst the rest of the islanders. A new language association, Parlemu Corsu (‘Let’s Speak Corsican’), was founded in Paris by Petru Rocca, rehabilitated after his wartime indiscretions and, in 1955, another Corsican language magazine appeared, U Muntese (Gauthier, 1982, 114), edited by Petru Ciavatti. The publication of U Muntese reaffirmed the dedication of language activists to the promotion of Corsican, focussing above all on the issues surrounding the protection and teaching of the heritage language (Fusina, 1994, 119). A year after the founding of U Muntese, the tradition of Rocca’s merendelle was revived at Evisa, a large village in the hills overlooking the western coast of the island. This revival of the merendelle coincided with the establishment of yet another language association Lingua Corsa (‘The Corsican Language’). The impact of these associations, publications and gatherings requires careful examination in order to attempt an evaluation of their potential collective contribution to language policy. First, it is important to observe that in terms of language practices, the influence of Corsican-language journals and rallies was – and still is – limited. Only confident corsophones, for example, would tend to attempt to read articles written in Corsican in U Muntese. Non-corsophones might well have been inspired to learn Corsican, although not merely to read the articles they could not previously understand. There is evidence that adult Corsican language classes did reach increasing numbers of islanders during the 1970s but that this commitment to learning Corsican amongst a section of society that had already left full-time education began to decline as the century drew to a close (Jaffe, 1991, 119). We cannot therefore offer – at least with any confidence – a generalised assumption that the work of language activists affected (either positively or negatively) the beliefs and practices of Corsicans with regard to their heritage language. Fusina (1994, 121) warns against the risk of overestimating the significance of journals like U Muntese within language policy, although he does acknowledge that the texts of the news-sheet (which ran from 1955 to 1972) did constitute a repository for Corsican language items at a time when realistic fears existed regarding the loss of parts of the language. This work on behalf of the Corsican language became a clear task for language activists in the 1970s. Although it can be difficult to analyse the effects of the language activists as far as the practices and beliefs of islanders are concerned, the undertakings of the various movements contributed to language management in a number of quantifiable ways. In issue number 20 of U Muntese in December 1956, the most recent grouping of language activists, Lingua Corsa, set out its aims and objectives to maintain and safeguard the Corsican language and to furnish its speakers with a dictionary and a grammar. Language activists then began the task of gathering the relevant lexicographical details, aiming at the very least to preserve the linguistic heritage of Corsican. Within the space of a year, there was a response to the appeal from Lingua Corsa to protect the Corsican language when the University of Aix-enProvence established the Centre for Corsican Studies to encourage and promote research into matters relating to island’s heritage language. The creation of this Centre was a formal piece of language management in the name of the Corsican

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language, a language which had been removed from the official linguistic repertoire of France for a number of centuries. Ironically, the creation of a Centre dedicated to Corsican took place not on the island itself, where the university had been closed down by the French authorities shortly after the 1768 Treaty of Versailles, but on the French mainland, albeit in an area with a high concentration of Corsicans living there. In the same year as the opening of the Centre for Corsican Studies at Aix, the Programme for Regional Action in Corsica was published by the French government. As if to underscore the order of importance, the Programme highlighted the economic hardships persisting on the island and concluded that the two priorities for the island’s development were agriculture and tourism (Jaffe, 1999, 67). Regional action, as understood by the French Republic did not to extend to linguistic or cultural matters, confirming the necessity of the language activists’ work if the Corsican language was not to be erased from the island’s language practices. In 1959, the tradition of the merendelle took a further step in its efforts at language management when, at its meeting in Corte, in the mountainous centre of Corsica, a motion was passed calling for the obligatory teaching of Corsican on the island at secondary school level.2 This lobbying of government marks the start of a new phase in language policy in Corsica and relaunches the divisive initiative of mandatory Corsican language education, an issue that remains as polemical today as it was in 1959.

4.3

Decolonisation and the Growth of Regionalism

The 1960s witnessed the rise of the regionalists in France. On Corsica, whilst often concerned about the position and status of Corsican, the various regionalist groupings were primarily interested in the more general questions of the fate of the island. Although Corsican language activists within associations such as Lingua Corsa agreed to a credo that was essentially regionalist (Fusina, 1994, 123), not all regionalists can be considered language activists – although it is not unusual for the two groupings to be conflated during the latter part of the twentieth century. However, the actions of the regionalists did encourage language activism, not least because the regionalist movements stressed the peculiarity of Corsican cultural identity and the threats posed to it during the twentieth century. It is not clear whether the regionalists, grouped into movements such as the National Union of Corsican Students (l’UNEC), the Committee for the Study and Defence of the Interests of Corsica (le CEDIC) and the Corsican Regionalist Front (le FRC) directly changed language practices and beliefs, or whether their actions and declarations helped define a Corsican identity of which the Corsican language was an integral part. Nevertheless, during the 1960s, an awareness of the challenges faced by the islanders, including the decline of the heritage language, emerged and manifested itself in ways not previously seen. The increasing prominence of the regionalists has not translated since the 1960s into overwhelming success at the ballot boxes, prompting observers to reason that

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regionalism, autonomism and latterly nationalism are minority movements. For all that, the narrative created by the regionalists and their subsequent successor movements became an undeniable context for analysing all aspects of Corsica. From a situation in which the State played the most significant role in island life, the regionalists and their heirs have sought to counter balance the supremacy of the Establishment by a number of methods, including appealing directly to islanders and organising themselves into active, formal movements. As noted above, these regionalists involved themselves in language matters as well as economic and social issues relevant to modern life on Corsica. In terms of language policy, the activists consolidated the position held by their predecessors, dating back to Santu Casanova, and aimed to influence both the State in its dealing with Corsican and the islanders in their beliefs and attitudes towards the heritage language. Regionalism did not develop in isolation during the second half of the twentieth century. As a philosophy, it evolved in a symbiotic relationship with decolonisation, especially on Corsica where the French withdrawal from overseas territories had particular resonance. In relative terms, large numbers of Corsicans who left the island from the nineteenth century onwards went to work for the French State in its administration of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. As the French State disengaged from North Africa, French citizens living and working in the colonies had to face the inevitable return to France. One local perspective during the 1960s was to identify a similarity between the three countries of the Maghreb and the island. According to one viewpoint, Corsica was being treated as ‘an internal colony’, providing raw materials and manpower for what is often referred to as la Grande Patrie, whilst serving at the same time as a market for industry on the mainland (Kofman, 1982, 303). This reasoning confirmed the beliefs of some regionalists that Corsica was not being treated with the equality promised by the State since the Revolution. The disruption felt across France through the 1960s had an impact on both language beliefs and language practices. The release of Algeria and the riots of the late 1960s, both of which constituted a time of exceptional social upheaval in France, challenged the language ideology that had been developed by the State since the Revolution. In 1962, France signed the Evian Accords with representatives of the new Algerian Republic, releasing the French State’s last colony in north Africa. In practical terms this action made Corsica France’s most southerly Mediterranean territory but, symbolically, it sparked a series of questions and debates regarding the nature and role of the island within la Grande Patrie (Marchetti, 1989, 180). The French colonisers in Algeria, including those born in North Africa, reasoned that, on the grounds that they spoke French, they were French. This argument was used by regionalists who calculated that the converse must also be true and that those who spoke Basque, Breton or Corsican were not French because they did not speak French (Beer, 1977, 146). This reasoning did not, however, take into account that by the 1960s, as has been noted above, there were very few monolingual corsophones left and virtually the entire population of the island spoke French. Nevertheless, some regionalists wished to extend this argument (based on the link between language and identity) to contend that a territory is not necessarily French

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just because French speakers live there, something which gave encouragement both to regionalists and to language activists. One practical effect of the evacuation of North Africa was the dramatic change in the demographic position of Corsica. The colons – the French citizens who had moved across the world to oversee France’s empire – and their offspring were resettled in France with financial support from the taxpayer. This resulted in the arrival of 17,000 people on Corsica, of whom Carrington (1995, 21) estimates one quarter were Corsican by origin. At the same time, Pellegrinetti and Rovere (2004, 447) note the arrival of an Arab labour force which was transplanted from North Africa to implement the plans the new arrivals brought with them. These plans included the redevelopment of the formerly uninhabitable eastern seaboard of the island.3 The cultivation of these lands as well as plots elsewhere on the island (which had been bought at greatly deflated prices by agencies of the State for redevelopment or redistribution) nourished the concerns of the regionalist movements who criticised what they saw as the unfair treatment of islanders. One of the main threads that ran through the regionalist movements on Corsica was that of dispossession. This dispossession did not relate solely to the question of the loss of land, but had wider-reaching connotations, including the disconnection of Corsicans from the few positive economic developments being felt on the island. The project to promote Corsica as a tourist destination was creating jobs, yet these jobs were not being taken by islanders but by mainland French citizens or foreigners (Renucci, 1974, 423). Young islanders seeking further study and a graduate career were still forced to leave the island to go to university. Moreover, the regionalist movements deplored what le CEDIC (1964, 26) called the ‘decorsicanisation’ of the island, highlighting in particular the detrimental effects of assimilation into France on the Corsican language and the island’s culture. Another factor in the causation of evolution of the regionalist movements was the modernisation of the island, stimulated by the leap in the island’s population after the evacuation of North Africa. The arrival of so many people accelerated the urbanisation of Corsica’s main towns, further altering the balance of the island away from its historical and traditional agro-pastoral roots and precipitating both social and economic problems (Colonna d’Istria, 1997, 166, 167). Beyond these physical consequences of the independence of Morocco, Tunisia and above all Algeria, the developments in language policy, especially in terms of language practices and language beliefs, should be examined at this point. It is important not to exaggerate the effects of the release of Algeria on language practices. In the middle of the twentieth century, the number of Corsican speakers continued to decline and the sudden arrival of the colons and their Arab labour force did not change the selection of either French or Corsican made by the majority of islanders. The colons themselves were certainly not all Corsican speakers and therefore would not immediately start using the heritage language on arrival. Those who were corsophones might choose to speak Corsican on occasion, perhaps within their extended families or to reaffirm their links with the island’s identity. There are no extant data on the language practices of the colons but the fact that the overall trend of the use of Corsican continued to decline suggests that they

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did not consistently speak Corsican. Similarly, the first generation Arab immigrants needed French as the lingua franca of the island in order to engage with the State and its apparatus. French – rather than Corsican – also gave access to education and employment, leading the majority of Arabs who learnt a new language to select French rather than the heritage language. There is some anecdotal evidence of immigrants who worked in lowly paid manual labour learning some Corsican as part of the assimilation process, but the importance of this kind of gesture makes very little if any impact on broader language practices on the island. More significant than the impact on language practices were the changes that the evacuation of North Africa had on language beliefs and on public opinion in general on Corsica. The arrival of 17,000 francophones, the majority of whom were certainly not fluent Corsican speakers, changed the backcloth against which island life was set. Already an increasingly French-speaking territory, the leap in the noncorsophone population of the island highlighted the limited use of the heritage language in modern France and confirmed the decision taken by successive generations of islanders to raise their children to speak French rather than Corsican. Some, but by no means all islanders, perceived the State’s generous conduct towards those who had quit North Africa as unfair in comparison with what many regionalists viewed as France’s ambivalence towards Corsica. There is evidence of resentment towards the colons and towards central government on the part of islanders frustrated by the hardships they had endured, especially when fertile land was offered to non-Corsicans (Guidici, 1998, 16). Even those sympathetic to the dilemmas faced by the colons in resettling on the island acknowledge that their arrival and, above all, the issue of farming the scarce good soil on Corsica, sparked a sense of destabilisation (Arrighi di Casanova, 1996, 75). The fact that most of those resettled on the island thanks to the largesse of the French State were not Corsican or of Corsican descent began to cause tensions between islanders and others, an element which forms part of nationalist rhetoric even today on the island. This notional division of the islanders not only accelerated the deterioration in relations between the regionalists and the French State but also hardened attitudes between some parties of islanders and the colons.

4.4

The Overshadowing of Language Activism

1965 witnessed the first bomb attacks by the regionalist movements with the destruction of houses constructed by one of the government agencies founded in the 1950s to redevelop Corsica. Pellegrinetti and Rovere (2004, 455) observe the significance of these bombings, noting how ‘frustration was no longer expressed by bitter speeches or hate-filled silences’. The use of explosives and other violent methods of articulating a message, be it regionalist, autonomist or nationalist in sentiment, has come to characterise the resistance of Corsicans who argue that they have been marginalized to the extent that they need to resort to terrorist actions in order to express their views. This campaign, despite various ceasefires and changes

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of emphasis, is still on-going at the time of writing and is currently directed at mainland French citizens investing in second homes on the island. In the summer of 1966, a number of the regionalist movements gathered in Corte, the historic capital of Paoli’s Corsica, and formed the umbrella regionalist group the Corsican Regionalist Front (le FRC) which, within a few months, formed a splinter group, the Corsican Regionalist Action movement (l’ARC). The second major social upheaval of the 1960s, now known as May 1968, revisited some of the issues highlighted by the evacuation of Algeria. Students and workers in Paris illustrated for the second time in a decade that a minority could have a voice in modern France and was able to question the received wisdom of the Fifth Republic. In terms of language beliefs, the challenging of the relentless centralisation of France ran counter to what Lodge (1993, 227) calls the ‘volontariste approach to history’. This particular approach, accepted according to Lodge both by defenders of heritage languages and by those more ambivalent to Breton, Basque and Corsican, suggests that the fate of the nation is controlled by lawmakers, to the extent that the decline in the use of the heritage languages is due to the actions of the State. The events of May 1968 consequently gave encouragement to regionalists across France that minority languages could be protected.

4.5

Language Management to Defend French

Within the context of tentative steps to permit the teaching of the heritage languages, a parallel strategy within language management, which was designed to promote and defend the French language, was pursued in France. Whilst the postDeixonne period marked a slow thaw in the treatment of the heritage languages by the State, a counterbalance was put in place by successive Presidents and governments in order to protect French. There is no suggestion that the realisation of these measures was motivated by a fear that Breton, Basque or Catalan were emerging as potential threats to the hegemony of France. The more likely danger was posed by the rise of English as a world language. During the 1950s, the influence from the United States of America and, much closer to home, the United Kingdom, was increasing. This rise of English, on the back of American economic success but also enhanced by the slow progress of Great Britain into the orbit of the Common Market in Europe, was something which the State (in its various organisations and personified by certain key individuals) thought should be resisted. The 1950s, as well as the passing of the loi Deixonne also witnessed the creation of three agencies designed to protect and promote French. First was the body called the Defence of the French Language (Défense de la Langue Française), established in 1953, followed by the Research Group into French Technical Terms (Comité d’Etudes des Termes Techniques Français) a year later. In 1957, the Office for French Vocabulary (Office du Vocabulaire Français) came into being. These three bodies were charged with cognate missions in the name of defending and extending the national standard language. The threat posed by English was twofold. On the one hand, its position

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within the world and the nascent global economy was showing the earliest signs of threatening the prestige and the position of French across the world. On the other hand, the slow-burning dominance of English was starting to have an impact on the internal structure of French, most obviously in terms of the lexicon. The perceived decline in the world standing of French dates back to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. One example of the diminishment of the utility of French was the fact that it was not originally considered for official language status at the founding of the United Nations. However, what is important to this study is the fact that the French State sought to respond to the challenges faced by the French language in the creation of agencies to act as guardians and planners for the national language. The foundation of these bodies recalls the establishment of the famous Académie française during the Ancien Régime and chimes with the ‘interventionism’ acknowledged by Lodge above, whereby the State and its apparatus can be expected to respond to all issues of life.

4.6

Language Management to Cloister Corsican

Having been omitted from the loi Deixonne in 1951 for the reasons enumerated above, Jean Zuccarelli, one of the Members of Parliament representing Corsica, proposed the modification of the law to include Corsican in 1965, but to no avail. In the light of the extra-linguistic developments of the 1960s and the concerted efforts of language activists, Pierre-Paul Giacomini, the Member of Parliament for Bastia in northern Corsica tabled proposals in 1972 which aimed to extend the provisions of the landmark legislation to Corsican (Fusina, 1994, 142). It was not until 1974 that the Ministry of National Education issued a decree, n° 74–33, which allowed the implementation on a trial basis of the teaching of Corsican to students in their final year of schooling. Moreover, this teaching was limited to one hour per week and was strictly optional for both teachers and pupils. Although the concessions made to Corsican seem limited, the advance made for the island’s heritage language was of the utmost importance. Despite all the limitations placed on the teaching of Corsican, it was permissible in law for the language to be taught in schools on Corsica. This threshold was the first of a number of significant milestones to be reached by the Corsican language within the precincts of the island’s schools. Although its actual impact in terms of language practices was, it is fair to say, negligible, the value of the existence within the school system of one hour per week of optional Corsican classes was of exceptional importance in terms of language beliefs. The acknowledgement of the validity of the Corsican language within the classrooms of the Republic and the rectification of the anomaly of Corsican’s exemption from the loi Deixonne are particularly symbolic. Within the space of a year, the extension of the loi Deixonne to include Corsican was confirmed and the nature of this addition to the original legislation ceased to be experimental. At the same time, another landmark law was passed which extended the possibility of the teaching of France’s heritage languages to all year

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groups within the formal school system. This law, the loi Haby (named after René Haby, Minister of Education at the time) allowed for pupils to elect to take classes in what the text referred to as ‘regional languages’ at any stage in their school career. Again, although unlikely to change language practices to any degree, the extension of the loi Deixonne and the passing of the loi Haby constitute the start of the slow and incremental process of allowing the use of Corsican in the island’s schools. From the mid-1970s onwards, as we shall trace below, the State – in its numerous forms – passed various laws and issued a number of decrees and circulaires which extended the possibility of learning Corsican (and the other heritage languages) in educational establishments. This arm of language policy on Corsica became increasingly pertinent as the twentieth century drew to a close and further concessions were made to heritage languages. As such, language management might well have been perceived to be the dominant factor in language policy within France and, in particular, on Corsica. This is a point to which we return in our conclusions, but it suffices to acknowledge that, after two hundred years of gallicisation on Corsica, the 1960s witnessed the start of the process to change the direction of language management as part of language policy on Corsica. If language activists were encouraged by the initial steps of language management in favour of Corsican, the loi Bas-Lauriol of 1975 returned to the issue of the defence of the French language. The loi Bas-Lauriol (named after the law’s two authors, Pierre Bas and Marc Lauriol and a forerunner to the loi Toubon of 1994, which would abrogate this measure) rendered the use of the French language obligatory under a range of circumstances, including the engaging of staff, advertising and the operating procedures of the service industries. In terms of language practices, this law far outweighed the advances made by the heritage languages with the passing of the loi Deixonne and its subsequent amendment to include Corsican in its provisions. Whereas the measures pertaining to France’s other languages permitted their exceptionally limited use as strictly optional subjects in schools within clearly defined geographical spaces, the loi Bas-Lauriol insisted on the use of French in the major areas of the economy of France, notably the working daily lives of many of the country’s citizens. It was perhaps fortuitous that this law was passed within twelve months of the extension of the loi Deixonne to include the L language of France’s Mediterranean territory, but the import of the loi Bas-Lauriol on language beliefs is clear. The French State was prepared to make meagre concessions to its heritage languages but these concessions were not to have any kind of significant impact on the vitality of the designated languages. At the very same time, the supremacy of French as the standard language was reinforced by legislation criminalising the use of any other language instead of French in the H domains. This included the production of radio and television broadcasts. Language practices were therefore subject to the law of the land and French was to be used in virtually all formal exchanges, spoken as well as written. Not only does the symbolic impact of this law confirm language beliefs that Corsican and the other heritage languages were not appropriate for use in the H domains, but it discouraged any change in language practices that might see Breton, Basque or Catalan employed within the media or the economic life of France. This law, especially given the timing of its passing, began a process we shall follow throughout the

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remainder of this study, of cloistering in law the heritage languages almost exclusively in one specific domain: formal education. The State, through the second half of the twentieth century, continued its policy of promoting the French language through the founding of agencies. After the creation of the three bodies in the 1950s (the Defence of the French Language, the Research Group into French Technical Terms and the Office for French Vocabulary), Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced in 1966 the formation of the High Committee for the Defence and Expansion of French (Haut Comité pour la défense et l’expansion du français). This was followed in 1967 by the founding of the Association for the Correct Usage of Administrative French (l’Association pour le bon usage du français de l’Administration) and, in 1970, by the establishment of a Terminology Commission (Commission de Terminologie) in every State ministry. The State continued to protect the status of French by the creation of these bodies to the extent that they came to characterise the institutional support offered to the national standard language. The inception of these agencies outpaced the tentative measures to offer limited teaching in the heritage language, something that prompts Escudé (2002, 10) to refer to these bodies as ‘the incomparable institutional arsenal to protect and defend French’. These actions, which punctuated the decades from the 1950s through to the 1990s, outstrip the gestures made towards the other languages of France.

4.7

Aléria

In between the extension of the loi Deixonne and the passing of the loi Bas-Lauriol, Corsica experienced one of the defining moments in its history, the like of which are retrospectively viewed as landmarks in the narrative of countries, territories or communities. The occupation of a vineyard’s wine cellar on the north-east coast of Corsica in August 1975 by autonomists, led by Edmond Simeoni, was the continuation of the resentment against the State who had, through its redevelopment agency the SOMIVAC, compulsorily purchased land on the island at low prices and subsequently passed the plots on to new tenants, often those returning or arriving on the island from North Africa. The Depeille vineyard was also accused locally of adding sugar to the wine produced there, an illegal activity which autonomists felt was being tacitly permitted by the forces of law and order. The climax of the occupation was the storming of the cellar by armed riot police who had surrounded the vineyard on the orders of the government, whose Prime Minister at the time was future president Jacques Chirac. The subsequent shoot-out resulted in the death of one riot squad officer and one policeman and left two men injured. Although not motivated in any sense by the question of the heritage language, the crystallisation of public opinion and the upheavals in the autonomist movement have coloured the debate surrounding the island since what is now referred to in shorthand as ‘Aléria’. In terms of the general reaction of the islanders, there was considerable shock at the response of the State to the occupation of the wine cellar and disbelief at the explosion of violence on the island. The issue of understanding Corsica’s peculiarity

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meant that the island’s heritage language, as a key marker of cultural identity despite its foreignness to large sections of the island, emerged as an issue of greater significance. Consequently, language beliefs have been, to a certain extent, governed by the associations of Corsican with autonomism and, from the mid-1970s onwards, nationalism, although there is no evidence whatsoever that language beliefs have been affected negatively by events such as Aléria. In the fallout after Aléria, autonomism on Corsica mutated with the founding in May 1976 of the Corsican National Liberation Front, le FLNC, whose bombing campaigns and violent tactics came to characterise Corsican nationalism in the eyes of the State and many French mainlanders. The FLNC, modelled to some degree on the successful Algerian National Liberation Front, le FLN, produced its manifesto, The Green Book (le Livre Vert) a year after its founding and dismissed autonomism within France for Corsica as a discredited failure, and called for a popular uprising to achieve independence for the island (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 503, 504). At the same time, a rival pro-French underground movement emerged, calling itself FRANCIA and promising reprisals for every anti-French gesture, every act committed by the FLNC. Jaffe (1999, 69) stresses the significance of the context created by these extra-linguistic events, ‘the fact of nationalism was an inevitable reference point for issues of Corsican identity, to include the question of language; the linguistic and cultural activism of the seventies cannot be understood outside of this political context.’ It is therefore pertinent to turn our attention back to the language activists for whom the 1970s are considered to be crucial in establishing all that was to follow for language policy on Corsica.

4.8

Language Activism in the 1970s

In the period leading up the extension of the loi Deixonne to Corsican, language activism was organised in a way that built on the developments of the 1960s, as analysed above, and this decade can be considered as a particularly successful period for those dedicated to the promotion of the heritage language. Language activists, such as Pascal Marchetti and Dumenicantone Geronimi, dedicated themselves to corpus planning for Corsican in what can be seen as a response to negative language beliefs about Corsican. Although it is not the aim of this study to cover areas investigated much more expertly by others (see, by way of example, Thiers, 1993; or Marcellesi, 1985, 1990), one of the criticisms made against Corsican is that its internal diversity has prevented it from being considered as a language, suggesting instead that Corsican is a selection of Italo-Romance dialects. The effects of contact with French have also been grounds for criticism of Corsican, with the charge being made that French, lexically, syntactically, phonologically and morphologically, has influenced Corsican to the extent that it has effectively been creolised. In response, Geronimi and Marchetti (1971) produced Intricciate è Cambiarini which was a reference work for the phonology of Corsican. Work on Corsican’s phonological identity was complemented by the founding of an association dedicated to the Corsican lexicon. In the middle of the 1970s, l’ADECEC

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(The Association for the Defence and Study of Central and Eastern Corsican) was established. This association set itself the task of recording Corsican’s linguistic heritage, especially its traditional lexicon, and of neologising in order to sustain Corsican for the requirements of a modern living language (Jaffe, 1999, 127). These endeavours in language planning were crucial in terms of providing resources for the heritage language which had become necessary if the language activists were to change not only the language beliefs but also the language practices of islanders. To equip Corsican with the terminology to discuss, for example, advances in technology, allows for negative language beliefs to be challenged. For example, the criticism that it is impossible to discuss the evolution of the computer in Corsican because the heritage language simply does not have the words with which to do so can be countered by the work undertaken by an association such as l’ADECEC. To measure the success of these endeavours would require evidence in the language practices of the islanders, something to which we shall return in Chapter 7. However, the technical side of language activism was matched by the concerted efforts of the activists to raise the profile of Corsican amongst its prime constituency, namely Corsicans themselves. One of the significant strategies employed to this end was the foundation in the 1970s of Scola Corsa (Corsican School), a language society formed initially on the French mainland. Scola Corsa sought to teach Corsican to the Corsican diaspora in their centres of concentration on the mainland, as well as to Corsicans on the island in an attempt to facilitate a change in language practices. The actions of Scola Corsa were particularly significant, in that they aimed to equip islanders with the ability and the confidence to use the Corsican language in ways in which it had been superseded by French since the start of the twentieth century. Building on the success of the merendelle from the 1950s, annual meetings were organised in Corte, known as Corsican Days (Ghjurnate Corse) which were, according to Jaffe (1999, 126) ‘political, cultural and linguistic rallies that drew thousands of militant students and nationalist sympathizers.’ Given the numbers of islanders who came to the Corsican Days, Scola Corsa was justified in considering itself a lobbying movement that spoke for a large constituency on the island and was also not implicated in the increasingly destabilising autonomist and nationalist campaign that was gathering pace. As a considerable grouping of language activists, Scola Corsa was able to justify by the demonstration of public support its call for the extension of the loi Deixonne to include Corsican and the reopening of the island’s university. As we have noted above, the popular support for this movement translated into the formal proposal put forward by Pierre-Paul Giacomini which led to the 1974 extension of the loi Deixonne. The language activists were greatly encouraged by the change to include Corsican in the meagre provisions of this landmark law, something which gave their efforts further momentum during this decade (Fusina, 1994, 135). Language beliefs were also modified during the 1970s by an increase in the use of Corsican on the island, as summarised by Jaffe (1999, 127–128). She notes that not only was there production of reading matter in Corsican, in magazines such as Rigiru, which followed in the tradition established by U Tramuntana and U Muntese, but also that the autonomist and nationalist movements made symbolic

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use of the language in their literature. Above all, Jaffe underscores the significant increase in the output of Corsican in what can be described as the arts, most notably in Corsican song, which was both new and popular in terms of output in the heritage language. Corsican song, often associated with autonomist or nationalist movements, is frequently cited as a measure of success for the heritage language since the 1970s, not least because it has demonstrated the vitality of the language but also – in terms of this study – for the fact it reflects a positive change in language practices in Corsican.

4.9

Three Strands of Language Management

By the end of the 1970s, it is clear that there were three strains of language management taking place on Corsica, each with differing aims and methods. The first strand constituted the strategies pursued by the State, long-standing language manager for France (including Corsica). These strategies had evolved to the extent that, since the liberation of the island after the Second World War, legislation and decrees were used to reverse, albeit to a minimal extent, the unwavering drive towards monolingualism in French across France started by the ascendant Jacobins in 1794. This strand of language management relaxed the iron grip on the control of languages taught in France’s schools with the landmark loi Deixonne and its 1974 extension ceding an optional place in the classroom to some heritage languages including, latterly, Corsican. Despite all the restrictions and shortcomings of the legislation, with Corsican haemorrhaging speakers using the language in L domains, this kind of language management should not be dismissed. Moreover, despite the other gestures made by the State to protect French and assure its position within national life in France, the concessions to Corsican and the other heritage languages should not be trivialised since they provided the necessary foundations for further language management during the final years of the twentieth century. In terms of its relations with Corsica, the State was not only concerned with the questions of language policy. In part of its administration of the island throughout the duration of the twentieth century, the State attempted to revitalise Corsica through economic and social policies. The impact of these extra-linguistic policies was felt across the island and penetrated language beliefs and practices to differing degrees. Let us note in passing the 1972 Development Plan (le Schéma d’Aménagement) which suggested the rebranding of Corsica as ‘the island of beauty’ (l’île de beauté) with a view to transforming the island into a holiday destination to rival the south coast of France. The aim was to draw between one and two million visitors to the island by 1985, although there was no stated to plan to respond to the effects of the arrival of such numbers of visitors to Corsica, and Kofman (1982, 306) notes the frustration of the islanders in the face of policy decided in Paris with no consideration for Corsicans themselves. The second strand of language management was that espoused by the language activists on Corsica. The continued efforts of dedicated individuals sustained

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the heritage language during the decades when many islanders ceased to use Corsican in the L domains of their lives. As Corsica became an ever-increasing French island, the language activists worked to maintain the profile of Corsican by the staging of language-centred events such as the Corsican Days, by organising adult acquisition classes, by work as fundamental as producing cultural matter – books, news-sheets, music – in Corsican and by language planning. Although the speakers of the heritage language collectively own Corsican (if a language can ever be understood as possessed by individuals or groups) the work of the language activists in the decades following the Liberation identifies them as guardians of Corsican. Without the infrastructure in place to institutionalise Corsican as the State did and does for French, the language activists, in pledging themselves to sustaining and normalising the heritage language through the various strategies outlined above, clearly prevented the demise of Corsican during the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, the language activists, in forming themselves into respected movements such as Scola Corsa, emerged as legitimate lobbyists for Corsican, pressing their elected representatives to engage in further formal language management in favour of the heritage language. Collectively, the language activists came to constitute a constituency in France’s political landscape and they used their democratic rights to petition receptive political parties, as will be highlighted below in the evaluation of language policy in the late 1990s. Finally, the nationalist terrorists played their part in language management on the island, although their role cannot be analysed in as clear-cut a manner as either the State or the language activists, since the campaign of terror which spilled blood on the streets of the island polemicised public opinion and, by extension, attitudes towards the movement and its viewpoints. The nationalist terrorists benefited from what some perceived as the marginalisation and dismissal of the island’s population by the State and others. By way of example, the red mud scandal (les boues rouges) from 1972 to 1973, demonstrated the commitment of the nationalists and the feeling of abandonment felt by some islanders. An Italian company, Montedison, was dumping toxic waste off the Corsican coast which was creating what looked like red mud in waters around the island. When, since the dumping continued, diplomatic negotiations between Paris and Rome appeared to be having little effect, direct action was taken by nationalists in Bastia who organised the storming of the sub-prefecture and the blowing up of one of Montedison’s ships in Italy in February 1973. Although the examination of the development of nationalism on Corsica is not an aim of this study, the impact of nationalist terrorists on language policy became increasingly important during the final decades of the twentieth century. In terms of beliefs, the principal political causes espoused by the spectrum of the two broad movements (the autonomists and the newly formed nationalists) did not strike a chord with the majority of islanders (Pellegrinetti & Rovere, 2004, 513). However, the nationalists (both the mainstream political parties and the underground terrorist movements) were also identified with the Corsican language, especially since graffiti

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written in the heritage language appeared across the island on road signs, on roadside rocks and boulders and on buildings earmarked for the attention of bomb-planting terrorists. The underground nationalist movement continued to use French, but it can be argued that this decision was pragmatic since the audience for the groups’ propaganda and literature extended beyond the island (where there were fewer and fewer corsophones anyway) to Paris and the heart of the State. However, public perception on the island made a clear link between terror and the Corsican language. The bloody actions of the nationalists repulsed the majority of islanders and the fact that the heritage language served as one of the prime emblems of the nationalists’ identity discouraged islanders from wishing to be identified with the Corsican language. Jaffe (1999, 280) refers to this as the ‘politicization of language and language choices’ and cites both her own experiences from fieldwork on the island as well as the conclusions drawn by others, such as Sanguinetti (1987, 12–28). Language beliefs, therefore, came under pressure from the actions of nationalist terrorists, a change which in turn modified language practices, as highlighted by Sanguinetti (1987, 18) who records that islanders were reluctant to be recorded on camera speaking Corsican for the regional television station for fear of being, he notes, considered a nationalist.

4.10

Language Activism and Reversing the Language Shift

The first decades after the Liberation witnessed another upheaval in language policy on Corsica. The island, from what many considered to be a marginalized position, overlooked and ignored by France, had moved to the forefront of national life thanks to the violent eruptions that punctuated the mid-twentieth century on Corsica. Borne of the extra-linguistic reasons analysed above, political movements (both mainstream and clandestine) had transformed the general perception of the island and forced the State to develop strategies to respond to the unique position of Corsica within France. Language activists had organised themselves into formal groups, the value and significance of whose work must be underscored. On one level, the activists engaged in language planning of primordial importance. In terms of corpus planning, bodies such as l’ADECEC dedicated themselves to the task of neologising for Corsican in order to ensure that, like any language, it could respond to the developments of the twentieth century. Individuals – such as Geronimi and Marchetti with their phonological guide – also played their part in sustaining Corsican, as the effects of prolonged contact with French led to levelling in a number of key domains. Language acquisition planning was also undertaken by the language activists, such as Scola Corsa, which attempted to change the language practices of adults, both on the island and the mainland. The language jamborees, such as the Corsican Days, built on the language classes and provided a forum for debates on language issues, involving islanders in the future of the heritage language. On another level, as lobbyists, the

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language activists also campaigned for greater recognition and use of Corsican as part of their status planning strategies. Together with elected representatives committed to the heritage language, legislative changes were effected by the language activists who reached the milestone of optional teaching of Corsican in the final quarter of the twentieth century. At this stage, we can return briefly to Fishman’s 1991 model for reversing a language shift (RLS), although the definitive evaluation of the part played by language activists in language policy on Corsica appears in the conclusion to this study. In terms of the Graded Intergenerational Dislocation Stages (Fishman, 1991, 393– 405, reproduced in Appendix A), by the end of the 1970s, Corsican was making progress in the first four steps (to attain diglossia) outlined for successful RLS. Thanks to the committed work of language activists, the reconstruction of Corsican and its re-acquisition as a second language for adults was at its peak by the start of the 1980s. As outlined above, much cultural interaction, especially in terms of song, took place. Schools had also become a forum for the acquisition of Corsican, although the provisions fell considerably short of both Fishman’s fourth stage and the demands of language activists. The area in which least progress had been made was what Fishman (1991, 399) refers to as ‘linguistic socialization’ as the basis of mother-tongue transmission. This equates to oral interaction in the minorised language in the domains of the family, the neighbourhood and the wider community. Despite the achievements of the great ‘Re-acquisition’ of the 1970s, language practices in Corsican did not change significantly. In other words, despite the successes and dedication of the language activists, a break in intergenerational transmission of Corsican was not avoided. In summary, the work of the language activists as a distinct constituency within language policy on Corsica emerged during the post-war period in a way not seen before, even during the halcyon days of A Tramuntana or A Muvra. The State, thanks largely to the work of regionalists and language activists across France, had been forced to acknowledge in law the linguistic diversity of the country. The State’s response to the influence of these pressure groups and, let us not forget, to extra-linguistic factors, led to measures whose significance was greater than their impact. The gestures made towards France’s heritage languages were to have much greater effect on language beliefs than language practices. At the same time, the concessions won from a reluctant State were exceeded by the efforts on behalf of the national standard language. The formation of agencies devoted to the French language outweighed the practical benefits gained by Corsican, although it is important not to allow other measures to overshadow the foundations laid for future legislation favourable to the island’s heritage language. Throughout this period, the islanders themselves were liable to pressure from the different agents identified above. Governed by a State which clumsily sought to respond to the island’s economic, social and political difficulties, courted by language activists appealing to their primary constituency and browbeaten by nationalist terrorists disrupting daily life and instilling fear and disgust, the islanders were at the heart of language policy on late-twentieth-century Corsica.

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Notes 1. Giacomo (1975, 22, 23) applies both these arguments to Alsatian and Flemish, whereby not only were the areas perceived to be open to territorial claims from France’s neighbours but that also the languages were considered dialects or patois of prestigious national languages, namely German and Dutch respectively. 2. In what can be understood as a direct response to one of the criticisms made of the loi Deixonne, this call for Corsican language teaching included a demand for the optional teaching of the heritage language on mainland France, crossing a threshold that the loi Deixonne, with its strict geographic limitations, did not. 3. The eastern coast of Corsica had been cleared of malaria, from which it had suffered for centuries, by the United States Army during the liberation of the island.

Chapter 5

5.1

The Final Decades of the Twentieth Century

The second half of the twentieth century was a period distinguished by accelerated change on Corsica. The island that the French State had attempted to incorporate into the Republic by vigorous assimilation policies was becoming increasingly identified across France by its singularity in comparison with the rest of the European country. This identity had been shaped by centuries of experiences unique to the island and was maintained and accentuated by the regionalist movements during the twentieth century. A prime facet of this separate identity was the Corsican language which continued to be defended by language activists and regionalists who appreciated its value and significance as a marker of the historical differences between the islanders and the citizens of metropolitan France. As regionalism mutated into autonomism and then nationalism, the governance of Corsica posed political questions not encountered elsewhere in France. It is no exaggeration to note that disorder on the island, in, for example, the form of bombing campaigns, and flashpoints of civil unrest, such as the Aléria siege in August 1975 and the bombing in response to Montedison’s ‘red mud’ environmental scandal, dominated the relationship between the State and the island. For these reasons, towards the close of the twentieth century, successive governments sought to tackle what has become known in shorthand as ‘the Corsican question’. For the purposes of this case study, the evolution of France’s Fifth Republic will only be considered insofar as it concerns the issues surrounding language policy on Corsica. After a prolonged period (dating from the end of the nineteenth century to the start of the Second World War) of little distinct language management, the State returned to language legislation within clear ideological frameworks. By the end of the twentieth century, legislation had become a key tool in managing language policy. By the start of the 1980s, a climate had been set of nationalist violence counter-balanced by local institutional support for the Corsican language. As early as 1979, the Corsican Regional Council, the body of elected representatives of the region, had already voted in favour of the Bozzi Report which was described as a Cultural Charter for Corsica and which called for, amongst other measures, the revitalisation of Corsican. Given the make-up of the Corsican Regional Council, comprising R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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parliamentarians and elected local councillors, the unanimous vote in favour of renewing Corsica’s cultural heritage reflects the willingness of elected members to commit publicly to the use of the language at this time. This chapter will evaluate the development, on the back of decentralisation of France’s political powers, of language management and will also seek to identify the most important agents within language policy decisions for Corsican. As will be demonstrated, language policy enters an increasingly legalistic process over the last years of the century, over which years the influence of non-linguists rises. This is not to suggest that linguists in their various guises should be the only contributors to language policy but, as will be made clear, the involvement of those whose expertise lies in public service, the law and even international co-operation will be seen to impact more strikingly on language matters than those trained in this area. Of particular note for the remainder of the examination of language management is the emergence of France’s Constitutional Council as an arbitrator in questions of language policy. The Constitutional Council, France’s highest constitutional authority, is called upon with increasing frequency during the period discussed in this chapter to intervene in language policy within the context of the French Constitution. Although always coloured by laws of various scopes, we will examine how language policy has become particularly legalistic and the role of the Constitutional Council is to be considered with particular care. Over this same period, the dramatic evolution of Europe as a continent of allied States will be shown to have born increasing influence on matters relating to language policy, both directly and by motivating the French State to take pre-emptive or protective action in this field.

5.2

Decentralisation for France, Devolution for Corsica

After the election of France’s first Socialist President, François Mitterrand, in 1981 there was clear political will to respond to the peculiarity of France’s Mediterranean island territory. Corsica was selected by the Socialist government as the test case for decentralisation in France and, between 1982 and 1983, legislation was enacted to devolve some responsibilities from Paris to Ajaccio, where the Regional Assembly was to be found (Ramsay, 1983, 204). The lois Defferre were part of the Mitterrand strategy for decentralising France’s administration, which, since before the Revolution, had been incrementally focussed on Paris. As part of the loi Defferre of 1982 that is of relevance to Corsica, the responsibility for the teaching of the Corsican language and cultures was devolved to the Regional Assembly (henceforth referred to as Ajaccio). The Chief Education Officer for Corsica founded the Academic Commission for the Corsican Language and Culture (la Commission Académique de Langue et Culture Corse) in March 1982 which met almost once a week until June 1983. The creation of such an agency, and others like it, such as the Council for Culture, Education and the Environment (le CCECV, whose significance will be evaluated in Section 5.3 below), was an important step because it replicated for the Corsican language

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bodies that had traditionally been founded for the French language. The creation of consultative groups and advisory agencies has long been part of the language ideology of France which, since the founding of the famous Académie française by Cardinal Richelieu, has gathered together specialists to debate and advise on language matters. The creation of comparable bodies for Corsican thus serves a number of purposes. Agencies such as the Academic Commission for the Corsican Language and Culture discuss matters of language policy and engage in the necessary tasks of corpus and status planning. The very existence of such bodies is also of fundamental importance in that, symbolically, they endow Corsican with a certain prestige. The symbolic argument for Corsican language issues has been remarked elsewhere (Jaffe, 1991, 372) and the implications of this symbolism and the founding of these agencies should not be overlooked, since these actions are the very gestures which influence both language beliefs and, subsequently, language practices. Since the start of the decentralisation process (and, to a lesser extent, even before the arrival of Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace), education has become the focus for language management on Corsica. From this domain, language beliefs and practices have been open to influence, yet the key area for language policy on the island, since the 1980s, has been the education system. Given the erosion of the number of speakers of Corsican since the Second World War, we are not yet at the stage of analysing language-in-education policies as understood by Amara & Mar’i (2002, 27–30). The decentralisation project never anticipated a proposal as extreme or radical as the abandoning of the national standard language in education, or even its relegation to co-official status with a heritage language like Corsican. Moreover, it is tenable that, by this time and given the vitality of Corsican, islanders had not been convinced that the heritage language as a medium of education was either feasible or desirable. We should recall that language beliefs towards Corsican had been worn down by two centuries of gallicisation. Since the final decades of the Ancien Régime, French had advanced – albeit falteringly for the first one hundred and fifty years of French Corsica – into the repertoire of the islanders on the premise that French represented all that was modern, progressive, successful and positive, whereas Corsican had been caricatured as the language in which one addressed the goat, the donkey or the sheepdog. In 1981, the island’s university was reopened in the mountain town of Corte. Corte, the capital of ‘free Corsica’ during the brief interlude of an independent island, is a town long associated with Corsica’s ‘father of the nation’, Pasquale Paoli, and the university was named after him. The question of language policy for the university was a thorny one, not least because of the historical resonance of the town in which the institute is housed – Corte is often portrayed locally as the repository of Corsican cultural identity. Moreover, the academics engaged to teach the island’s students were, to a large degree, the veterans of regionalism or, at the very least, language activists. Although not implemented immediately upon the reopening of the university, proponents of Corsican secured compulsory Corsican language teaching for all full-time students, something which cheered language activists greatly (Fusina, 1994, 213) since it was viewed as a positive piece of language management

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destined to change language practices, or – at the very least – enhance the language beliefs of a generation of students disconnected from their linguistic heritage. To oblige students to follow courses in Corsican is another difficult issue and one which will be discussed more fully in Chapter 7. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether the mandatory nature of Corsican language education at Corte is welcome today within the precincts of the university. Within the context of language management, Escudé (2002, 18) describes Mitterrand’s first term as President as leading ‘towards a certain normalisation’ of the teaching of France’s heritage languages. Alain Savary, Mitterrand’s first Minister for Education, was responsible for a number of circulaires (decrees) that were intended to organise the teaching of France’s heritage languages and their respective cultures. These circulaires (notably n° 82–261 and n° 83–547) were followed by arrêtés (legal orders) which continued to regularise not only the teaching of the heritage languages and cultures but the pedagogical training for the teachers themselves. Following Mitterrand’s re-election in 1988, there was a further step towards the formal organisation and extension of the teaching of France’s heritage languages. The loi Jospin of 1989 is interesting not only because it legislates for the training of teachers of heritage languages and their respective cultures, but also because it marks the first intervention in language management of Lionel Jospin, Socialist Member of Parliament and future Prime Minister, to whom we shall return in the next chapter. As the Mitterrand presidency unfolded, it is arguable that a certain softening of the State’s attitude towards France’s heritage languages can be detected. Since the start of the period covered by this case study, we have traced the aggressive, but not always successful, gallicisation of Corsica in wave after wave of explicit drives to raise language practices in French. In prompting a shift to French, we have noted, especially in terms of extra-linguistic factors, the causation for the abandonment of Corsican. By the 1980s, the decline of Corsican was no longer questionable; islanders’ language beliefs and language practices had changed to the extent that many Corsicans in younger generations spoke little or no Corsican. In the light of this fact, one perspective emerges which argues that the benevolence of the Mitterrand era was not the consequence of a genuine commitment to the heritage languages but, instead, a painless gesture. It has been reasoned that this generosity was a token gesture at a time when these languages had been so minorised by aggressive language management that they were in considerable difficulties in terms of vitality (Comiti, 2005, 77; as well as Humphreys, 1993, 639, who discusses this point in a wider context than merely France). In other words, languages such as Breton and Occitan are perceived to be in such a vulnerable state as languages that it is highly unlikely that they will ever be able to challenge the hegemony of French. Thus it is possible to see modest measures to allow limited use of the heritage languages within the apparatus of the State as popular but costing little in more than merely financial terms. Judge (1994, 37) is even more blunt in her analysis of this kind of benevolence towards heritage languages, noting that France no longer fights against these languages since they no longer represent any kind of danger. The same term, ‘danger’, is used by Marchetti (2003, 117) in his appraisal of the Mitterrand-era

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slogan ‘the right to be different’. These words marked the Socialist President’s campaigns and were intended, amongst other issues, to summarise his policies towards decentralisation and the heritage languages. It is now generally accepted in academic circles that the ‘rehabilitation’ (Duverger & Maillard, 1996, 131) of the heritage languages began once the aim of establishing monolingualism amongst the majority of France’s population had been achieved.

5.3

Language Activists Within the Administration of Corsica

In the creation of a Regional Assembly for Corsica, and in the light of direct elections to that body, nationalists entered the political administration of Corsica at Ajaccio. In terms of language policy, though, it should be noted that language activism, if we understand the term as referring to campaigning to effect a positive change for Corsican, was not limited to the elected nationalists. As early as 1983, a resolution was passed in Ajaccio which recognised the intrinsic value of Corsican as a marker of Corsican identity and specified French-Corsican bilingualism as a goal for the Regional Assembly (although this measure was rejected by Paris as falling out with the remit of Ajaccio). The Corsican language reappeared as the subject of a debate in 1985, when a nationalist motion was tabled to oblige the State to provide Corsican language education, although it was to remain optional for pupils on the island. There was, however, no vote on this issue. These examples of attempts at language management in favour of Corsican illustrate the positive language beliefs held by the majority of the Regional Assembly towards the heritage language. In 1989, the successor motion to bilingualism, proposing co-officiality for Corsican and French on Corsica was brought forward. We shall return to the question of co-officiality below although it should be noted at this stage that this motion was defeated. However, the fact that such language questions were being discussed by the Regional Assembly is important in the evolution of language beliefs on Corsica, although it is unlikely that the series of relatively unsuccessful measures in themselves had any significant impact on language practices. Be that as it may, attitudes towards Corsican entered a new phase since the elected representatives at Ajaccio, in a process that often characterises Corsica as a laboratory for France’s decentralising tendencies of the 1980s and 1990s, made the heritage language a topic for debate and discussion across the island. Whilst the work of groups such as Scola Corsa and its predecessor associations should not be considered as exclusive, it is fair to assert that the forum provided by the Regional Assembly brought the language question, as well as the other fundamental issues devolved to Ajaccio, into the public domain. The role of le CCECV, the Council for Culture, Education and the Environment, in language policy on Corsica merits closer examination. This Council had a broad remit but of most significance to language policy on Corsica, it comprised a language committee, known as Lingua. The creation of the language committee of le CCECV was particularly important since it employed language activists, amongst

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others, who lobbied on behalf of the Corsican language from within the apparatus set up by the State. This was not so much a case of poachers turning into gamekeepers but rather the admittance of pressure groups into the administration of the island. It is important to recall, however, that le CCECV was not a committee of elected representatives at the Regional Assembly tabling formal proposals in the Assembly chamber, but rather a consultative body who published documents to stimulate debate on Corsican, comparable to contemporary lobbyists the world over. It was intended that the work of le CCECV would galvanise debate amongst the islanders as well as the elected representatives in Ajaccio. The role of the language committee of le CCECV was significant by its nature, in that language activists, having previously lobbied the State from outside, became a formal part of the process of language management. Le CCECV engaged in questions pertaining to language policy, focussing first on the question of language practices. The work of the language committee of le CCECV is explored at length by Jaffe (1999, 177–185) and so her presentations and evaluations will not be rehearsed here. Instead, it will suffice to note the Corsican language debates during the 1980s outlined above in which le CCECV played a significant part. Jaffe (1999, 177) suggests that le CCECV sought to ‘change some of the terms of public discourse about language’ which we can translate for the purposes of this study into a deliberate involvement to modify language beliefs. Le CCECV was closely identified with the debates on the Lingua Matria and the more widely known attempt to establish co-officiality for Corsican alongside French, both of which discussions took place in the late 1980s. Lingua Matria was the notion that although Corsican was no longer the mother tongue of islanders in that it was not the first language learnt by the majority of islanders, it still enjoyed the associations of such a status. As such, le CCECV sought to encourage an island-wide sense of ownership of and attachment to Corsican, despite the fact that the heritage language fell between two stools, being neither a mother tongue nor a foreign language but the language that marks Corsican identity. Lingua Matria as a concept was soon eclipsed by the debate surrounding co-officiality for Corsican, suggested in the first instance by le CCECV in order to acknowledge the State’s resistance to bilingualism. Co-officiality would allow, for example, texts in either French or Corsican to enjoy the same legal status, thereby permitting islanders to write cheques, address letters or petition the State in Corsican. In differentiating co-officiality from bilingualism, le CCECV explained that it was equally possible to define oneself as either a francophone or corsophone Corsican, rather than insisting on expressing oneself solely through the heritage language – the tenor of previous debates at the Regional Assembly. As already mentioned, this motion for co-officiality was not passed and France’s Conseil d’Etat (the State Council, the body that advises the government on administrative matters) ruled in 1992 that neither letters nor applications to the courts could be produced in the heritage languages (Favoreu, 2004, 49). Nevertheless, the act of bringing the question of the status of Corsican on Corsica into the light has been part of the evolution of language beliefs amongst islanders. Set against the decision by several generations to abandon Corsican, language beliefs towards the heritage

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language were changing again in the late 1980s. Despite the arrival of the language activists within the administration of Corsica, the commitment to learning Corsican amongst adults was not sustained after the high tide mark that was the 1970s – referred to locally as u Riacquistu (the Reacquisition).

5.4

La Collectivité Territoriale de Corse

In 1991 the Socialist government of Michel Rocard introduced legislation to change the status of the island. As part of what is known as the loi Joxe (named after the Interior Minister, Pierre Joxe), the law proposed further devolution be granted to Corsica, and outlined a strategy for the teaching of Corsican and of Mediterranean cultures (Arrighi, 1990, 104). This law, however, proved to be polemical on the grounds that it contradicted Republican ideologies regarding the rights of citizenship and the use of language. The controversy centred first on references to ‘the Corsican people’ in Article 1 of the law – something that immediately sparked a debate in France as to the existence of a people within the French people. Article 2 of the French Constitution, to which we shall return below, specifies that all of France’s citizens are equal before the law, regardless of their origin, race or religion, and that the French Republic is, amongst other qualifications, indivisible. In other words, there is, in law, no such thing as ‘the Corsican people’ since ‘the French people’ cannot be subdivided as this would run counter to the principle of equality. As controversial as the proposed recognition in law of a Corsican people was Article 53 of the loi Joxe, which recommended the introduction of Corsican language and culture classes into the school timetable. The controversy here might seem incomprehensible in the light of the extension of the loi Deixonne to Corsican in 1974, which permitted the teaching of the heritage language on the island. Let us recall, however, that the provisions for the teaching of France’s heritage languages are strictly optional: no student, according to the legislation enacted before the loi Joxe, can be obliged to learn a heritage language. Article 53 of the loi Joxe, therefore, crossed a new threshold since, in introducing Corsican to the timetable, students would, effectively, be expected to study Corsican and its culture. As such, in May 1991, France’s Constitutional Council entered the debate. Not for the last time in this case study, we find proposed language management serving to test the limits of the law of the land. At the same time, we must bear in mind the fact that, as part of language policy on Corsica, it could not be guaranteed that such legislation would have a positive impact on language practices. In its Décision n° 91–290 DC, the Constitutional Council (1991) ruled that Article 53 of the loi Joxe did not contain a sense of obligation which would have rendered it incompatible with the notions of equality enshrined in the Constitution. The Constitutional Council also ruled that the promotion of the Corsican language and its culture by Ajaccio did not have any binding constitutional value. In reaching this judgement, the State devolved the responsibility of promoting

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(however one chooses to interpret that term) Corsican to what is known as the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, transferring some degree of rights to official language management away from Paris to Ajaccio. Henceforth, language management could be undertaken by the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio but also still by the government or the President in Paris. This dual responsibility for language management, given the nature of representation in Ajaccio,1 radically changed what could be understood as top-down language management, since – whilst remaining obliged to respect the spirit and the letter of the French Constitution – the Regional Assembly was granted the authority to manage language-in-education policies on Corsica. In retrospect, the ruling made by the Constitutional Council (1991) on the reference to ‘the Corsican people’ in the loi Joxe can be seen to have had a comparable impact on language policy on Corsica to the decision that allowed Corsican to enter the timetable. Considération n° 13 of this Décision, referring to Article 2 of the Constitution, highlights the fact that all citizens of France are equal. Therefore, there is no ‘Corsican people’ in France; there are only ‘French people’ comprising all the citizens of France, regardless of their origin, race or religion. The politics of discussing the existence of a Corsican people rumbled on through the following decade and beyond,2 as we will see in the discussion of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, where this thorny question was used to attempt to block language management favourable to the heritage languages.

5.5

Language Management to Defend French

One of the most significant international agreements of the late twentieth century was the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, signed by the member states of the then European Community. This Treaty was intended to further harmonisation across the Community on matters relating to the Euro, a common foreign policy and the administration of justice. The Treaty was not without controversy and in France, in preparation for the changes planned, the Constitution was amended to enshrine the position of French within the State explicitly. The Constitutional Law n° 92–554 pertained to Article 2 of the Constitution and (as well as formally acknowledging the national flag, the motto of the Republic and la Marseillaise as the national anthem) stated that ‘the language of the Republic is French’. This action is a prime example of what Kaplan and Baldauf Jr (2003, 6) enumerate as part of language policy as it is traditionally understood. In the light of the debates on language choice and practice over the two hundred and fifty years highlighted in this case study, it might well appear surprising that a country famed for its ‘strong ideology and management’ (Spolsky, 2004, 63) had not sanctified its revered standard language before 1992. In amending the Constitution, the State asserted its position in language management in France and demonstrated its commitment to the French language, something that might be considered contrary to its sympathetic responses to the lobbying from language activists since the end of the Second World War. The change to the

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Constitution, a classic gesture in terms of language management, is a reminder of the Republic’s commitment to its standard language, threatened (or, at the very least, intimidated) by the language beliefs of the majority of the members of the expanding European Community. With the planned accession of countries, such as Austria, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, the balance within the Community would tip in favour of those countries who used English, rather than French, as a second language. In terms of language policy on Corsica, the formal recognition of French as the language of the Republic has had an impact in a number of ways. For language activists, the act of formally placing the French language at the heart of the State was a disappointment. The ease with which the change to the Constitution was made did not go unnoticed and, as will be highlighted in the next chapter, was referred to when subsequent propositions favourable to the heritage languages were blocked on constitutional grounds. This decision, as part of what can be understood as an attempt to protect France’s interests in the face of perceived anglophone dominance in the European Community, served to confirm the hegemony of a language which some had hoped would change its dominant power relationship with Corsican, Basque, Breton and the other heritage languages of France. In the light of the change to the Constitution and the rulings made by the State Council, the legal attitude towards these languages stiffened with, for example, post office workers refusing to deliver letters where the address was given in one of the heritage languages, rather than French (Sibille, 2000, 82). This kind of interpretation of the change to the Constitution continues to shape both language attitudes and language practices; as illustrated throughout this case study, gestures which disparage the heritage languages affect language policy. If some activists thought that France’s linguistic mood music cherished French more clearly in the 1990s than over the preceding decades, the next piece of language management would confirm that, for all the generosity shown towards the heritage languages, the State would continue to legislate to protect French. In 1994, just two years after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the centre-right government of Edouard Balladur sponsored the loi Toubon (named after the then Culture Minister Jacques Toubon) which was drafted to confirm the importance of French in the life of France. The loi Toubon shares at least one characteristic with the Edict of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539. The Edict was expressly intended to prompt a language shift in the judiciary from Latin to French, but its corollary was technically to outlaw the use of the heritage languages in legal documents. The loi Toubon sought to reinforce the position of the standard language in order to offer a formal resistance to the advances made by English into the linguistic landscape of France. Despite the fact that the preamble to the legislation stated that its provisions did not hinder the protection of the country’s other languages, it also technically discriminated against the heritage languages. One perspective, shared by academics, politicians and regionalists is that the loi Toubon ‘made no concessions to the regional languages’ (Judge, 2000, 75). The law was controversial because it did not chime with the mood that had been growing in favour of – at the very least – tolerance of the heritage languages. Määttä notes that the French media ‘labeled it as an outdated tool of fight against English’ (2005, 174). Again, the Constitutional Council was

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called upon to examine the legislation to see whether it contradicted the Constitution. In its Décision n° 94–345 DC, the Constitutional Council (1994) upheld some of the complaints made against the loi Toubon. In particular, and referring back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man from August 1789 as well as the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, the Constitutional Council ruled that the law ran counter to the freedom of speech prized in post-Revolution France. Once modified in accordance with the Décision, the loi Toubon made it onto the statute book and, together with the change to the Constitution, it illustrates a course of action which exemplifies the language management strategies for which France has become renowned since before the Revolution. Part of the significance of these steps is that, in terms of language management, they constitute what Ager refers to as ‘two high status public statements’ (1999, 116) and as such had the potential to change language attitudes and, therefore, language practices. However, there is evidence that language management in the manner of these two ‘public statements’ is not as effective in modern France as it once might have been. Judge (2000, 78) suggests that the political climate had changed to the extent that legislation such as the loi Toubon was unacceptable to parts of French society, in that not all French citizens supported strong language management.

5.6

New Agents in Language Policy

Language policy in France was to experience a fundamental change in the 1990s in a way that the State, as represented by its traditional Establishment figures (including various Councils attached to the Republic and the mainstream political parties), might not have anticipated after the Second World War and the Liberation. For the period covered thus far in this case study, language policy has been an internal affair where language management has been regulated by central government based in Paris. This formal language planning was driven initially by the State, dating back to the Ancien Régime, through the Revolution, reaching its peak – we argue – during the Third Republic. Language management then became an ideological battle between what we can refer to in sociolinguistic shorthand as the Jacobins, favouring one national language for one unified nation, and the language activists who sought to set the agenda for formal language planning as part of a programme to revitalise Corsican. This revitalisation came after two hundred years of what the language activists perceived to be marginalisation and discouragement. Although some might choose to identify themselves differently, these language activists were and are French citizens, a fact which confirms the domestic nature of language policy in France. Since before the Revolution, therefore, language management in France has been the concern of the French and whilst others might have felt emboldened to contribute to the discussions of the twentieth century, language management has been undertaken – often in response to pressure by French nationals – by the French. In the 1990s, the language policy debate in France was joined by the relatively new supra-national agencies referred to collectively by sections of the

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Anglo-Saxon press as ‘Europe’. From the perspective of this case study, it is pertinent to identify the two main agencies whose discussions, decisions and rulings came to bear upon language policy on Corsica (and in France in general): the European Union and the Council of Europe.

5.6.1

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

If the change to the French Constitution and the passing of the loi Toubon were preventative measures, taken in order to defend French against perceived threats primarily from beyond France’s borders, the work undertaken by the Council of Europe on language matters could be understood as threatening the position and status of French by the back door. Before examining the measures proposed by the Council of Europe on language diversity, it is important to differentiate between the Council and what is now known as the European Union. Whereas the Council of Europe is an organisation that seeks to defend human rights, promote democracy and develop a European identity, the European Union is an economic and political association of twenty-seven European countries which operates a system of internal free trade and common external trade tariffs. The European Union, originally an economic organisation, is evolving into a more federalist political grouping. Both bodies had already engaged in the debate on language management in 1981 when they published their respective recommendations on the subject. The Council of Europe produced recommendations on language management in its report on ‘The Status of Minority Languages in Europe’. In the same year, ‘The Community Charter on Regional Languages and Cultures’ and ‘The Charter for the Rights of Ethnic Minorities’ were issued. Despite the fact that over fact that over forty directives pertaining to language had been issued by successive French governments between 1976 and 1982, France made no formal response to these three documents (Escudé, 2002, 10), not least because – as far as the European Community’s texts were concerned – it was noted that the protection and promotion of heritage languages was beyond the remit of the European Community (Wright, 2000, 415). Ten years after its summary on European minority languages, the Council of Europe (1992) presented its Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (henceforth the Charter). The Charter evolved from resolutions passed by the European Community (Määttä, 2005, 168) in particular from the Arfé Resolution of 1981 which formally recognised Europe’s linguistic diversity as a strength rather than a weakness or, more extreme still, a threat (Wright, 2000, 414). The Charter came into force in the spring of 1998 once five member states, as per the regulations of the Council of Europe, had signed and ratified it. The Charter, according to its own executive summary, ‘aims to protect and promote the historical regional or minority languages of Europe’ by outlining principles to be followed by member states that will not only acknowledge but also protect and encourage linguistic diversity across Europe. It is important, therefore, to note that the Charter is not a linguistic bill of rights for what could be considered

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minorities in Europe. It does not list the privileges that should be enjoyed by each and every member of a recognised ethnic minority within the continent. As Grin (2003, 194) concludes, ‘The Charter can be interpreted as a text motivated by a welfare-based ideology, according to which diversity is worth preserving and developing because it constitutes a contribution to the general quality of life.’ One of the principal intended consequences of the implementation of the Charter was that, from Portugal in the west to the Caucasus in the east, heritage languages would be valued and nurtured (rather than marginalized) by the states in which they are found and spoken. The Charter contains four parts, of which Part II sets out its principles to which all the signatory nations must agree, including the acknowledgement that these heritage languages (differentiated from languages of immigration, which are explicitly excluded from the provisions of the Charter) constitute a key part of the cultural heritage of the continent. This part of the Charter was the most problematic to France’s legal guardians. Part III comprises ninety-eight measures, which are broken down into seven categories: education, judicial authorities, administrative authorities and public services, the media, cultural activities and facilities, economic and social life, and transfrontier exchanges (Sibille, 2000, 95–96). From these ninety-eight measures, the signatories must agree to apply at least thirty-five provisions, of which three measures must be adopted from the indexes for education and cultural activities. Moreover, signatories must also apply at least one measure from the provisions for judicial authorities, administrative authorities and public services, the media, and economic and social life. At the time of ratification, the member state must also formally identify the languages to which these measures will apply. Finally, Parts I and IV constitute the technical overview of the Charter, its broad provisions and definitions.

5.6.2

The French State’s Response to the Charter

The Charter, considered flexible and cautious (Spolsky, 2004, 124–125), was championed by regionalists and their allies in France. The 1997 general election saw the Socialists, whose rule under President François Mitterrand had initiated the process of devolution discussed above, returned to power. The new Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, set out on a course of action to address the issue of the Charter. There had already been some debate in France following the opening of the Charter for signature, since its wording recognises the existence of groups of peoples within a State, something that had already been discussed in Corsica’s Regional Assembly but, as noted above, dismissed by the Constitutional Council who decreed that there is only one people – the French – within France (Jaffe, 1999, 128). Jospin commissioned a report on France’s heritage languages, started by Member of Parliament Nicole Péry but completed and submitted, once Péry entered government, by the mayor of Quimper in Brittany, Bernard Poignant. The Poignant Report (Poignant, 1998) was submitted to the government in the summer of 1998 and concluded that France should support its linguistic diversity.

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It also recommended that a legal opinion be commissioned to ascertain whether, despite the Constitutional Council’s earlier ruling on ‘the Corsican people’, the Charter could be understood within the parameters of France’s Republican institutions. Ager (1999, 54) observes that constitutional expert Guy Carcassonne removed a considerable obstacle to the signing of the Charter by producing a favourable legal report in response to the Poignant Report. The Jospin government accepted Poignant’s recommendations and began the process of signing the Charter. In doing so, the then government engaged in language management favourable to the heritage languages of France. After the change to the Constitution and the loi Toubon, regionalists and language activists (who had lobbied the Socialists before and during the general election campaign) could consider themselves to be active participants in language management in France. Given the resistance to such measures for decades during the centuries since the Revolution, these advances are particularly significant for language policy on Corsica and therefore for this study: language management that protects and promotes heritage languages changes positively the contexts in which language beliefs and practices are shaped as we will highlight in the remainder of this chapter. Since signatories were obliged to name the languages to which the provisions of the Charter are to apply, one of the next steps towards signature was a request to the director of the National Institute for the French Language, Bernard Cerquiglini, to designate which languages in France would be nominated for inclusion in the Charter. As Wright (2000, 416) comments, ‘This is where the French position started to deviate from that of all the other signatories, and French history and tradition weighed in to push the French process into stalemate’. Cerquiglini proposed that the government recognise seventy-five languages of France, including those spoken in France’s overseas territories. Of these seventy-five languages, the twenty found in metropolitan France did not correspond entirely to the spirit of the definitions of regional or heritage languages as clarified in the Charter since they were not all the languages of autochthonous minorities (Wright, 2000, 416). By way of comparison, at the time of ratification, Austria identified five languages to which the measures of the Charter would apply, whilst the United Kingdom also nominated five languages and Germany six. Part of the problem in France with identifying the languages to which the Charter would apply was that citizenship law entitles immigrants’ children born in France to speak the language of their parents, hence the inclusion of languages such as Armenian and Berber. Määttä (2005, 176) lists what he sees as the three principal reasons for Cerquiglini’s opposition to the Charter. First, the Charter, in identifying a language with a community rather than the nation, can be seen to contradict France’s Republican ideology, according to which languages are part of the national heritage. Second, none of the languages spoken in France today originated within the territory, since even French is a descendant of Latin which emerged beyond the borders of contemporary France. Third, the differentiation between languages and dialects could be seen to be blurred, meaning specifically that the Romance dialects which persist in France (and from amongst which French evolved) do not constitute dialects of French and should therefore enjoy the same rights afforded by the Charter as the heritage languages such as Corsican.

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On 7 May 1999, France became the nineteenth member of the Council of Europe to sign the Charter. At the same time as the signature, the government brought forward a ratification bill in response to the lively debate on the acknowledgement of minority groups within France’s borders. This bill included an interpretation of the Charter which insisted it existed not to recognise and defend minorities but to champion Europe’s linguistic diversity and heritage. In such a way, France formally indicated that it would not be extending collective rights on the speakers of heritage languages. Määttä (2005, 177) believes that, had this clarification not been sought, the Charter would have been incompatible with French law, thereby preventing the Minister for European Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, from signing it. Of the ninety eight measures contained in Part III of the Charter, France indicated that it would adopt thirty nine articles, just four beyond the minimum requirement. Furthermore, the measures adopted all seek the encouragement, promotion and development of languages in France, whilst falling short of actively revitalising any of the twenty possible languages highlighted by Cerquiglini (Määttä, 2005, 178). In effect, this ‘mild version of the Charter’ (Wright, 2000, 416) does not exceed the provisions of the loi Deixonne of 1951 and therefore does not go any further in positively changing language beliefs or practices on Corsica. As demonstrated through this case study, language policy can be seen to be usually governed by informal groups of individuals (such as communities of islanders on Corsica) or more formal associations or bodies (societies of language activists or the State as embodied by its various agencies, amongst other bodies encountered already). The occasions when an individual plays a significant part in language policy are rare, yet the role played by President Jacques Chirac during the saga of the signing and ratification of the Charter is, in this case, one example of one person influencing language management. France’s Head of State was not responsible for commissioning the Poignant, Carcassonne or Cerquiglini reports or for selecting the measures of the Charter to which France would subscribe. However, President Chirac did become involved in France’s relationship with the Charter when, following the signing in Budapest by Moscovici, he asked the Constitutional Council to assess whether the Charter would conform to the spirit of the Constitution. In its Décision n° 99–412 DC, only two months after France had signed the Charter, the Constitutional Council (1999) ruled that the implementation of this document was incompatible with France’s Constitution, effectively dismissing the government’s clarification in the ratification bill as irrelevant. The Constitutional Council’s decision returned to the issue that had been raised previously during the debate on ‘the Corsican people’, namely the granting of rights to minority groups. According to the Constitution, since the Republic is indivisible and its people are equal, such groups do not exist in France. In French law, groups have no collective rights based on an aspect of their characteristics; in other words, France’s Constitution is underpinned by the contract between the individual and the State, which does not allow for the privileging of groups within France (Määttä, 2005, 178–179; Wright, 2000, 417). When Prime Minister Jospin asked President Chirac to authorise changes to the Constitution to enable to permit the ratification of the Charter, the President refused. This refusal has been highlighted by language activists who lobbied hard for France

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to demonstrate a commitment to its heritage languages by ratifying the Charter. In the fallout after the decision by the Constitutional Council, both Chirac and Jospin were at pains to point out that France could and would continue to support and nourish its languages despite the fact that the process to ratify of the Charter had stalled indefinitely. These commitments can be understood in a number of ways. This professed dedication to France’s heritage languages can be dismissed as politicking by two men both seeking election as President at the Presidential elections that would take place three years later. A less cynical interpretation of this position is that it acknowledges the limitations of the Charter when it is set against the extent of the reach of France’s constitution. Alternatively, it is possible that both the President and the Prime Minister were committed to linguistic diversity, a view that might find support on account of the enactment between 2001 and 2003 of fifteen ministerial decrees pertaining to the promotion of heritage languages, in comparison with the passing of not a single measure between 1994 and 2000 (Määttä, 2005, 181).

5.6.3

The Charter in a Corsican Context

On Corsica, the nationalist groupings, such as Corsica Nazione and l’Union du Peuple corse, strongly supported the ratification of the Charter, despite the general agreement on its shortcomings. In the light of Décision n° 99–412 DC, an action group on Corsica was founded, comprising of language activists, trade unions and the Council for Culture, Education and the Environment, called The Language Co-Operative (Le Collectif pour la langue). The group began a campaign to lobby the government to change the Constitution in order to allow ratification of the Charter (Judge & Judge, 1998, 304).3 The existence of this grouping, like its many predecessors highlighted throughout this study, demonstrated a local commitment to language activism that seeks to influence language management. Language beliefs (at least amongst a cross-section of the island as exemplified by The Language Co-Operative) not only remained positive but also motivated islanders to act to change language management. What remained to be seen, however, was whether the level of language management offered by the Charter could close the circle between the three elements of language policy and change language practices. If the Charter was understood by its proponents to offer only limited support for the heritage languages, it is important to discern why its ratification was and is so important to language activists. Since France’s purchase of the island, the enactment of language laws, the drafting of constitutions, and the issuing of formal decrees by the State have come to dictate language policy on Corsica. A pattern emerged whereby the pace of language policy was set by language management, invariably undertaken by the French Republic. To a greater extent, language beliefs and language practices were dictated by the measures and decrees of this language management. It is therefore tenable to argue that language activists and islanders have considered language laws and rulings issued by governments in Paris to dominate language policy on Corsica. When a measure, such as the Charter – understood as favourable to Corsican – is drafted, despite its limitations

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as a document which does not considerably exceed the 1974 extension of the loi Deixonne, the nature of language policy in France meant that language activists expected that this measure would have a positive impact on language beliefs and language practices. In other words, the Charter received warm support from groups like Corsica Nazione because they judged that it would change the way islanders viewed Corsican and the extent to which they used the language. In understanding language policy on Corsica within this framework, we are creating a hierarchy in which language management influences language beliefs and language practices to a considerable extent. However, whilst it is clearly possible for language beliefs to affect language management (and we have traced the results of lobbying on behalf of heritage languages throughout this study), this influence swims against the tide. In conceptualising this relationship between the three elements of language policy, we return to Lodge’s ‘volontariste approach’ (1993, 227) according to which the outcome of events – in this case, language policy – comes as a result of the actions and decisions of the State rather than individuals or even small groups such as communities. Such an analysis of language policy on Corsica goes some way to accounting for the high esteem in which the Charter is held by language activists, insofar as the enactment of language management favourable to France’s heritage languages is understood – by language activists and some sections of islanders – as serving the cause. In other words, the Charter was warmly received by language activists because it translated into language management favourable to Corsican, despite its shortcomings in terms of actively changing language practices.

5.6.4

The Local Implications of the National Impasse

In the wake of the failure to ratify the Charter, language planning has emerged as an area in which language activists and islanders could participate in order to exploit the popular mood of positive language beliefs. As highlighted in Chapter 1, Cooper (1989) divides language planning into three specific strands: corpus planning, status planning and acquisition planning. Having measured acquisition planning in the previous chapter, it is worth dwelling on corpus planning, since this has particular pertinence in the light of the Charter. As outlined above, corpus planning on behalf of Corsican has been undertaken through the twentieth century. Part of this work has been the faithful recording of expressions, proverbs and sayings in Corsican in journals such as A Tramuntana and A Muvra, something which constitutes a valuable part of the language’s heritage and can also be used as a resource when language activists, teachers and politicians seek to interfere in the reconstruction of Corsican at the turn of this new millennium. Part of the popularity of A Muvra was its inclusion of representations of the island’s cultural identity in Corsican (Arzalier, 1990, 48). In the post-war era, valuable work was undertaken by bodies such as l’ADECEC as well as notable Corsican individuals such as Pascal Marchetti, Jean-Joseph Franchi and Jean Chiorboli.4 Responsibility – in the loosest possible sense – for acquisition planning was passed to the CRDP, the regional centre responsible for teaching

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material (le Centre Régional de Documentation Pédagogique) as part of the wider Contrat de Plan (see Chapter 6) for managing the island. The CRDP has co-ordinated the production of school textbooks, inviting published authors to contribute to their development and writing. The wider discussion about corpus planning for Corsican had been led by researchers amongst themselves with no official intervention either from the State in Paris or from Ajaccio. In conversation, Jean-Marie Arrighi, Schools Inspector for Corsican at the Académie de Corse, characterised the debate as an intellectual struggle between the ‘linguists’ (such as Dumenicantone Geronimi and Jean-Joseph Franchi) and the ‘sociolinguists’ based at the newly reopened university in Corte (including Jean-Baptiste Marcellesi, Jacques Thiers and Jean Chiorboli). This discussion was conducted through the medium of articles published in the island’s press, with particular public interest generated thanks to a debate at Vizzavona in 1987. The university at Corte has played its part in corpus planning, hosting a colloquium on the issue of polynomia5 in 1990, for example, as part of an attempt by language activists to resolve some of the problems with which the language was faced. However, Corsican has lacked an over-arching agency or body that is responsible for Corsican in the way that the Académie française oversees French or the Accademia della Crusca does for Italian. The significance of this absence was heightened during the public exchanges about the Charter. The proponents of the Charter did not envisage the application of its measures serving to revitalise the continent’s heritage languages, even those which were nominated by the relevant states and enjoyed the most extensive application of measures set down by the Council of Europe. In order to maximise the advantages offered by the provisions of the Charter, Grin (2003, 199) recommends the establishment of what he calls a Language Planning Office, which would be devoted to the protection and promotion of a given minority language, ultimately to ensure that the policy decisions decided by any tier of government lead to positive results for the relevant language. This is a different premise to that upon which the Académie française, for example, was established. However, the model of a respected, authoritative body as offered by the Académie française, combined with the responsibilities of the various agencies founded in the second half of the twentieth century in France, is one that Grin suggests is necessary in order to actualise the potential benefits of the Charter. Such a viewpoint finds an echo on Corsica where, for example, Comiti (2005, 37) regrets the absence of such an ‘Office for the Corsican Language’. In terms of language management, the creation of such an agency would not serve to determine ultimately what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in terms of the varieties of Corsican in existence across the island. Instead, this body would co-ordinate efforts to enable Corsicans to change their own language practices by serving as a resource for Corsican in terms of spelling and pronunciation as well as offering guidance on such matters as translating labels for bottles of wine (Comiti, 2005, 37). To a certain extent an ‘Office for the Corsican Language’ as proposed by Comiti would enhance language beliefs, partly by emulating the prestige of comparable institutions, partly by dispelling the criticisms levelled at Corsican that its internal variety hampers its practical usefulness as a language.

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Notes 1. Devolution, depending on the electoral system selected, can give greater influence to groups marginalized in national parliaments. By way of example, until the Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007, the Scottish Nationalist Party has sat in opposition to the Executive at the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh since its reopening in 1998, whilst Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, plays a similar role at the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. The same principle has held in Ajaccio, where Corsican nationalists, with not a single seat in Parliament in Paris, have constituted a constant albeit minority presence. 2. Escudé (2002, 6) highlights another occasion when the question of a ‘Corsican people’ exploded in public life, noting a lively exchange in France’s Senate in 1996 when a Communist Senator used the term ‘Corsican people’ only to be shouted down by her colleagues from the Left and the Right. 3. This viewpoint clearly had some impact amongst the islanders since, for example, in the second survey for this project, one respondent – R31/00 – noted that the problem surrounding France’s ratification of the Charter could be resolved quite simply: “All that’s needed is one stroke to the Constitution”. 4. These individuals could be described as language activists, although it is important not to dismiss their writings on language matters on the grounds that they have an ideological interest in the revitalisation of Corsican. 5. Polynomia is the model proposed by Marcellesi (1990) for the recognition of internal variation within Corsican, on the proviso that the speech community recognises all the forms of the language as Corsican. Such a model was brought forward as a method of countering the criticism that the absence of a standardised Corsican rendered the language it impossible to teach, to transmit or to acknowledge as an independent language, rather than merely a collection of related dialects.

Chapter 6

6.1

Language Beliefs Influencing Language Management

By the early 1990s, the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio was a fully functioning chamber able to consider devolved matters, such as education, but without the power to legislate. While still bound to respect the Constitution of France (the island remaining subject to laws passed in Paris), Ajaccio emerged as a principal agent in language management in the final decade of the twentieth century. One of the effects of devolution was the co-existence of two formal, official agents in language management for the island (as well as other authoritative agents such as the European Union). Although Paris and Ajaccio were not set on conflicting courses in terms of language policy on Corsica, it is possible to identify an essential difference between the two institutions. In Ajaccio, given the separate elections for the Regional Assembly, the voting population of the island had – and still has – the opportunity to elect someone to represent them at a local level whom they might not support at national elections. Moreover, given the nature of politics on the island (not always a mirror of the mainland) certain groupings were bound to be better represented in Ajaccio than in Paris, especially the Corsican nationalists. As already noted, not all nationalists are language activists, and not all language activists are nationalists, but it is worth recalling, as Jaffe (1999, 126–131) outlines, nationalists as well as the majority of other elected representatives at the Regional Assembly defended, supported and promoted Corsican. With the first elections to this Assembly, dedicated proponents of Corsican in the form of the various nationalist movements were elected to serve in regional government. In the 1991 election, 21% of the seats in the Regional Assembly were won by the nationalist movements, a proportion which rose to 25% in 1992. Later, the various groupings held 27% of the seats after the 1999 elections. As part of devolution for Corsica, the Regional Assembly had been required to produce a Contrat de Plan – the planning and budgetary document for a set period which must be agreed by the Assembly since it provides a programme to be followed. The first Contrat de Plan (for 1989–1993) was agreed a little behind schedule in 1990 yet, in terms of language policy, it set clear targets which aimed to change language practices. This Contrat de Plan would effectively establish a base R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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line from which more extensive language management would evolve. In this area, the Contrat de Plan highlighted – amongst other targets – a plan for the training of teachers, the creation of a Corsican language working group in every secondary school and the production of textbooks and audio-visual teaching aids. According to Escudé (2002, 21), the implementation of this list of targets has been satisfactory. The first Contrat de Plan was followed by a second, covering the period 1994–1998 which was adopted in September 1993. This second Contrat de Plan was to build on the provisions of the first and extend some of its measures, including a partnership with the television channel FR3 to develop Corsican-language programmes. In February 1994, Ajaccio published a document entitled ‘The Strategy for the State on Corsica’ which, for the first time, formally recorded the aim of establishing three hours per week of Corsican language teaching in public education from nursery schools to the island’s university. This provision was to be achieved within five years and would remain optional, in accordance with, amongst other fundamental texts, the Constitution, the rulings by the Constitutional Council and the loi Deixonne (and its subsequent amendments) of 1951. Although we must acknowledge the focus of language management almost exclusively in the education system, by the middle of the 1990s, the State – through the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio – had made a significant commitment to Corsican. This dedication to Corsican was not unqualified, nor did it extend to the kind of undertaking that language activists had been seeking since the Liberation. However, thanks to the creation of the Regional Assembly, the powers devolved to it and the participation of islanders in the democratic process of standing for election, a fundamental commitment to Corsican had been reached. Despite the decisions made by many in post-war generations to abandon the heritage language, the majority of the islanders have long been committed to the heritage language, as demonstrated not only by work undertaken by Jaffe (1999, 2001) and elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004a) but by the continued use of the language under certain circumstances by sections of the island’s population. Moreover, the attachment to the preservation of the heritage language and its transmission within the schools system on the island is, in terms of the actions of the Regional Assembly, unquestionable. Whether this attachment goes beyond a desire to preserve Corsican and arrange for the availability of its teaching in schools is not something it is possible to establish yet, given the youthfulness of the Assembly. However, in terms of language policy on Corsica, it is important to acknowledge at this stage that a new threshold has been reached. Language beliefs amongst language activists and islanders (as personified by their elected representatives in Ajaccio) are positive and go some way to counter the perceived earlier ambivalence over the period of intense gallicisation on Corsica. In turn, these language beliefs have led to modest language management in favour of Corsican. Although we have noted in Chapters 3–5 the influence exerted by proponents of Corsican on legislators, now for the first time, two of the main pillars of language policy on Corsica are directly linked; language beliefs are influencing language management in Ajaccio. The strength of the influence of the pro-Corsican lobbyists and the depth of the commitment of the elected members have been repeatedly tested

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since the founding of the Regional Assembly, but this should not detract from the connection of these two fundamentals of language policy. As we shall see in the next chapter, islanders are in favour of the preservation of the Corsican language, since it is understood as a marker of their identity as Corsicans. This element of cultural identity is complex, since it begs questions about the understanding of what it means to speak a language. We shall return in part to these issues but, at this stage, it suffices to note that islanders support not only the concept of preserving the Corsican language but also the provision of Corsican language teaching for those who wish to take up the option. At this stage in the development of language policy on Corsica, Ajaccio became the forum for debates on language management, ostensibly within the school system. It should be noted that, with only a few exceptions, such as the agreement between Ajaccio and FR3 for television programming in Corsican, language management focused virtually entirely on the school system. As the 1990s progressed, there were developments within the television and radio media, but the key locus for language management on Corsica is education. Without a formal agreement on the matter, and possibly also because education is one of the matters devolved to Ajaccio, a consensus appears to have been reached that the preservation of Corsican and the changing of language practices to sustain and revitalise the heritage language would best be achieved by language management in the island’s schools. This subconscious decision has serious implications for language policy on Corsica, as highlighted by Comiti (2005, 84) amongst others.

6.2

Interpreting Language Management from Paris

In devolving responsibility for education from Paris to Ajaccio, the State did not cease to concern itself with matters pertaining to the national education system on Corsica. Legislation enacted by Paris continued to apply to the island in the spirit of equality dating back to the Revolution. Simultaneously, this equality was protected by the vigilance of those politicians who were quick to call upon the Constitutional Council to verify the legitimacy of decisions made in both Ajaccio and Paris. Corsica can thus be seen to have enjoyed the peculiar position of enjoying dual language management from both Paris and Ajaccio. In the 1990s, a new agent asserted its position in language management in France thanks to the focus of language policy on the national schools system. Regions of France are organised into local education authorities (académies), led by a Chief Education Officer who is appointed from amongst the académie’s professoriate. The Chief Education Officer interprets the circulaires, décrets and lois emanating from Paris and applies them to his own specific region. Thus we encounter, yet again, an individual (or, in this case a role within the administration of the State) who has an important role to play in language management (see Ager, 2001, 175, 176). In Toulouse, by way of example, the Chief Education Officer issued a number of circulaires regarding the development of the teaching of Occitan and its culture in the light of circulaire n° 95–086.

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On Corsica, Chief Education Officers have used language-in-education policies, circulaires, and laws to the benefit of Corsican linguistic and cultural education, ensuring that Corsican enjoys significant institutional privileges. It would be unwise to highlight the Chief Education Officers on Corsica as principal agents in language management, since both Paris and Ajaccio have passed different forms of legislation which have been executed by these civil servants. One of these circulaires from Paris was not made explicitly to enhance the status of the heritage languages, but has been used to do so on Corsica, thus making one of the most significant changes to language practices on Corsica since the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1992, circulaire n° 92–234 was drafted so as to permit the establishment of ‘European departments’ in secondary schools in order to enrich language teaching in France. This circulaire was intended to combat the country’s poor performance in European Union league tables for the learning of modern foreign languages. However, the circulaire did not explicitly exclude the heritage languages from the provisions laid down. Circulaire n° 92–234 provided for the creation of a pathway in secondary schools for pupils to enjoy intensive language teaching in their first two years. In turn, this would lead to a broader curriculum in subsequent years. Importantly, however, from the third year, teaching would be undertaken in the target language across the curriculum (although not necessarily for all disciplines). Although not explicitly intended for France’s heritage languages, Chief Education Officers have since used this circulaire, alongside other measures, for the teaching of a number of subjects in both the national standard and in French. This circulaire and a number of other decrees are cited by the Académie de Corse as the legislation that permits bilingual education in French and Corsican. The interpretation of this circulaire is of particular importance since it has a particularly significant impact on language practices on Corsica. For what is arguably the first time, Corsican became a language which could be used as a medium for teaching. Since the laws brought forward by Ferry at the close of the nineteenth century, French had dominated the classroom to the almost total exclusion of all other languages, including the heritage languages. The little schooling that took place on Corsica before France purchased the island would have been in Tuscan Italian. Certainly, as long as France has administered Corsica and its developing education system, there had been no official use of Corsican as a medium for teaching.1 It is not the case that the provisions of circulaire n° 92–234 allowed Corsican back into the classroom as a language of teaching, since it had never formally been used as such beforehand. For the first time, Corsican entered the domain of a language of instruction in formal education, although this domain was by no means passed from the H to the L language. In 1995, circulaire n° 95–086, known as the circulaire Bayrou (after François Bayrou, the then Education Minister) which built on the provisions of the loi Deixonne was issued. It is worth noting in passing the fact that many measures pertaining to the teaching of the heritage languages in France are understood in relationship to the loi Deixonne, something that, despite its limitations, demonstrates the seminal nature and the significance of that law. The circulaire Bayrou formalised the teaching of the heritage languages within the curriculum of state education and, importantly, provided for bilingual education. A mark of the progress that had been made over

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the forty years since the passing of the loi Deixonne was the fact that this circulaire applied to over twenty heritage languages, rather than the four legislated for in 1951. Although falling short of the seventy-five languages of France nominated by Cerquiglini, the provisions for this circulaire covered what might be understood as the big beasts of heritage languages (namely Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican and seven varieties of Occitan) as well as languages spoken in France’s overseas territories. The stipulations of this circulaire were limited to those students who had elected to follow the relevant pathway but, nevertheless, the circulaire Bayrou made extensive provisions for the teaching of the heritage languages and, even more importantly, for the development of bilingual teaching. Another threshold was reached with this circulaire since it made permissible the use of languages such as Niçart, Tahitian and Gallo in the playgrounds, corridors and schoolrooms from which they had been chased in the eighteenth century. In terms of bilingual education, the circulaire Bayrou allowed for the creation of bilingual primary schools where classroom time would be divided equally between teaching in French and teaching in the heritage language. Although it is important not to overstate the impact that such teaching might have, the fact that it is provided at all is, in itself, highly significant. This circulaire deliberately changed language practices for half of the school week for those who chose to follow this pathway. Since the start of the long war to gallicise France, which we should recall was not confined solely to Corsica, efforts had been made to change language practices to the detriment of every language other than French. The circulaire Bayrou, with the introduction of bilingual sites in the areas attached to the nominated heritage languages, organised language practices in a way not seen before. Other provisions in this circulaire included the permission to sit the history paper in the brevet examinations (the national assessment taken by all pupils at the age of fourteen in France) in the heritage language. In practical terms, the stipulations of the circulaire meant that it was possible to change the language practices of primary school children. However, it is particularly important to recall that this change would only occur in schools; there could be no expectation that pupils on this pathway would continue to speak Corsican outside the school. Moreover, this measure did not entitle Chief Education Officers to offer immersion education in the heritage languages; the national standard language was not removed from the timetable or as a medium of teaching by this circulaire.

6.2.1

The Circulaire Bayrou on Corsica

Although twenty languages were identified as valid for the provisions of the circulaire Bayrou, the greatest effect of the measures was felt on Corsica (Sibille, 2000, 69). By the middle of the 1990s, the Académie de Corse was expected to be able to offer three hours of Corsican language teaching to all students, something which was an advance on the 1975 extension of the loi Deixonne which only made such teaching available should the school and its staff decide to offer this teaching. For the academic year 1996/7, 6,165 children of secondary school age received some

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Corsican language teaching, rising to 8,330 by the turn of the millennium, and rising again to 8,717 (or 44% of all children in secondary education) for the school year 2004/5. In July 1996, Prime Minister Alain Juppé made an official visit to the island, during which he announced the opening of four trial bilingual infant schools in Ajaccio, Calvi, and the villages of Riventosa and Mezana. Bilingual education in Corsican, as well as for the other heritage languages of France, is acknowledged, by – for example – Duverger (2005, 63) as an essential act of language management to change both language practices and language beliefs. Duverger reasons that the only way to revive Corsican, Breton, Basque or Catalan (as well as other threatened languages) within the precincts of the school system is to value them and to enhance their status by giving them what he calls an instrumental role above and beyond their existence as an occasional tool for communication. The significance of the announcement made by Prime Minister Juppé is important, since the introduction of bilingual education between French and a heritage language does not chime with language beliefs across France. Duverger and Maillard (1996, 140) conclude that not only was the general public not supportive, according to numerous surveys, of this type of bilingual education, but also the State’s language beliefs in this area have not been clear. Subsequently, Duverger and Maillard (1996, 140) describe the launch of this type of bilingual education as ‘bumpy’. Although the measures taken to offer Corsican language classes to secondary school students are worthy of note, it is the inscription rate in bilingual education that is more striking and which sets Corsican apart from the rest of France’s heritage languages. According to the website of the Académie de Corse, 246 students were enrolled at the island’s bilingual primary schools in the school year 1996/7, a figure which rose to 1,154 by the turn of the century and rose again to 2,859 for the school year 2004/5. The issue of bilingual education in Corsican and French is of particular interest in the twenty-first century as this has become a key area of development in language practices in Corsican. Corsica, however, lacks the network of private immersion schools that exists for Basque, Breton, Catalan and Occitan. There is no equivalent to the Ikastolas, Diwan, Bressoles or Calandretas schools on the island, and consequently, the focus for changing language practices of young children on Corsica has to be in the bilingual schools which have been established. Bilingual education within the French context is intended to divide equally the twenty-six-hour school week between French and, in our case, Corsican, although it should be highlighted again that the pairing of the national standard language with a heritage language is not uniform across France and Corsican enjoys a position on the timetable not granted, for example, to Alsatian. In conversation, Jean-Marie Arrighi, Schools Inspector for Corsican at the Académie de Corse, commented that as recently as September 2005, the balance was not quite equal between the two languages, with Corsican tending to extend to nine or ten hours of the teaching week, rather than the thirteen hours envisaged. Furthermore, the organisation of this teaching is not uniform, with differences noted between the schools in the island’s two départements. Nevertheless, accepting these caveats, the principle at work in the bilingual education system is that

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language practices are directly changed by the fact that the second language, namely Corsican, becomes a language of play, of work, of life for those who are taught in this second language (Duverger & Maillard, 1996, 19). In 1997, in the light of the founding of the four bilingual sites across the island, the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio discussed a formal plan for the development of the teaching of Corsican and the island’s culture. Again, the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse sought to engage in language management as per their remit, although no formal decision was reached since the negotiations of a new Contrat de Plan interrupted all other proceedings at the Regional Assembly.

6.3

The Matignon Accords – Another Threshold Crossed

By the turn of the millennium, Corsica was enduring another grisly period in its history. In February 1998, Claude Erignac, the island’s Prefect and therefore the most senior representative of the State on Corsica, was assassinated as he was entering a theatre in Ajaccio. The assassination was carried out by a group of nationalists, although the elected nationalist representatives at the Regional Assembly sought to distance themselves from the perpetrators of this crime. Prefect Erignac, despite the increasing problems facing the island’s community (such as racketeering and political murders amongst rival nationalist groupings), had not spent his time on the island surrounded by bodyguards, something which made his assassination even more appalling. The islanders with one voice condemned the murder and demonstrated in large numbers on the streets of the island against the violence perpetrated in the name of independence, nationalism or further devolution.2 Erignac was followed at the Lantivy Palace (home and workplace of the Prefect in Ajaccio) by Bernard Bonnet whose mission was characterised as bringing the rule of law back to the island. However, Prefect Bonnet was then implicated (and subsequently tried and imprisoned) for his role in a crackdown on beach huts3 that was secretly and illegally manipulated in order to draw rival nationalist groupings into conflict. The involvement of the State, in the form of the Prefect, in the social unrest that was mounting on the island prompted Prime Minister Jospin to launch his plan to stabilise Corsica by bringing Paris and Ajaccio together to work on what have become known as the Matignon Accords, named after the Prime Minister’s residence in Paris (Colombani, 2002, 21). Again, extra-linguistic factors constitute the causation for significant changes in language management on the island. The Matignon Accords comprised five different propositions, of which the third pertained to the teaching of Corsican. It suffices to note that by this time, the Corsican language had effectively been cloistered within the education system as if this were the only possible locus for language management – something that examples such as Wales and Catalonia demonstrate not to be the case. The Matignon Process, as the formal discussion between Paris and Ajaccio came to be known, saw the Socialist government in the capital put propositions to the Regional Assembly in order to renegotiate the relationship between the island and the State. The premise for this process

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was that the current administration of the island, given the unacceptable social unrest, was clearly not working as it should and this attempt by the government would seek to establish some level of stability. It is not strictly accurate to describe the Matignon Process as emanating from the government, since there was division over the plans at the highest level in Paris. This division eventually led to the resignation of the Interior Minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who saw the process as a threat to the integrity of France such were, to his mind, its radical proposals for devolution. The Matignon Process was controversial both in Paris and on Corsica and some of the wrangling centred on the issue of teaching Corsican in schools. The proposition from the government in Paris, to be voted on by the two Houses of Parliament in Paris as well as by the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio, was that Corsican language classes would enter the timetable in both nursery and primary schools. This would mean that all children would take Corsican unless their parents specifically opted out from these classes on behalf of their children. The significance of this measure should not be overlooked. The proposal put forward by the State, as represented by the government, was to make Corsican language classes all but obligatory for every young pupil on the island. It is important to note the evolution of language management with regard to Corsica from the time of the Revolution through to the end of the twentieth century. From discouraging both Tuscan Italian and Corsican from the H domains of Corsica’s diglossia at the end of the eighteenth century, the State proposed in this process to make Corsican a mandatory subject in school for all children with an option for parents to withdraw formally their children from this provision. Before tracing the debate surrounding the language component of the Matignon Process, it is imperative to note two points. First, despite the significance of the proposal in terms of what it represents, it is critical to recall that these measures would, in themselves, not revitalise the Corsican language. This is a point to which we will return in Chapters 7 and 8; the teaching of Corsican to all children of nursery and primary school age will not revolutionise language practices on the island. Second, the fact that the government included a proposition on the Corsican language in the Matignon Process suggests that the State viewed what can best be described in shorthand as ‘the language issue’ as of primordial importance to the future of Corsica. In awarding Corsican such prominence in the proposals for the administration of the State, there is an implicit suggestion that the government believed that language management had been part of the cause of social unrest on the island and, at the same time, that it would be part of the solution. In Paris, the proposals prompted a flurry of parliamentary questions in both the National Assembly and the Senate. Part of the general debate surrounding the Matignon Process centred on the issue of mandatory Corsican language classes with one standpoint in Paris being the fear that classes in the island’s heritage language would become compulsory for all pupils on Corsica. Escudé (2002, 13–14) outlines the seven reports produced on the language proposition of the Matignon Process, each proposing to modify the wording of Article 7, Paragraph I which originally read, “The Corsican language shall be one of the subjects taught within normal school hours in nursery and primary classes and can therefore be studied by all pupils”. The attempts to recast the wording of Article 7, Paragraph I sought, to

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varying degrees, to qualify explicitly the optional nature of Corsican language education. The reasons for the extensive deliberation over the minutiae of this proposition did not appear to be motivated by fears that the Matignon Process would change language practices on the island. The main complaint appears to have been that the language provisions of the Matignon Process were unconstitutional because they contradicted France’s principle of equality. Whilst islanders were able to refer to another pillar of France’s constitution – liberty – with the freedom to take Corsican language classes if they so wished, they would distinguish themselves as unequal to their peers elsewhere in mainland France if the heritage language became a subject within normal school hours. As we have already seen on a number of occasions, the Constitutional Council was called upon to make a decision on the matter. Over two hundred and fifty Members of Parliament and Senators appealed to the Constitutional Council to review the Matignon Accords. The nature of this submission was that there were two particular measures which were unconstitutional, namely the granting to Ajaccio of the right to legislate and the establishment of obligatory Corsican language classes. In its Décision n° 2001–454 DC, the Constitutional Council (2002) ruled that although the delegation of legislative authority to Ajaccio was unconstitutional, the teaching of Corsican as proposed in the Matignon Accords was not unconstitutional since it ‘assumes an optional nature and does not undermine equality between pupils’. The ruling in favour of Article 7, Paragraph I of the Matignon Accords meant that the language provisions could become law and did so in the loi n° 2002–92. The loi n° 2002–92 was the culmination of the Matignon Process in terms of actual legislation.4 As well as the articles on Corsican language education, the law devolved more responsibilities to Ajaccio. As a consequence, and building on the proposals of the lois Defferre and the loi Joxe, Corsica enjoyed more autonomy than any other part of continental France (Colombani, 2002, 73). The Matignon Accords took language management on Corsica to a new threshold and one not enjoyed by any other part of France. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile taking the opportunity to analyse to what extent this Process has had an impact on language policy on Corsica. At the start of this chapter, we noted that language beliefs on the island, given the consensus in Ajaccio on the desirability to preserve and to extend the Corsican language as a marker of Corsican cultural identity were starting to lead language management. However, we also drew attention to how the modification of the timetables in schools to include Corsican as a normal part of the curriculum would not dramatically recondition the language practices of young people on Corsica. This is an issue to which we will return in Chapter 8 but it is important to evaluate the response on the island to the Matignon Process. As early as the start of the school year in September 1999, shortly after the government’s propositions to include Corsican within the normal timetable of the school curriculum, the island’s then Chief Education Officer, Jacques Pantaloni, acted to incorporate the spirit of the Accords into the island’s education system. In September 1999, pupils entering their sixth year of schooling (usually aged around ten or eleven) were given Corsican language classes unless their parents explicitly requested their removal from these classes. The nature of these classes has been, to a greater extent, initiation teaching

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of the heritage language to pupils who have had little, if any, exposure to Corsican, other than possibly noting its presence in the linguistic landscape or hearing it used by older relatives. This year group were taught Corsican for two years at which point they could choose to abandon their studies of the heritage language in favour of another subject, or they could continue, although continuing would mean that they would have to follow a further two years of Corsican and take a paper in the subject as part of the brevet (the national examinations taken by all French schoolchildren at the age of fourteen). To support this commitment, as highlighted during the discussion of the Charter above, a flurry of circulaires were issued to enhance the provision of training for teachers of the heritage languages as well as strengthening the stipulations for bilingual education in the relevant designated schools.

6.4

Evaluating the Progress of Corsican Language Education

In the summer of 2005, the Regional Assembly at Ajaccio voted to create a new consultative body whose function would be to examine the questions and issues tackled in the 1980s by the Lingua committee within the CCECV. This body, the Corsican Language and Culture Council (le Conseil de la Langue et de la Culture Corses) was to be drawn from elected members of the Regional Assembly as well as co-opted specialists. The Scientific Committee of the Corsican Language and Culture Council went through the process, undertaken on numerous occasions already in language management on the island, of establishing a new baseline for the revitalisation of Corsican. Since its creation, this body has not only assessed progress made within the framework of teaching Corsican but also brought forward proposals for an action plan. The Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, as with other regions within France, was obliged to produce a Regional Training Development Plan (le Plan Régional de Développement de la Formation). This Plan was published at the end of 2005 and, with input from the Corsican Language and Culture Council, it included a report and plan de développement for the Corsican language. This is one of the most recent examples of language management directed on the island by supporters of Corsican (the Corsican Language and Culture Council includes nationalist elected representatives who, as has been shown, are consistently identified with attempts to protect and extend the use of Corsican on the island) and language specialists. In addition to presenting an overview of the achievements made thus far in terms of language management, this Plan identifies the strategies to be employed in order to build on the advances made in revitalising the island’s heritage language. In this section, using amongst other sources the reports produced by both the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse in its 2005 Regional Training Development Plan and by the Académie de Corse which issued a pamphlet in the same year, we shall evaluate the evolution in Corsican language teaching on the island. Subsequently, we shall analyse in the next section the plans and proposals put forward by the Collectivité Territoriale, comprising – amongst others – language activists in the committees of the Corsican Language and Culture Council.

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Without the system of the immersion schools, such as the Diwan schools in Brittany, bilingual education remains wholly within the State education system on Corsica. The State, through the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, continues to develop the network of bilingual schools with the salaries for bilingual teachers paid for by both Paris and Ajaccio. If we accept Duverger’s assertion that meaningful, balanced bilingual education changes both language beliefs and, most importantly, language practices, on Corsica, the State (in its decentralised form) remains, by its language management strategy, committed to Corsican as a heritage language. Since the summer of 2001, two circulaires and three decrees (arrêtés) on bilingual education have been issued. The State has been committed to making the organisation of French-Corsican teaching more rigorous. These elements of language management constitute the framework by which the Académie de Corse, under the guidance of the Chief Education Officer, has extended not only the teaching of Corsican but also teaching in Corsican. An expanding network of bilingual schools has existed on the island for a decade, dating back to the then Prime Minister Alain Juppé’s announcement during his visit to Corsica in 1996. It is clear that there has been considerable expansion in the organisation of the primary school bilingual education network, as well as in the numbers of children enrolled in this system. From the four sites announced in 1996, there were nineteen sites in 2001 and thirty-nine in 2006. In terms of primary school pupils participating in bilingual education, the Académie de Corse records that there were 246 children enrolled in 1996, 1,154 in 2001 and 2,859 for the academic year 2004/5. The Collectivité Territoriale de Corse (2005, 10) reports, therefore, that 15% of primary school children are in bilingual education and, as noted elsewhere (Blackwood, 2007, 30) the demand for places in these sites is outstripping supply. Bilingual language education, therefore, enjoys a certain currency amongst parents on the island, although Jean-Marie Arrighi, Schools Inspector for Corsican at the Académie de Corse (in conversation during the fieldwork for this case study) acknowledged that language beliefs are not so strong as to prompt disappointed parents to demonstrate in favour of more places within this system. The Scientific Committee of the Corsican Language and Culture Council concluded that bilingual education has made considerable progress in primary schools since its inception but that this growth was slowing (CTC, 2005, 28). Bilingual education in secondary schools is experiencing a dramatic change since, for the first time, pupils schooled in bilingual primary schools are now passing through the secondary system, meaning in theory – if not wholly in practice – secondary schools on the island are faced with bilingual pupils. Given the fact that this is a new development in language teaching on the island, the organisation of this kind of schooling is experiencing some difficulties, a fact acknowledged by the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse (2005, 11). The proportion of bilingual pupils arriving at secondary schools, normally larger establishments drawing on a number of feeder schools, is lower than in the designated primary schools, making bilingual education more difficult to manage in practical terms. These difficulties should be overcome, according to the Regional Training Development Plan (CTC, 2005, 11), as a result of the fact that, over time, increasing numbers of children who have passed through the

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bilingual primary education system will reach secondary-school age. It is not unfair to question whether this laissez-faire attitude to the difficulties in secondary schools is optimistic and is an issue to which we will return when evaluating the proposals for the next phase in bilingual education planning for Corsica. The Académie de Corse refers to the other form of Corsican language education, which constitutes the three hours of teaching of the heritage language, as ‘extensive’. In terms of ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching, only 5% of primary school classes offered in 2005 no Corsican language teaching, a total which has fallen from 21% in 1999. In the academic session 2005/6, 46% of pupils received the stipulated three hours of Corsican per week. In the primary school system on the island, therefore, the ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching is making progress, but in terms of language practices, the majority of school pupils under the age of eleven do not have the basic three hours of Corsican per week.

6.5 6.5.1

A New Plan for Language Management An Acknowledgement of Language Realities

Having examined the evolution in Corsican language education, it is appropriate at the close of this chapter to turn our attention to the plans for the future of this education, as – thanks to the incremental decentralisation of the French State – overseen by the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse. Amongst other sources, we shall refer to the Regional Training Development Plan, which includes the proposals put forward by the Corsican Language and Culture Council, the Académie de Corse and the Regional Assembly. The full title of the report for the Regional Training Development Plan is of interest to this case study since it tacitly acknowledges what we referred to above as the cloistering of Corsican within the school system. The document is entitled ‘The plan de développement of the teaching of the Corsican language and its culture and life-long learning’ (my emphasis). In broadening the focus of the report and plan to include the learning of Corsican beyond the schools of the island, the authors acknowledge not only the isolation of the heritage language within the education system, something which alarms activists and sociolinguists such as Comiti (2005, 69), but also the need to extend this teaching beyond the normal school age. This admission is particularly significant since it recognises the position of Corsican within the repertoire of the island. Using Fishman’s 1991 framework for reversing language shift, the realities of language policy on Corsica have meant that the graded stages of revitalising the heritage language were not followed according to the order as proposed by Fishman. In other words, the acquisition of Corsican by adults of child-bearing age, through evening classes or Corsican Days, has not been achieved in the last few years, despite the success and popularity of these strategies during the 1970s. The Scientific Committee of the Corsican Language and Culture Council, as part of the

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Regional Training Development Plan, has thus identified three levels at which the intergenerational gap between the competence of pupils and that of their parents is widening. Whilst pupils now learn Corsican as part of their normal timetable or, in an increasing number of cases, within the bilingual schools network, the Scientific Committee recognises that some parents do not speak Corsican ‘whilst some do not understand it and others speak it but cannot write the language even though their children are learning both to speak and to write [Corsican]’ (CTC, 2005, 30). This crucial admission identifies a defining characteristic of recent language management favourable to Corsican, whereby the focus for language policy has been on the school system to the detriment of virtually every other domain. However, it is too easy to criticise the possible short-sightedness of language management undertaken by the State (in its various forms) and encouraged by committed language activists. It is imperative not to forget the context for language policy on Corsica, especially the intense process to assimilate the island into France. Set against this gallicisation and given the limited freedom to govern the school timetable, it was arguably inevitable that language management would be concentrated on this one area. It is also important to recognise that the measures undertaken within education have, since the turn of the millennium, formally introduced significant numbers of school children to a heritage language in what was thought to be terminal decline. Although it is not clear whether the legislation and decrees enacted pertaining to Corsican have halted this decline, they have certainly marked a turning point in language practices on Corsica. In accepting that Corsican has been lost by at least one generation raised in the 1980s and 1990s, the undertakings of the activists and the elected representatives, as well as those islanders who have supported Corsican language education have made an impact on the language practices of a proportion of young islanders at the start of the twenty-first century.

6.5.2

Language Management Beyond the School Precincts

The Regional Training Development Plan also acknowledges another significant strategy of language revitalisation. Since Fishman’s landmark investigation into reversing language shift (1991), it has been accepted that language revitalisation does not happen merely because a dedicated group of individuals within a given speech community wish it so to do. On Corsica, language policy as pursued by language activists has continuously sought to revitalise and to normalise the heritage language. Language activists, with the support of some elected representatives and encouraged by what is considered to be island-wide support for efforts on behalf of Corsican, have endeavoured, as has been shown throughout this study, to create a place within the island’s repertoire for the heritage language. This they have done not merely to maintain Corsican as an interesting marker of cultural identity, but as a means of communication used by islanders. In the face of the gallicisation of all aspects of island life, such an aim has required concerted action and dedication on

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the part of the islanders themselves. It also requires significant efforts in terms of language acquisition since the use of Corsican in every domain is far from straightforward given the decline in language practices over the twentieth century. However, as argued by Jaffe (2001) and as acknowledged in the Regional Training Development Plan (CTC, 2005, 30), one dominant local perspective has been that language acquisition happens in some mysterious way on the streets of the island – dans la rue – to the extent that this presentation of learning the regional heritage language has almost become a cliché on Corsica. This attitude towards the learning of Corsican has not been the sole argument put forward in order to encourage widespread learning and subsequent use of Corsican. As we noted in Chapter 4, since as early as 1959, calls have been made repeatedly for compulsory Corsican language classes (although this strategy has always been controversial and remains so to this day) despite the fact that some critics of the Matignon Accords argue that the heritage language is already all but mandatory for those entering secondary schooling. Nevertheless, the Regional Training Development Plan recognises that, while twenty years ago it might have been broadly felt that Corsican was learnt in the streets, this is no longer the case today. Three-quarters of school pupils, according to a 2005 report published by INSEE, France’s national institute for statistical information, believe that Corsican is something learnt in school. This has the corollary, highlighted by Jaffe (2001) and accepted by the Scientific Committee of the Corsican Language and Culture Council, that the existence of Corsican has been given ‘a strictly disciplinarian image’ by its association with formal education. Consequently, to accelerate the normalisation process for Corsican, the Scientific Committee suggests employing a strategy used elsewhere, such as in Brittany, to connect explicitly the heritage language with social activities, such as football, in order to redefine language beliefs and reposition Corsican as a vernacular language, used for everyday communication rather than merely as a subject, like English or Latin, in which one can be examined at the end of the school year.

6.5.3

Action Plans for Language Management

The Regional Development Training Plan, which brings together the principal agents in language management on Corsica in the form of the Regional Assembly, the Académie de Corse and the committees of the Corsican Language and Culture Council, is a key document in the strategy for future language policy on the island. This Training Plan includes two principal axes for changing language practices in Corsican, namely a strategy in education seeking to offer bilingual teaching to all pupils and a policy to integrate the Corsican language into all levels of education and training. These two axes incorporate a number of action plans by which the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, the body charged with the responsibility for the development of minority language education on Corsica, proposes to achieve its two goals. In order to bring bilingual education to all pupils on the island, the Plan enumerates four action plans which in turn include targets, proposals and projects.

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These four action plans aim to establish universal bilingual education in elementary schools within seven years, to advance bilingual education in primary and secondary schools, to guarantee the quality of bilingual education and to support bilingual education with contributions from other sections of Corsican society. In the breakdown of these action plans, the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse identifies targets to be reached within each area. For example, as part of the strategy to advance bilingual education in primary and secondary education, a minimum target of enrolling 33% of pupils in CP (the first year of schooling at elementary level) and 25% of pupils in CE1 (the second year of elementary schooling) in bilingual education by 2013. The plan also designates procedures by which these goals are to be accomplished, such as the creation of four extra bilingual teaching posts every year for seven years within the primary school network. Since the turn of the millennium, the Académie de Corse has devoted much time to the issue of teacher training for the network of bilingual classes as well as for the provision of ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching. Circulaire n° 2002–104 stipulated that those seeking to work as bilingual teachers should be assessed by a panel appointed by the island’s Chief Education Officer. This panel sets a one-hour written test and conduct a half-hour interview in Corsican. Successful applicants are subsequently able to participate in the bilingual education programme. However, it remains the case that no teacher can be forced to teach in Corsican, despite the fact that they may actively use the language outside their school. The issue of teacher recruitment on Corsica assumes a significance not matched in places such as the United Kingdom. Paris manages a national system of appointing secondary school teachers across the country which means that there are occasions when the State moves qualified teachers across France to fill vacancies. Although, based on personal experience of schools on the island, the number of continental French teachers sent to Corsica or electing to work there is low, this does have an impact on the language practices of teaching staff. The proportion of primary school teachers identifying themselves as unable to teach Corsican has risen to 37% in 2005 from 27% in 2000 (CTC, 2005, 8), whilst the figure of those primary school teachers able to teach Corsican but unwilling to do so has fallen to 3% in 2005 from 15% in 2000 (CTC, 2005, 7). In terms of practically achieving ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching, the picture is mixed. It is clear that the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse is investing significantly in the training of teachers to undertake the teaching commitments made by the Regional Assembly. There is also a shift in language beliefs on the part of primary school teachers with the overwhelming majority now being prepared to teach in the heritage language if they are so able to do. Given the influence of teachers in the development and attitudes of their pupils, to find such a small proportion of teachers refusing to teach in Corsican will continue to enhance language beliefs towards the heritage language. However, of concern to language activists and to the Académie is the jump in the proportion of teachers who are not able to teach in Corsican. On one level, this development illustrates the generational differences on the island, since this increase arises from the progressive retirement of teachers with a stronger grounding in the heritage language compared with the

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appointment of young teaching professionals from the generations disconnected from Corsican during the 1980s and 1990s. On another level, this rise underlines the ambitious nature of the proposals to change language practices in schools. The plans to extend bilingual and ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching rely upon the appointment of qualified and competent teaching staff. Whilst the Plan highlights an increase in recruitment to undertake these tasks, given the fact that the generation ‘lost’ to Corsican will continue to provide the pool from which teachers emerge for the short-term future, the drive to change language practices by this method may well prove over ambitious. Preliminary findings on the issue of teaching in Corsican have been published elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004a, 326–328) and we will return to this question in Chapters 7 and 8. In terms of the second axis of the Plan, the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse proposes three action plans in order to integrate Corsican into all levels of education and training on the island. These action plans aim to guarantee three hours of Corsican language teaching at every level of education, to adapt the syllabuses and to take Corsican into account at every stage of life-long learning, including vocational qualifications. As with the other axis of the Plan, each action plan includes strategies by which these targets are to be achieved. The Collectivité Territoriale de Corse has identified what it sees as the lack of identification of young people with the island, to the extent that whilst secondary school pupils are expected to be able to identify France’s national rivers, such as the Rhône, the Rhine or the Marne, they cannot name or place Corsican rivers such as the Golu, the Liamone or the Rizzanese (CTC, 2005, 25). The adaptation of the island’s schools’ syllabuses is therefore to include, according to the plan, the creation of bilingual textbooks for all subjects. Already, some textbooks are available in both French and Corsican but in producing bilingual resources for every school discipline, language practices are changed for pupils in that their education will be conducted in their heritage language as well as the prestigious national standard. In terms of language policy on Corsica, this kind of project closes the circle in the relationship between Spolsky’s three elements of language management, language beliefs and language practices. A formal decision has been made by those with the necessary authority to change language practices and language beliefs by demonstrating that education and understanding of one’s own environment can be realised through a heritage language. The Regional Development Training Plan, therefore, marks a new milestone in language policy on Corsica. This document, prepared and proposed by elected representatives from the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse as well as specialists co-opted on to the Corsican Language and Culture Council, is a landmark report for language policy on Corsica. Given its contributors, it exemplifies the collective contribution made by the State, the activists and the islanders to the three elements of Spolskian language policy. This Plan is contextualised by language management which has not only enabled the devolution of some responsibilities for education to the islanders in the form of their Regional Assembly in Ajaccio but also permitted the presence of Corsican language classes in the normal timetable of the island’s school pupils. The Plan, as noted above, concludes with its proposals to change language beliefs and language practices in order to revitalise the heritage language.

Notes

101

This revitalisation is understood as the goal of language activists and islanders in the light of the marginalisation of Corsican that dates back to before the Revolution. This Plan does not, however, assess the language beliefs and language practices of the islanders and it is this area of language policy on Corsica which will provide the focus for the next chapter.

Notes 1. As we have seen, this does not mean to say that Corsican has never been heard in schools, either on the lips of pupils or even staff as the black hussars endeavoured to teach an unschooled population. 2. According to statistics provided by Pellegrinetti & Rovere (2004, 627), a total of 40,000 people took to the streets of Ajaccio and Bastia on the Wednesday after the assassination. 3. In what seems like a piece of farce rather than the actions of the State on Corsica, the Prefect was seeking to enforce the strict laws protecting the island’s beautiful coast. These laws are designed to prevent the construction of commercial or residential properties too close to the sea. In this campaign to re-establish the rule of law on Corsica, illegal beach huts selling drinks and snacks to sun-seekers were to be removed. The famous incident that brought down Bonnet saw the police secretly called upon to burn down one such beach hut on 19 April 1999, but one of the officers dropped his police radio at the scene, thereby implicating the forces of law and order right up to the Prefect who was found guilty of ordering the arson. 4. Further plans as part of the Matignon Process were not realised. The proposals to merge the two départements that constitute Corsica in order to create a new regional administration were put to a referendum on Corsica in 2003, overseen by the then Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. This use of a public referendum is exceptional in France’s dealings with its regions but, for a number of reasons not pertinent to this study, the island rejected the proposals by 51%.

Chapter 7

7.1

The Islanders – A Longitudinal Study

One of the principal aims of this case study has been to demonstrate the essential link in language policy on Corsica that exists between the three agencies identified in this book’s title. Thus far, we have evaluated the language management upon which the State embarked from the time of the island’s inclusion into France in 1768. We have also analysed the projects, efforts and tactics of the grouping that has been referred to collectively as ‘the language activists’. Over the course of the centuries covered in this book, we have identified the language activists as they have emerged as such – individuals, groups and associations committed to the cause of the Corsican language. These language activists have had various aims and priorities over the past hundred years and have worked under wildly differing circumstances and in different contexts. Where appropriate, the symbiotic relationship between the State and the activists has been highlighted and, with increasing frequency, it has been demonstrated that, in addition to extra-linguistic factors (often stimulated by political or social occurrences not related to language issues), language activists have influenced the State to draft language management favourable to the heritage language on the island. However, it has been noted on a number of occasions that the final agent, referred to in shorthand as ‘the islanders’, has posed some problems when attempts have been made to assess their role in language policy on Corsica. The key principle guiding this analysis of the situation on Corsica has been Spolsky’s 2004 definition of language policy as comprising of language management, language beliefs and language practices. Whilst language management has left a clear trace in the life of the island, measuring language beliefs and language practices has been frustrating and unsatisfactory. Although attention has been drawn to the global picture (which shows a language now the focus of serious attempts at language revitalisation but previously deserted by generations of islanders who had been subject to a programme of intense gallicisation, and to the impact of the modernisation of Europe), it has not been possible to provide evidence for the language beliefs and language practices of the inhabitants of Corsica. In this chapter, we shall present a selection of findings from a series of sociolinguistic surveys conducted on the island from 1999 to 2005. R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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7.1.1

Chapter 7

Procedures

The conclusions drawn from the results of this series of surveys are, we argue, representative of wider trends in language attitudes on Corsica, although it suffices to note that these findings should be handled with the usual caution. The surveys were conducted on the island in 1999, 2000, 2003 and twice in 2005 – when the first survey followed the pattern of the earlier investigations but the second focussed solely on students in their final year of schooling. Respondents were asked a fixed number of questions and their answers were recorded on a dictaphone. The questionnaires were in French and, with the exception of the 2003 survey (undertaken by a research assistant working on Corsica for a year), were conducted personally. The surveys were restricted, for practical purposes, to the French administrative département of Corse du Sud (Southern Corsica), which includes the towns of Sartène, Bonifacio and the island’s capital Ajaccio, but not Corte – Paoli’s historical capital – or Bastia, both of which are to be found in Haute Corse (Upper Corsica). Each survey interviewed fifty individuals, of whom twenty-five were male and twenty-five were female with the exception of the second study in 2005 where, due to the demographics of the three schools, there were sixteen male and thirty-four female respondents. This imbalance does have an impact on the conclusions drawn from the second 2005 survey in that it is not possible to suggest trends along gender lines. However, the disparity between the two genders does not invalidate the results of the survey or prevent a non-gender-specific evaluation of language beliefs and language practices amongst the island’s youth. Two methods for selection of the candidates were employed. For the first four surveys, the friend-of-a-friend technique, espoused by Lesley Milroy1 was used, in addition to the process of stopping passers-by on the streets and inviting them to take part. The second method for recruiting participants was more productive in terms of access to a wider sample of the population, although the friend-of-afriend technique allowed entry to sections of islanders who did not habitually stroll the streets of southern Corsica. As the surveys were being conducted, it became increasingly clear that it was impractical to attempt a random approach in the smallest of towns and villages in Corsica, since this method did not usually allow me to access a cross-section of the island’s population. A day, for example, spent in Cargèse, a well-known large village north of Ajaccio, was highly unprofitable in terms of recording respondents. As a consequence, except when a specific entry into a community was proposed by the friend-of-a-friend method (as was the case in the mountain village of Lopigna), the survey focussed on Ajaccio and Sartène. The 2003 survey was conducted largely in Porto-Vecchio, on the island’s east coast, where the research assistant was based for the year. The random sampling of respondents was modified in order to achieve a balance of age-ranges and genders. However, this method for sampling – and the size of the sample – means that the five surveys cannot be described as a completely representative sample of the island’s population.

7.1 The Islanders – A Longitudinal Study

7.1.2

105

Types of Question

Over the course of the time it took to undertake the five surveys, the questionnaire evolved, picking up questions prompted by earlier results and disregarding others. Questions were rephrased. The first five questions collected personal data, although after the first survey, the questionnaire became anonymous since it became clear that respondents were reluctant to give their names and this information added little, if anything, to the conclusions drawn from the responses. The remaining questions investigated language beliefs and probed language practices with a view to analysing the vitality of Corsican. A considerable proportion of the surveys was devoted to the issue of Corsican language education, the initial results for which have already been published (Blackwood, 2004a). Other sections of the questionnaire focussed on contemporary issues in Corsican language planning not pertinent to this study, such as distanciation2 (see Blackwood, 2004c). The questions put to the respondents were mixed in that some were open-ended (for which hesitant respondents were often encouraged to expand upon their answers) and others required a yes/no answer. In some – but not all – cases, respondents explained the rationale for their answers; when no explanation was offered, the interviewer attempted to solicit further information, not always successfully.

7.1.3

The Profiles of the Respondents

Before assessing the contribution of the islanders to language policy on Corsica, we must achieve a suitable definition of ‘islanders’, something which, initially, might well seem redundant. One of the reasons for referring to this third set of agents as ‘the islanders’ rather than as ‘Corsicans’ is that defining Corsicans as a group is not wholly straightforward. Certainly, it is not considered the case on the island itself that one has to be born on Corsica in order to be Corsican. Notable Corsicans, as well as participants in these five surveys, have been born sur le continent (in mainland France) or in North Africa, but still consider themselves Corsican. Place of birth, therefore, is not the primary marker of Corsican-ness. Instead, it appears that a deep attachment to Corsica, which often includes generations of family members hailing from the island, is a key marker in Corsican identity. One advantage that Corsica has over comparable communities or regions in mainland France is that it has an unquestionable territory. The start of the sea is, clearly, where Corsica ends and the significance of this identifiable space should not be underestimated. For the purposes of these surveys, participants were those people who identified themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, with Corsica. This means that they live and work on the island, contribute to different degrees to island life but may or may not be ‘Corsican’ in that they might well have been born in Marrakech to continental French parents but have chosen to settle on the island. It is for these reasons that the final agents in this examination of language policy on Corsica are referred to as

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‘the islanders’. Over the five surveys, 67% of the respondents were born on the island. A further 22% were born on mainland European France; 6% of those surveyed were born in North Africa but nevertheless identified themselves as Corsican. The final 5% of respondents had chosen to live on the island, but were from beyond France’s borders; this category included three respondents born on Sardinia, three from mainland Italy, two Portuguese respondents, a Martiniquan and a Quebecois. In terms of the five surveys, there are two hundred and fifty respondents in total, of whom 54% were women (although for the first four surveys, there was an equal split between the genders). As far as the age of the respondents is concerned, 32% of the participants were under the age of eighteen, although it should be recalled that the second survey of 2005 concentrated solely on final-year school children and, in addition, twenty-nine school children participated in the 2003 survey in Porto Vecchio. The remainder of the participants can be divided into four bands; 17% of the respondents were aged between nineteen and thirty; 20% were between thirty-one and fifty years old; 16% were between fifty-one and seventy; the final 7% were aged over seventy-one. All the respondents were asked to declare the highest academic qualification that they had received. Thirty-six candidates had no formal qualifications, which equates to 14% of those surveyed. However, 47% of this category were still in full-time education and therefore not in a position at the time of the survey to have sat any of the State-organised assessments. 37% of the respondents had been awarded the brevet, the examination taken by all pupils at the age of fourteen. Of these respondents, 74% were still in full-time education and therefore expecting to receive a further qualification. Of the remainder, a further 14% had left full-time education at eighteen with the baccalauréat, the school leaver’s certificate, and a further 19% had a degree-level qualification or above. The final 16% declared that they had some other kind of qualification, normally vocational.

7.2

Results

The statistics generated by the responses from the five surveys appear in tables since categories of replies to the questions permit an overview of the trends in the islanders’ language beliefs. However, this evaluation of the language beliefs merits the devotion of some space to the rationales offered by the respondents to my surveys with a view, in particular, to forecasting the likelihood of normalising Corsican. The significance of the islanders’ reasoning has been explored at length by Jaffe (2001, 280–289) and also commented upon elsewhere (Blackwood, 2007, 25) but it is worth scrutinising the explanations and justifications volunteered by the participants in these surveys in order to present the most complete picture of islanders’ language beliefs in terms of transmitting Corsican and the responsibility for its teaching. It is important to bear in mind that not all respondents, despite gentle and persistent encouragement, offered explanations for their beliefs and thus the following analysis of language beliefs can only be as comprehensive as the openness of the responses of the participants to these five surveys allows.

7.2 Results

7.2.1

107

Basic Language Practices

Having obtained personal data for each respondent before starting to record of the interview, the first question of all five surveys asked the respondents whether they understood Corsican rather than if they spoke the language. This order for the initial questions was motivated by the widely held belief that greater knowledge of a language is required to speak a language than merely to comprehend it (Table 7.1). To ask, as the second question did, whether the respondents spoke Corsican refines the picture of the vitality of the heritage language as well as presenting indications of language practices. It should be acknowledged that both these questions allowed for answers beyond the binary yes/no, something which has made analysis more complex. Some respondents felt that they spoke Corsican but not fluently, whilst others could understand a little but not much (Table 7.2). In assessing the answers offered by the respondents, it must be recalled that the answers given are self-reported and have not been tested. As has been extensively debated (by, inter alia, Labov, 1966; Trudgill, 1974; Milroy & Milroy, 1991), individuals make claims about their own language practices that might appear incorrect or dishonest, either exaggerating or downplaying their abilities or actual linguistic

Table 7.1 Do you understand Corsican? Year Yes 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

86% 53% men 88% 55% men 82% 54% men 84% 55% men 72% 39% men

47% women 45% women 46% women 45% women 61% women

No 14% 29% men 12% 12% men 18% 33% men 16% 25% men 28% 14% men

Table 7.2 Do you speak Corsican? Year Yes 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

66% 66% men 58% 76% men 58% 59% men 56% 57% men 36% 61% men

71% women 88% women 67% women 75% women 86% women

No 34% women 24% women 41% women 43% women 39% women

34% 18% men 42% 14% men 42% 38% men 44% 41% men 64% 16% men

82% women 86% women 62% women 59% women 84% women

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behaviour. This is a complication which means that it is unwise to rely uncritically on the responses offered by the participants in any surveys such as these. Furthermore, it is important to establish what, exactly, it means to speak Corsican; one perspective might view the use of oft-heard formulaic greetings and expletives which can be heard around the island’s town squares during the passegiata as ‘speaking Corsican’. Another perspective might only consider speaking Corsican as the use of the heritage language for all communicative purposes in life, with recourse to French only under certain limited circumstances, such as in conversation with non-corsophones. Anecdotal evidence and experience of island life suggest that the latter approach is highly unlikely or, at best, unusual. The results do not permit a precise interpretation of what each respondent meant by ‘speaking Corsican’ but this does not mean that we cannot draw conclusions from the results of these surveys with any confidence. Even bearing the above-outlined qualifications in mind, it remains possible to outline tendencies in the understanding and the speaking of Corsican as a result of this fieldwork. In terms of understanding Corsican, according to the statistics generated by these surveys, four in every five islanders claim to be able to understand the heritage language, although the proportion is slightly lower when we examine school pupils. Nevertheless, almost three-quarters of final-year pupils in secondary education asserted that they can understand Corsican. The symmetry between the two genders is noteworthy; for the four surveys of adults, on average, 54% of those who understood Corsican were men, 46% were women. Given the higher proportion of female participants in the 2005 pupils survey, it is not feasible to include these responses in this global picture, but the results of the surveys suggest that it is fair to reason that there are no major differences between the genders concerning comprehension of Corsican. In so far as gender differences are concerned, more striking are the statistics pertaining to the respondents’ ability to speak Corsican. In the matter of speaking Corsican, for the four surveys of adults, the results are relatively stable with an average of 60% of adults reporting that they could speak Corsican. In terms of projected figures, given recent census reports calculating the total number of islanders as 279,000,3 these four surveys would suggest that something in the region of 167,400 islanders speak Corsican. Clearly, this is an estimate based on four surveys conducted over a six-year period, but in a State which refuses to permit an official investigation into language use, this figure is still likely to be of interest to those working on France’s heritage languages. The fifth survey, taken in three secondary schools in southern Corsica with respondents aged in their late teens, provides a striking change in the percentage of islanders claiming the ability to speak the heritage language. A little over a third of school-leavers claimed to be able to speak Corsican, something which is striking but which, at the same time, should not be taken out of proportion. This is only one survey of this age group and covered only fifty pupils spread between three secondary schools in Ajaccio, Sartène and Porto-Vecchio. Nevertheless, it does provide a snapshot of the language practices of final-year school pupils and, as such, confirms a sharp generational difference in terms of language use between this cohort and the adults surveyed in the other four questionnaires.

7.2 Results

109

With regards to the balance between the two genders, the four surveys of adults reveal a clear tendency for men rather than women to claim to be able to speak Corsican. On average, nearly two thirds (64.5%) of those who asserted that they could speak Corsican were men. This association of heritage languages with men rather than women is not new but it is confirmed by the results from the four adult questionnaires. At the same time, as might be expected, there was a higher proportion of women, rather than men, declaring that they were unable to speak the heritage language. On average, 72% of those who replied that they could not speak Corsican were women. These trends are noteworthy and we shall return to them in our assessment of other areas of language practices amongst islanders.

7.2.2

Corsican Spoken in Families

Fishman (2001, 15a) sets out a four-stage linkage system to save a threatened language that is based on his analysis of attempts to reverse language shift, and therefore to change language practices (and language beliefs). From the perspective of this study into language policy on Corsica, this strategy applies to changing existing practices and beliefs in order to favour Corsican over French. After the establishment of the threatened language as a second-language for adults of child-bearing age, Fishman notes that the next stage is the change of this second language to a first language in home and community life in order to pass the language on to children before they enter school.4 In order to evaluate the evolution of language practices in terms of the transmission of heritage language within the home environment, every respondent in the four adult surveys was asked whether they spoke Corsican with members of their family (Table 7.3). In the event that they replied that they did, they were then asked a supplementary question, which sought to ascertain with whom, exactly, the respondent spoke Corsican. The results produced by these four surveys are also relatively stable and an average of 57% of respondents confirmed that they spoke Corsican with members of their family. Clearly, this average is not as high as the percentage of respondents who asserted that they spoke Corsican, something which suggests more than one

Table 7.3 Do you speak Corsican within your family? Year Yes 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults

48% 67% men 60% 70% men 66% 56% men 52% 54% men

33% women 30% women 44% women 46% women

No 52% 35% men 40% 25% men 34% 35% men 48% 46% men

65% women 75% women 65% women 54% women

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explanation. It is possible to reason that, for a number of plausible reasons – including the lack of corsophones at home – not all islanders who can speak Corsican actually choose to do so. There is considerable anecdotal evidence, including answers from respondents to these surveys, of cases where an islander marries a non-corsophone and transmission of the heritage language in the home subsequently ceases. In the light of the tendency noted above for the speaking of Corsican to be identified more often with men rather than women, it is also possible that men socialising together, in the numerous bars and cafés of the island, or playing boules together on the squares to be found in every town and village, speak Corsican with friends and acquaintances rather than with blood relatives. Nevertheless, the fact that an average of 57% of respondents stated that they spoke Corsican within their families constitutes a considerable strength in terms of normalising the position of the heritage language on the island. Having noted above that Corsican had been marginalized as an L language, even within the L domain par excellence of the home, the fact that over a half of respondents confirmed that they used the heritage language with members of their family is one strategy which, although unlikely to affect a complete reversal of the language shift to French, might surely go some way to revitalising Corsican. However, these results cannot be taken at face value and, to this end, every respondent who confirmed that they spoke Corsican in their family was then asked to identify those family members with whom they spoke the heritage language. The respondents who answered this question were not restricted in their answer to name the person with whom they most often spoke Corsican and, therefore, many candidates suggested two or three individuals with whom they conversed in the heritage language. As a result, the percentage figures provided in Table 7.4 reflect the number of times any given category of family member was identified. A significant minority in every survey (and subsequently 11% on average) was adamant that they spoke Corsican with every single member of their family and could not, despite gentle encouragement, distinguish any particular relation with whom Corsican is used. According to the average produced by the four surveys, 8% of the respondents spoke Corsican with their grandparents’ generation, 32% to their parents’ generation and 28% with their own generation, by which we understand the combination of both siblings and spouses. However, only 7% reported that they spoke the heritage language to their own children. In terms of language practices, this decline in the intergenerational transmission of Corsican has a significant impact on our evaluation

Table 7.4 With whom, within the family, do you speak Corsican? Year Parents Siblings Spouse The elderly All 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults Average

Grand-parents

Children

40% 38% 28% 22%

8% 20% 14% 13%

16% 13% 9% 16%

12% 13% 5% 16%

20% 4% 11% 10%

4% 6% 9% 13%

0% 6% 11% 10%

32%

14%

14%

12%

11%

8%

7%

7.2 Results

111

of language policy on Corsica. This declivity in passing Corsican down to subsequent generations in a home environment becomes even more striking when we look at the ages of the respondents. Over the four surveys, the respondents who state that they speak Corsican with their children have an average age of sixty and this category includes only two individuals under the age of forty (R2/05, a thirty-six-year old man and R7/05, a thirty-eight-year old woman). The fact that the average age of this sub-category is so high suggests that the offspring with whom they were speaking the heritage language had left formal education a considerable time ago. In turn, we cannot therefore assert that there is a small minority of islanders who speak Corsican with younger generations in their teens, twenties or even early thirties – the generations most clearly disconnected from the heritage language. A strikingly similar proportion of respondents from these four investigations affirm that they spoke Corsican with their grandparents with their average age being twenty-seven. The youngest participant in this category is E29/00, a fourteen-yearold schoolboy in Porto-Vecchio, whereas the oldest member of this sub-group is R5/00, a forty-five-year-old male civil servant. The majority of this category were in their twenties and only one respondent, R7/05, noted that she spoke Corsican to both her children and to her grandparents. The gender differences between both categories, given the relatively small number of respondents in each group, are interesting. Of those who spoke Corsican with their children, 41% are men and 59% are women, a result that challenges the widely held view that men are traditionally associated with heritage languages whereas women prefer to use national standard languages. In this sample, women are more likely to transmit Corsican to their children than men. The reverse holds for those speaking the island’s heritage language to their grandparents, where 61% over the four surveys are men and 39% are women. The largest grouping of respondents who speak Corsican within their home-familyneighbourhood networks were those who used the heritage language with their parents. Over the four surveys, this category constitutes 32% of all respondents who spoke Corsican to a family member and the average age of the respondents is thirtyfive. The gender divide is more striking for this grouping, where 65% are men and 35% are women. The oldest respondent is a sixty-six-year-old retired hotelier who, in his response, affirmed enthusiastically that he spoke Corsican every day with his mother. At the other end of the age spectrum, the youngest respondent is a twelveyear-old schoolboy in Ste Lucie de Porto Vecchio, on the west coast of the island. The largest sub-grouping of these respondents are those in their forties, although there are almost as many in their teens and their thirties, suggesting a relatively even spread across the age groups for this category. Of all the respondents who affirmed that they spoke Corsican with members of their family, only one individual, R2/05 (a thirty-six-year-old male train driver), spoke Corsican to both his parents and his children, as well as to his brother. From this sample of islanders, there is only one person who maintained the intergenerational transmission of Corsican from which he himself benefited. We have already acknowledged that, based on the findings drawn from the survey of school pupils in 2005, there is at least one generation – those currently in secondary schooling – whose language practices have been changed by a break in

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intergenerational transmission of the heritage language. The conclusions achieved by closer examination of the answers presented in Table 7.4 do not counter the overall impression that there has been a collapse in the teaching of Corsican between generations in the home-family-neighbourhood-community domain, since the minority who state that they spoke the heritage language with their children were much more likely to be referring to offspring who were in their forties rather than in their teens. On the basis of these four surveys, we cannot generalise with any confidence that Corsican has been transmitted to the youngest of islanders in the crucial domain of the home and neighbourhood.

7.2.3

Non-corsophones Learning Corsican

The attitudes of non-speakers of the heritage language towards their learning of Corsican constitute a key indicator of language beliefs amongst a particularly significant section of the islanders. A supplementary question was put to respondents who replied that they did not speak Corsican that asked them whether they would like to speak the heritage language. Although not presented in Table 7.5, in some surveys, there was a small proportion of respondents who did not know whether they wished to speak Corsican: 10% in 2003 and 4% amongst adults in 2005. Those candidates who did not wish to learn Corsican were in the minority and, judging by their answers, these respondents did not necessarily oppose the heritage language. More accurately, this grouping could be described as ambivalent towards Corsican. By way of example, R37/99 set out her reasons, as a non-corsophone, for her lack of desire to learn the heritage language. When asked if she would like to speak Corsican, R37/99 replied ‘Well, not particularly because I really don’t see the point as far as my daily life is concerned. Socially, I don’t really need to, except if I have to speak with older people who more often than not on Corsica speak Corsican rather than French.’ In other words, R37/99 reasoned that Corsican is not a prerequisite to living on the island. It is true that there

Table 7.5 Would you like to speak Corsican? Year Yes 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

82% 14% men 95% 15% men 81% 35% men 82% 44% men 87% 15% men

86% women 85% women 65% women 56% women 85% women

No 18% 33% men 5% 0% men 9% 50% men 14% 33% men 13% 25% men

67% women 100% women 50% women 67% women 75% women

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113

is no compelling need to learn Corsican in order to subsist on the island, inasmuch as one can work, buy food, socialise and raise a family without having to speak Corsican. The results suggest that language beliefs towards the heritage language on the island are not necessarily motivated by utilitarian or practical factors. Furthermore, the majority perspective in itself does not translate into a change in language practices – the fact that an average of 85% declared that they would like to speak the heritage language does not change their actual language choices. Whilst a clear demonstration of positive language beliefs signals a certain vitality in the heritage language, the support for Corsican manifested in this series of surveys does not guarantee an increase in the proportion of Corsican speakers on the island. Respondents were not replying that that they attended adult classes in Corsican in order to perfect their language skills and, ultimately, to speak Corsican on a daily basis. Merely answering in a questionnaire that they would like to speak Corsican does not mean that these islanders were going to go to the great lengths required to learn a language, even if it is their heritage language. Moreover, it is not possible to ascertain with any confidence whether these respondents were telling the truth or merely rehearsing socially acceptable answers. This is an obstacle that dogs questionnaire-based research and one which must be hurdled by acknowledging that the respondents might, either deliberately or unwittingly, give misleading answers. We can, nevertheless, discern that there are positive language beliefs towards Corsican. Not only do these findings point to that conclusion, but at the same time, even if we cannot rely on the reported attitudes to language learning, the fact that we can assert that islanders felt they should want to learn Corsican confirms the island-wide demonstration of positive language beliefs.

7.2.4

Corsican as a Marker of Identity

In 2005, a supplementary question was added to the surveys put to both the sample of adults and the fifty final-year school students. This question investigated what might be considered the explicit link between the heritage language and Corsican identity. One perspective has been to assert that the Corsican language is the most salient marker of Corsican cultural identity yet, given the decline in the number of speakers since the cause of the heritage language was espoused by the first language activists over one hundred years ago, perhaps such an assertion is not so selfevident. Respondents were asked whether one had to speak Corsican in order to be Corsican (Table 7.6). Clearly, in the light of the gallicisation process outlined above, it is no longer the case that islanders speak Corsican for most of the time. Simultaneously – and regardless of the decisions passed by the Constitutional Council in Paris – the distinct identity of Corsicans remains intact, as demonstrated by the repeated debates on the existence and acknowledgement of ‘a Corsican people’. As a result, we expected on the one hand the overwhelming majority of non-corsophone Corsicans to reply that they did not believe that one has to speak Corsican in order to be

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Chapter 7 Table 7.6 Does one have to speak Corsican to be Corsican? Year Yes 2005 adults 2005 pupils

16% 25% men 18% 33% men

78% 51% men 82% 32% men

75% women 67% women

No 49% women 68% women

Table 7.7 According to corsophones, does one have to speak Corsican to be Corsican? Year Yes (%) No (%) 2005 adults 2005 pupils

16 21

84 71

Table 7.8 According to non-corsophones, does one have to speak Corsican to be Corsican? Year Yes (%) No (%) 2005 adults 2005 pupils

9 19

86 81

Corsican, whilst, on the other hand, we reasoned that the picture provided by the responses of the corsophone respondents would not be quite so clear-cut. Regardless of the stated abilities in the heritage language, Tables 7.7 and 7.8 demonstrate that a considerable majority of islanders did not believe that to be Corsican, one has to speak Corsican. This conclusion chimes with a judgement made by Jaffe (2001, 288) based on her survey work on the island in 1988 and 1989. She argues that one pertinent local perspective is the detection of a romantic rather than essentialist relationship between the Corsican language and culture. This is something to which we shall return below in the discussion of compulsory Corsican language education, but it merits brief preliminary discussion here. Jaffe (2001, 288) suggests that a proportion of islanders: do not identify the use of the Corsican language itself (either in the abstract or as spoken practice) as being critical to Corsican identity. Rather they view the importance of Corsican for Corsican identity as based on the quality of the attachment of its speakers to the language.

In other words, the trends suggested by this question in the two 2005 surveys echo conclusions reached elsewhere, namely that an ability to speak Corsican is not the defining characteristic of Corsican identity. More remarkable still is the inference that can be drawn from closer examination of the answers given by non-corsophones, as presented in Table 7.8. On the basis that these respondents have already stated that they do not speak the heritage language, a fraction fewer than one in five non-corsophone school pupils questioned their own identity by reasoning that one has to speak Corsican in order to be Corsican. In other words, almost one in five non-corsophone teenagers did not consider themselves Corsican because they did

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not speak the heritage language of the island. As has been noted already in this chapter, it is important not to overplay the significance of a set of results produced from a single survey in three secondary schools. Nevertheless, these responses highlight the value of the heritage language as the defining characteristic of Corsican cultural identity. Wittingly or otherwise, 19% of participants in the 2005 school-pupil survey discounted themselves as Corsicans on the basis of their own language practices.

7.3

The Response to Language Management

Although some findings have already been published on this subject (see Blackwood, 2004a), in this analysis of language policy on Corsica, it is imperative to complete the triangular relationship between language management, language beliefs and language practices by testing the links between these three pillars of this case study. All respondents to the five surveys were asked whether they thought that Corsican language classes should be mandatory in the island’s schools (Table 7.9). The call for compulsory Corsican language classes was first formally made at the 1959 merendelle and was raised by Petru Rocca in the 1920s before that. It has remained one of the strategies put forward by some, but not all, language activists. The State’s ideological opposition to such teaching throughout the majority of the twentieth century has anchored this debate in the theoretical rather than the practical, although the decentralisation process of the 1980s and 1990s changed the political landscapes making mandatory Corsican classes a much more realistic aim than it ever had been. As discussed elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004a, 312–320), the first survey in this longitudinal study was undertaken prior to the culmination of the Matignon Process, a little over a year after the assassination of Prefect Erignac and some six months before the introduction of almost-obligatory Corsican language classes for all eleven and twelve year olds on the island. One school term into the Chief Education Officer’s timetabling of Corsican for all in their first year of secondary education, Corsica magazine (in its edition of January 2000) published its findings on mandatory Corsican language classes. The magazine commissioned l’Institut Louis Harris to undertake a survey whose results were based on six hundred tele-

Table 7.9 Should Corsican language classes be compulsory in schools? Year Yes (%) No (%) Do not know (%) Other (%) 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

64 36 38 38 42

30 48 52 58 56

0 2 6 0 2

6 14 4 4 0

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phone interviews undertaken in December 1999 (Harris/Corsica, 2000). In 2001, Jaffe published her findings on compulsory classes in the heritage language, based on research undertaken in the late 1980s. These three surveys – my 1999 investigation, Corsica’s December 1999 poll and Jaffe’s earlier investigation – have strikingly comparable results, with the proportion of respondents favouring obligatory classes in Corsican standing at 64%, 62% and 50% respectively. By the time the second survey for this study was conducted, at Easter 2000, a distinct change in language beliefs can be detected. By the time this question was put to islanders, eleven year olds had undergone two terms of what was effectively mandatory Corsican language classes. For the final four surveys, the proportion of respondents favourable to the compulsory teaching of Corsican has remained significantly lower than the first three surveys discussed above. Although Jaffe (2001, 279–280) argues that her results overstate the sanctioning of mandatory teaching of the heritage language amongst islanders, the results of the three initial surveys would suggest that there was considerable support on the island for such teaching until it became a reality in the classrooms of Corsica. The four surveys taken after 2000 point to a hardening of attitudes against compulsory Corsican language classes, with an average of 54% of respondents opposing these classes and 39% favouring mandatory teaching of the heritage language. Over the course of the five surveys, however, the difference between opposition to and support for this kind of language management is less wide, with an average of 49% opposing and 44% supporting compulsory Corsican language classes. This division between proponents and opponents is more striking if we take into account the respondents’ self-reported abilities in Corsican, as presented in Tables 7.10 and 7.11.

Table 7.10 According to corsophones, should Corsican language classes be compulsory in schools? Year Yes (%) No (%) Do not know (%) Other (%) 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

61 24 48 50 42

30 55 34 46 37

0 0 10 0 5

9 21 8 4 16

Table 7.11 According to non-corsophones, should Corsican language classes be compulsory in schools? Year Yes (%) No (%) Do not know (%) Other (%) 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils

59 33 29 23 32

35 43 71 68 65

0 5 0 0 0

6 19 0 9 3

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The distinction here between the two principal perspectives is clear. On average, 45% of corsophones supported mandatory Corsican language classes, whereas 35% of non-corsophones adopted the same position. In terms of opposition to this kind of teaching, an average of 40% of corsophones adopted this position in comparison with 56% of non-corsophones. There is a discernible separation in beliefs based on the respondents’ relationship with the heritage language, whereby it is more likely for opponents of mandatory Corsican language classes to be non-speakers of the heritage language. However, it is far from being the case that beliefs towards compulsory classes in Corsican are primarily governed by islanders’ abilities to speak Corsican. It is necessary to distinguish the rationales offered by the participants in these surveys in order to evaluate the prevailing arguments in this debate. The opposition to compulsory Corsican language teaching can be organised into a number of categories, the most widely articulated of which is the freedom to choose the subjects to be taken at school. In turn, this key argument is modified in a range of different ways but at its core is the prizing of liberty, something which we have already discussed in terms of language management as a guiding principle of organising life in the Republic of France. One qualification of the doctrine of freedom of choice is the unnatural nature of compulsory Corsican-language education, as expressed by R29/00, a sixty-three-year-old male corsophone, who replied that ‘Corsican should be taught as an option, not obligatorily, for many reasons but because, above all, it’s learnt at home, in the family, in the street. It should be taught [in schools] but it should be optional.’ Although this question of the responsibility for the teaching of the heritage language is something upon which we shall dwell below, it is important to address the point made by R29/00. There is a local perspective which rejects the premise that the school is, in twenty-first century Corsica, the primary agent in the transmission of the heritage language. This rationale can be qualified in a number of ways, including the rejection of the formal education system as a locus for teaching Corsican by virtue of the fact that the schools were used as a weapon to change language practices on the island to the detriment of the heritage language. Similarly, another related viewpoint is that language activism on the island should not seek to replicate the methods employed since the nineteenth century by the French State to gallicise the island, as highlighted by R25/00, a forty-six-year-old male corsophone, ‘Terms such as obligation have no bearing on reality. It’s not possible to change the way people speak by introducing laws. No, I’m opposed to obligation.’ R25/00’s response echoes one of the main arguments of this study, namely that the thread of language management that runs through France’s governance of Corsica was not the main impetus for a change in language practices amongst islanders. Extra-linguistic factors have played the most significant role in this shift, although the change was supported by vigorous and consistent language management. In measuring the language beliefs towards the mandatory teaching of Corsican based on her surveys from the end of the 1980s, Jaffe (2001, 284, 285) highlights some commonalities in her analysis of the stable resistance to compulsory classes in the heritage language. One of the principal recurring rationales, she reasons, is what she calls ‘oppositional essentialism’, which seeks to organise these objections

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to mandatory Corsican classes on the basis that islanders reject – for the heritage language – the models, methods and frameworks explicitly adopted for French. In other words, where French was introduced as the language of administration and justice by language laws, by formal structures such as State education and by the unwavering support of the State’s authority, Corsican must be sustained, so the argument runs, by the private practices of individuals in their personal networks, through community support and thanks to the encouragement of local groups of language activists. Jaffe pursues this argument, reasoning that the formal teaching of Corsican within the precincts of State schools is a ‘deauthenticating act’ (2001, 286), by which she suggests that the heritage language does not sit naturally or particularly easily inside the embodiment of the French Republic – in other words the island’s network of schools – because Corsican is strongly identified with the home, the family and the village. In this respect, Jaffe’s conclusions, based on her fieldwork in Haute Corse, dovetail with Fishman’s frameworks for language shift reversal in that they support the view that the primary focus for a reversal of the language shift should not be the formal education system but, instead, the familial, social use of the heritage language. Over the course of my five surveys, the most frequently rehearsed rationale behind the respondents’ rejection of mandatory Corsican language classes was the fear that making the study of the heritage language would be counter-productive in that it would be detrimental to both language beliefs and language practices. Jaffe (2001, 288) encountered comparable perspectives in her surveys and described this collective viewpoint as oppositional romanticism whereby ‘imposing Corsican would have a negative cultural effect, by provoking student rejection.’ Such a standpoint was taken in my surveys by – for example – R26/99, a seventy-sevenyear-old male corsophone, who replied ‘No, it should be optional because if it were obligatory, it would put off some parents and pupils.’ In a comparable response, R60/05, a sixteen-year-old female non-corsophone, reasoned ‘No, because it’s a choice. Everyone has got to choose. It’s not by forcing people that they are going to appreciate Corsican.’ Similarly, R93/05, a seventeen-year-old male corsophone commented ‘No, because obligation runs the risk of diminishing the pleasure in speaking, hearing and communicating in Corsican.’ It is interesting to note that, although not systematic enough to permit a confident generalisation, opposition to this kind of teaching on the grounds that it would be counter-productive was often articulated by younger participants, including R76/05, a seventeen-year-old male corsophone, who pithily answered ‘No, because obligation would kill off the language.’ There is clearly a widely held perspective that a measure designed to change language practices in favour of the heritage language would actually serve to harden language beliefs against Corsican to the extent that, in the eyes of some, serious damage would be done to the vitality of the language. The rationales of those who favoured mandatory Corsican language education can also be organised into categories, and it is interesting to note that only a minority perceived such teaching as a method for revitalising the heritage language. Of those who declared themselves in favour of compulsory heritage

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language classes, only one – R54/05, a sixteen-year-old male corsophone – took this standpoint: ‘I think so, if we are going to sustain it [Corsican], to preserve it.’ One particularly significant viewpoint voiced during these surveys is one that returned to the crux of the deliberations made by the Constitutional Council in relation to the status of Corsican language education. This perspective suggested that mandatory Corsican classes should be organised for those islanders identifying themselves ethnically with Corsica but not necessarily for others living on the island. This line of argument has been articulated elsewhere such as the notional Breton civil servant’s son. In this scenario, a civil servant posted to the island from his native Brittany would find that his school-age son would be required to learn, in addition to standard French, a heritage language which is not his own. R14/99, a forty-eight-year-old female non-corsophone favoured mandatory Corsican education ‘for Corsicans’. Similarly, R50/05, coincidently also a forty-eight-year-old female non-corsophone, replied ‘If we are talking about a Corsican, then yes. We are not going to oblige a foreigner or a mainlander to learn Corsican’. Both these examples do not acknowledge the realities of modern France, where, in its recent judgements, the Constitutional Council based in Paris reiterates the imperative for all French citizens to be equal. To oblige Corsicans to learn Corsican whilst exempting the family from Montpellier living on the island would run counter to all the recent decisions reached by the Constitutional Council. The final main perspective proffered by the proponents of compulsory Corsican language education stresses the bond between the heritage language and the collective cultural identity of the islanders. Such respondents included R59/05, a sixteen-yearold female non-corsophone, who stated ‘Yes because, all the same, we’re on Corsica and it would be good if everyone spoke it’ and R80/05, a seventeen-yearold female non-corsophone, who felt that Corsican should be obligatory ‘because it’s our culture and when you live here, you should know it, or least the bare minimum.’ It is interesting to note that the majority of those respondents who could be encouraged to expand on their support for obligatory Corsican language classes were the young, hence the emphasis in this section on the rationales articulated by teenage participants. Despite this imbalance, the prevalence of this reasoning is significant in that it posits a failing in the transmission of Corsican which, in turn, has a detrimental impact on the vitality of a distinct Corsican identity. In spite of the majority perspective that the heritage language is not a prerequisite for identifying islanders as Corsicans, a counter viewpoint is held that there is some level of responsibility for islanders to speak the heritage language. Moreover, this viewpoint reasons that, to guarantee or even merely encourage this commitment to Corsican cultural identity, school children should be obliged to learn the heritage language. This position was articulated by R72/05, a seventeen-year-old male noncorsophone, ‘Yes, because it’s our culture and those of us on Corsica should speak only Corsican’. This answer is interesting for a number of reasons, but most salient is perhaps the self-critical assessment of language practices, where R72/05 did not speak Corsican himself and yet stated that everyone on the island should, in fact, use only the heritage language.

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Mother-Tongue Transmission The First Stage – Language Beliefs

Fishman (1991, 373–375) highlights the primordial need for mother-tongue transmission of what he refers to as Xish in order to reverse the language shift to a dominant contact language. In terms of this study, we need to evaluate the issue of intergenerational transmission of Corsican in a home environment, set against the backcloth of an unquestionably successful language shift to French on the island. Before such transmission can occur, there needs to be a change in language practices, since, as we demonstrated above, Corsican is not used extensively in a home environment amongst family members, especially between parents and their children. Simultaneously, as well as evaluating language practices in order to investigate the chances of reversing the language shift to French, it is imperative to assess language beliefs. Based on Spolsky’s definition of language policy, we sought to establish whether islanders demonstrated positive language beliefs to the extent that they wished their children – actual or future – to learn the heritage language. In order to be in a position to evaluate language policy on Corsica, this is only the first stage in assessing intergenerational transmission, but its significance is key. Therefore, all respondents to the five surveys were asked whether they wanted their children to learn Corsican. Taken at face value, the results provide evidence of positive language beliefs towards the heritage language. On average, 85% of respondents replied that they wished their children to learn Corsican. Interestingly, this clear demonstration of favourable language beliefs extends to the school pupils surveyed in the second investigation in 2005, something which suggests that there has not been an intergenerational break in language attitudes to Corsican, despite the fact that transmission of the language itself appears to have declined significantly. Positive language beliefs towards Corsican, therefore, are demonstrated by statistics such as these and are, to a certain extent, testament to the work undertaken by language activists over the past century to sustain such attitudes. Throughout the two hundred and fifty years of the gallicisation of Corsica, extra-linguistic factors and State language management succeeded in transforming language beliefs towards French from a position of ambivalence to the stage where language practices changed completely and French became the first language for the entire island. Over this same period, however, language beliefs towards Corsican, according to the results of these surveys, have not diminished significantly. In surveys, four out of five islanders declare that they would like their children to learn Corsican. At this stage, it is important to reassert the qualification made elsewhere (Blackwood, 2004a, 322) concerning the sensitivity with which these kinds of statistics should be handled. We do not venture that the responses outlined in Table 7.12 herald the reversal of the language shift to French, nor the normalisation of Corsican on the island, nor an imminent change to language practices amongst the island’s young. These data do not prove that islanders’ children are actually going to take the time and the

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Table 7.12 Respondents wanting their children to learn Corsican 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils 74%

90%

76%

94%

90%

Table 7.13 Corsophones wanting their children to learn Corsican 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils 88%

90%

97%

100%

95%

Table 7.14 Non-corsophones wanting their children to learn Corsican 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils 82%

86%

52%

86%

87%

considerable effort required to learn the heritage language. Similarly, these results do not suggest that widespread intergenerational transmission of Corsican in the domain that Fishman (1991, 398) refers to as ‘home-family-neighborhood-community’ is about to resume. Instead, these statistics must be considered with the caveat that responding to surveys, such as these ones, can be an empty gesture where socially acceptable answers are rehearsed. Nevertheless, this in itself testifies to positive language beliefs – even if islanders are merely going through the motions of affirming the desirability of their children learning Corsican, this would demonstrate that there are island-wide positive language beliefs towards the heritage language. The results generated by this question across the surveys can, if interpreted differently, highlight another conclusion of this evaluation of language policy on Corsica. If we cross-reference the responses provided to the questions about the respondents’ stated abilities in Corsican with their views on the learning of the heritage language by their offspring, it is possible to evaluate language beliefs from a different perspective. Tables 7.13 and 7.14 above show the proportions of islanders wishing their children to learn the heritage language in relation to their own stated language abilities. If we compare the averages of the two sets of surveys, we can see that 94% of self-reported Corsican speakers and 79% of those who asserted that they were noncorsophones wanted their children to learn the heritage language. It is perhaps not surprising that such a high proportion of islanders who speak Corsican also wish their children to do the same. The statistics reached by collating the results from non-Corsican speakers further highlight positive language beliefs and, despite the inexplicable dip in the 2003 survey, remain largely stable. These two sets of results confirm that positive language beliefs are not limited to either speakers or nonspeakers of Corsican; it is not correct to assert that only those who speak the language wish to see their children learn Corsican. Nor is it the case that non-speakers rather than speakers would prefer their offspring to learn the heritage language. Across the island, regardless of their own abilities in Corsican, islanders wish to see their children speaking Corsican.

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When examining the favourable language beliefs towards the learning of Corsican by future generations and, more specifically, by the respondents’ children, one distinct perspective emerged. This viewpoint made the link, without any prompting from the interviewer, between the desire for children to learn Corsican and the actual responsibility for the transmission of the heritage language. In other words, some respondents anticipated the question on the responsibility for teaching Corsican. One of the viewpoints which articulated this explicit link between favourable language beliefs and the responsibility for the transmission of the heritage language was the one by which respondents across the four surveys asserted that the learning of Corsican happens ‘naturally’. In response to the question ‘Would you like your children to learn Corsican?’, R34/99 – for example – replied, ‘According to my father, my uncle and my god-father, Corsican is learnt in the street and it comes naturally, in the street.’ Similarly, R47/99 answered, ‘Definitely. I think it happens naturally at home.’ Although none of the participants who drew attention to this ‘natural’ acquisition of the heritage language explained what they meant by this, implicit in their responses was that they understood this issue to be linked to the debates surrounding the formal teaching, either compulsory or optional, of the heritage language. A comparable rationale was offered which stresses the importance of the domestic transmission of Corsican, as exemplified by R16/00, a fifty-one-year-old female corsophone, ‘If I had children, yes, they would have definitely learnt Corsican but it would have happened just like that, because my parents spoke it and it’s transmitted from parent to child.’ In terms of categorising the perspectives offered by the respondents, R16/00’s answer resonates with Jaffe’s ‘oppositional essentialism’ (2001, 285), whereby she firmly situates the Corsican language within the domestic, private environment rather than in the formal, State-regulated sphere of the national education system. This link between positive beliefs towards the learning of Corsican by future generations and the responsibility for its transmission is also expressed in terms of maintenance of the internal variation of Corsican. This variation, used in the past by opponents of the heritage language, has been identified as Corsican’s Achilles heel and the primary reason for resisting the formal appearance of the heritage language on the timetables of the island’s schools. However, the viewpoint expressed by these respondents is a counter-position adopted by those who see the existence of a number of Corsicans as a strength and a characteristic to be protected. This perspective is articulated in response to the use of formal education to transmit the heritage language but is also expressed in the discussion on the acquisition of Corsican by the respondents’ children. R5/00, a forty-five-year-old male corsophone wished his children to learn the heritage language, ‘but at home, because every region has a different variety of Corsican. So, if a teacher from Bastia teaches his own Corsican to kids in Ajaccio, then there’s going to be a discrepancy.’ The fact that there is internal variation in Corsican, not merely lexical but also morphological and phonological, will be revisited below. Of those who did not state that they wanted their children to learn Corsican, it is important to note in passing that, at the same time, they were not opposed to the learning of the heritage language by future generations. Table 7.15 shows the

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Table 7.15 Respondents who stated that learning Corsican is their children’s choice 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils 6%

10%

12%

6%

2%

number of respondents who answered explicitly that the learning of the heritage language was not a decision they would take for their children but would, instead, allow any descendents to choose whether to learn Corsican. In some respects, this minority position is not particularly significant, especially when we bear in mind that this constituted an average of 7% over the five surveys. However, it is important to develop fully what these respondents were articulating in their responses. This 7% reasoned that the learning of a language was a decision to be made by individuals themselves, rather than by their parents and family. On one level, this confirms what is already well established, namely that the first language taught to virtually every single islander is French. However, these data also point to a minority, almost one in ten islanders, who did not intend to transmit the heritage language in the home environment unless their children somehow indicated that they wish to learn Corsican. For this minority, it is highly unlikely that the next generation will be bilingual, language practices will not change, and the establishment of Corsican as the language of Fishman’s ‘home-family-neighborhood-community’ network will miss another generation. It is, of course, possible that formal education in Corsican, especially given the growth in bilingual primary education and the so-called ‘extensive’ Corsican language teaching will change language practices over the course of a child’s compulsory schooling, but this is perhaps an optimistic rather than a probable outcome.

7.4.2

The Second Stage – the Evolution of Beliefs into Practices

Having established that there are not only positive language beliefs towards the heritage language but also that a stable majority of islanders wished future generations – and, in particular, their own children – to learn Corsican, it is now pertinent to turn our attention to the second stage in mother-tongue transmission. The next logical step in this examination is to investigate the link between language beliefs and language practices in terms of teaching the heritage language to future generations. In analysing the responses to the 1999 survey, it became clear that it would be imperative to evaluate the participants’ understanding of the responsibility for the teaching of Corsican to the island’s children. Therefore, for the subsequent four surveys, each respondent was asked to identify whom they perceived as responsible for the teaching of the heritage language. This question was open-ended and it invited the participants to distinguish more than one category of individuals at whose feet the responsibility for this teaching ought to be placed. However, since the question was open-ended, it allowed a range of responses, some of which were expressed by only one individual and so, on that basis, do not appear in the table below. There was also a very small minority of

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respondents who felt that they did not know who should be responsible for such teaching. These two minority positions together constitute the final percentages for each survey, totalling on average 10% of responses over the four surveys. Given the responses to this question, it has been possible to divide the answers into a spectrum of four main categories, at either end of which stand the family and the schools as the sole responsible agencies for the transmission of Corsican to the island’s next generations. The two other principal responses offered during the recordings of these surveys include both the family and the schools, but whereas one local perspective is to consider the family as the principal agent in teaching the heritage language, supported subsequently by the schools, the other viewpoint is not to distinguish between the levels of responsibility between the family and the schools. The third potential response, namely the citing of the schools as the primary transmitter of Corsican, enforced at a secondary level by the family, was offered as a response by one participant to these surveys, R31/00, a fifty-year-old male corsophone, who replied, ‘Well, it should be taught in two ways. It should be taught first of all at school and then especially within the family. The school is so important because people don’t learn it at home any more.’ It remains significant to note that only one parent articulated what is arguably a reality for two-fifths of the island’s population, based on the results outlined in Tables 7.2 and 7.3 above, namely that a minority of parents cannot speak Corsican and a majority of islanders do not speak Corsican at home to their children. Over the course of the four surveys in which this question featured, an average of 38% of respondents cited the family as the sole responsible agent for the transmission of Corsican. At the other end of this short spectrum, an average of 19% of respondents believed that the schools alone have primary responsibility for the teaching of Corsican to the island’s youth. Despite the fact that the largest proportion of respondents identified the family as the primary environment for the transmission of the heritage language, it must be acknowledged from the results of the four surveys that one in five islanders believed that the responsibility for the teaching of Corsican did not lie with the individual but is the concern of formal, Stateorganised education. In terms of the revitalisation of the heritage language, this significant minority poses a key challenge to those seeking to normalise Corsican. Fishman’s 1991 and 2001 strategies for reversing a language shift stress the primordial importance of mother-tongue transmission, even when this does not equate to a marginalisation of a dominant language but rather a compromise in the allocation of functions between the languages in contact. The second stage of Fishman’s fourpart linkage scheme to normalise a threatened language within a speech community requires the use of this minorised language within the domain of the home and family. Despite the fact that over a half of islanders speak Corsican at home, there is a clear and stable minority perspective that the transmission of the heritage language should be undertaken by an external body – the schools – rather than by islanders themselves in domestic contexts. At the same time, there is an increasing number of islanders who do not speak Corsican themselves and so rely upon the formal education system to transmit the heritage language to their children. These are the generations whose language practices are still to be transformed so that they can

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join the first stage of Fishman’s four-part linkage system and use Corsican as a second language at home. R19/05, a thirty-seven-year-old female non-corsophone, spoke for those who have lost or never had access to the heritage language, identifying the school as bearing the responsibility for the transmission of Corsican, ‘because I don’t speak Corsican. That’s why I enrolled my daughters in a bilingual class.’ In R19/05’s case, the school can encourage language practices that she clearly perceived as desirable but which she cannot hope to sustain as a non-corsophone. Whilst this perspective is significant in that it enables the island’s network of schools to assume responsibilities beyond the capabilities of non-corsophones, it does ground the use of the heritage language in the domain of formal education rather than in the homes, villages and communities of the island. The viewpoint taken by R19/05 and others like her testified to positive language beliefs that are translated into language practices likely to sustain Corsican. We will return to the significance of these conclusions in the final evaluation of the role played by the islanders in language policy on Corsica. In assessing the responsibility for the teaching and transmission of Corsican, scholars – such as Fishman – do not dismiss formal education as a tool to be exploited for the revitalisation of threatened languages. Schools have a vital part to play in changing language practices in favour of heritage languages as well as undertaking a key role in the teaching of such languages, especially in cases where we estimate that, in the case of Corsican, 40% of islanders do not speak the language at stake. The importance of the schools in the transmission of Corsican was borne out by these four surveys, whereby an average of 54% of islanders believed that the school has, to a greater or lesser extent, a part to play. We have already noted that almost one in five islanders believed that the schools alone are accountable for the teaching of Corsican. At the same time, an average of 35% asserted that this accountability is to be shared between the schools and families on the island. The distribution of the responsibility for the teaching of the heritage language was prioritised by an average of 15% of islanders (and 43% of all of those who identified both the schools and the family as charged with the duty of transmitting Corsican) who, as noted above, placed the family before the schools. In this division of labour between the two institutions, there is a clear local perspective that the schools have a supportive role to play, especially in the verification and standardisation of the Corsican taught by parents and other family members. For example, R26/05, a fifty-seven-year-old male non-corsophone, felt that ‘Corsican is learnt above all at home, but the schools have to pick up the baton afterwards to verify the grammar, the vocabulary, to see that it’s all correct.’ Similarly, R2/05, a thirty-sixyear-old male corsophone made a clear distinction in the transmission of the heritage language, ‘Speaking is up to the parents, writing is over to the schools.’ Both these rationales reinforce one characteristic of Jaffe’s oppositional romanticism. She concludes (2001, 289): Both the definition of the school as the polar opposite of the domain in which the value of Corsican is located, and personal experiences of the French school system undoubtedly contributed to [the] skepticism that anything to do with local culture or deep emotional value could be transmitted in the schools.

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There is a clear local perspective that reasons that Corsican is not a language that sits comfortably within the classroom in that it had no place in schools for centuries, even before the Battle of Ponte Nuovo in 1768. In discussing the responsibility for the transmission of the heritage language, R48/00, a thirty-seven-year-old female non-corsophone, commented, ‘Corsican is a spoken language, it’s traditional, it’s spoken rather than written, so it’s up to the grandparents, the parents, the friends’, even though she believed that the school and the family are co-responsible for future generations’ language practices in Corsican. Whilst the work undertaken by schools is valued – especially and possibly inevitably by non-corsophones with positive attitudes towards the heritage language – there is a clear perspective that questions the legitimacy of the formal education system in maintaining and revitalising a language, since this same network of schools was exploited with considerable success to marginalize Corsican. We shall see echoes of this standpoint in the rationales cited by those respondents who see the family as solely responsible for the transmission of Corsican. An average of 38% of islanders believed that the family and the family alone was responsible for the teaching of Corsican to the island’s young. If we examine the trend in responses more closely, we can see that the individual figure of 24% for the 2005 survey of school pupils is significantly lower than the adult average (42% over the three surveys), something that can be explained to a certain extent by the lower proportion of self-reported ability to speak Corsican in this particular survey. It follows that where fewer participants asserted that they could speak the heritage language, the proportion of respondents who identified themselves as responsible for teaching their own children Corsican would be lower. Interestingly, the proportion of those who believed the school alone had the duty to teach Corsican was not higher amongst the pupils who participated in the 2005 survey, as one might have expected given their tendency not to identify the family as chiefly accountable for this responsibility. In comparison with the three preceding surveys of adults, as demonstrated in Table 7.16, only one respondent in ten to the 2005 survey of final-year school pupils identified the school alone as the transmitter of the heritage language. Although these are the results generated by just one survey of late teenagers on Corsica, it does suggest that younger generations do not, on the whole, believe that the teaching of Corsican should be left to the schools, suggesting instead that parents, grandparents and extended families, alongside educational establishments, must continue to take a key role in this task.

Table 7.16 Responsibility for teaching Corsican

The family The family THEN the schools The family AND the schools The schools

2000 (%)

2003 (%)

2005 2005 adults (%) pupils (%)

42 12 18 20

50 4 12 28

34 30 12 18

24 14 38 10

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In analysing the rationales offered by the participants to the four surveys in which this responsibility was investigated, it is important to note that no respondent stated explicitly that the island’s schools should not play a part in the transmission of the heritage language. There is no attested explicit resistance to the work undertaken by the island’s education system in teaching Corsican to children. Prior to an evaluation of the rationales offered by the participants, it might have been possible to highlight the significance of what is left unsaid by the respondents, in that whilst none of them spoke out against the transmission of Corsican through formal education, it could be inferred that they were opposed to differing degrees to a part being played by the schools. On closer analysis, however, it is clear that this is not the case. The group of respondents who identify the family alone as responsible for transmitting the heritage language can be divided into different categories based on the justification of their answer. There is one particular viewpoint which stresses the traditional nature of the transmission of Corsican. This is where the respondents came closest to rejecting the schools as a forum for the teaching of the heritage language without articulating Jaffe’s oppositional essentialism (2001, 284, 285). Such a stance was taken by R3/00, a fifty-five-year-old male corsophone, who felt that the responsibility for the transmission of Corsican lies with ‘Our ancestors, the older generations at home, just like I learnt it, at home.’ The identification of the domestic nature of the heritage language was mirrored elsewhere and even cited as motivation for respondents learning Corsican themselves. For example, R67/05, an eighteen-year-old female non-corsophone at Porto-Vecchio’s secondary school answered, ‘I’d like it to be me [who is responsible for teaching the heritage language to future generations] so that’s why I want to learn Corsican.’ Although this kind of response does not equate to either a change of language practices in terms of the respondent herself or her potential future children, it does underscore positive language beliefs towards the heritage language, pointing to favourable attitudes amongst non-corsophones towards the acquisition and subsequent transmission of Corsican. Reflecting one of the concerns raised by respondents discussing the desirability of mandatory Corsican language classes, one respondent – E41/03 – highlighted the importance of families in terms of transmitting local variation within Corsican. E41/03, a thirty-five-year-old female corsophone, commented that, ‘It’s the parents and grandparents above all [who should teach Corsican]. That’s where you really learn the local Corsican, the Corsican from every region.’ This response emphasised the internal variation of Corsican but did not identify it as a potential weakness and instead stressed that this diversity is a marker of difference to be retained rather than lost through levelling. These surveys have provided anecdotal support for the variation within Corsican, on the basis that respondents have articulated a desire to maintain the different Corsicans rather than move towards one, single, unified language. Another viewpoint mirroring the generalisations made about the teaching of Corsican is that, somehow, the fact that the heritage language is transmitted in a domestic environment rather than in the formal surroundings of the island’s schools increases the likelihood of bilingualism. This suggestion that language practices are dictated or, at least, encouraged, by the methods of language acquisition echoes the

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rationale discussed above pertaining to the ‘natural’ acquisition of Corsican in the streets of the island. By way of illustration, R6/00, a forty-nine-year-old male corsophone, stated, ‘It’s up to the family, the parents to teach Corsican. If they learn it at home, in the street, they’ll continue to speak it.’ This might well appear an ambitious expectation, namely that domestic transmission of Corsican enhances considerably a set of language practices in which the heritage language is used more often in comparison with the practices of those who acquired Corsican at school. However, this belief chimes with Fishman’s 2001 four-stage linkage system for reversing a language shift (2001a, 15). According to Fishman’s model, the development of the threatened language – in this case, Corsican – as a mother-tongue language should first take place in the domestic environment of the family, the home, the neighbourhood and the community. The next stage – and the third in Fishman’s linkage system – is the use of the threatened language not only as a subject within formal education but also as a language of instruction. Setting aside the likelihood of R6/00’s assertion that an islander taught Corsican by their family was more likely to use Corsican than the contemporary who waits until the start of formal schooling, the premise that there must be a domestic aspect to the transmission of Corsican in order to extend language practices in the heritage language is sound.

7.4.3

The Distribution of Responsibilities According to Personal Ability

Having identified the principal tendencies amongst the respondents towards the responsibility for the transmission of Corsican, it is worth dwelling briefly upon the distribution of language beliefs in this area according to stated abilities in the heritage language. In marrying the responses presented in Table 7.2 to the views expressed in Table 7.16, it is possible to discern whether there are, in this representative sample of the island’s population, any significant trends based on the respondents’ potential or actual language practices. Therefore, the data presented in Table 7.16 is re-presented in Tables 7.17 and 7.18 with a view to differentiating between the language beliefs of corsophones and non-corsophones. It is unsurprising that, over the four surveys, the average proportion of corsophone respondents (44%) who believed that the family is responsible for the transmission of

Table 7.17 Responsibility for teaching Corsican according to corsophones 2000 (%) 2003 (%) 2005 adults (%) 2005 pupils (%) The family The family THEN the schools The family AND the schools The schools

48 3

59 12

41 30

26 21

21

13

8

42

24

14

15

0

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Table 7.18 Responsibility for teaching Corsican according to non-corsophones 2000 (%) 2003 (%) 2005 adults (%) 2005 pupils (%) The family The family THEN the schools The family AND the schools The schools

31 14

38 0

27 18

26 6

18

10

23

39

14

48

27

16

Corsican to future generations was higher than the comparable share of noncorsophones (31%). What is, however, remarkable was that such a high proportion of non-corsophones – almost one in three – reasoned that, despite the fact that they themselves would be unable to teach Corsican to their children, it remains the duty of the family to transmit the heritage language to the young of the island. From these surveys, it is unclear whether the respondents were suggesting what would be an ideal state of affairs, where the family-home-neighbourhood-community domain were to be the genuine locus for teaching Corsican to young islanders, or whether they believed that this is a feasible reality, despite their own inability to engage in this task. Nevertheless, there is a widely held local perspective, amongst both speakers and non-speakers of Corsican, that the family alone is charged with the obligation of passing the heritage language on to children. The balance in the identification of the family as solely responsible for the transmission of Corsican is reversed when we turn our attention to the average proportion of respondents who stated that the island’s network of schools have the duty of teaching the heritage language. On average, 13% of corsophones perceived the schools as sole agents for the teaching of Corsican in comparison with 26% of non-corsophones. In line with the averages reached above, it is not surprising that non-corsophones placed more emphasis than corsophones on the schools as teachers of Corsican, although it is striking to note that none of the corsophone school pupils interviewed in 2005 felt that the school on its own has the duty to teach the heritage language to future generations. It is important not to place too much emphasis on the results of one survey of fifty school pupils in southern Corsica, but this trend might well suggest that younger islanders consider the heritage language to be anchored in the crucial domain of home and hearth. This is the key domain in Fishman’s analyses of normalisation and revitalisation of minorised languages and the findings from the 2005 school pupil survey suggest a hardening of Jaffe’s oppositional essentialism. At the same time, the average proportion of respondents who felt that the family has a part, either alone or with the schools, in transmitting Corsican is considerably higher amongst corsophones (82%) than noncorsophones (64%). These surveys, therefore, confirm the trend that we might have predicted regarding language beliefs and language practices, in that islanders who speak Corsican are much more likely to favour the transmission of the heritage language within their families than non-corsophones. A conclusion that is less predictable

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is the tendency for non-corsophones, who themselves are disqualified from participating in this domestic transmission of Corsican since they do not speak the language, to favour this teaching within the home environment. This further underlines the islanders’ positive language beliefs towards Corsican since over two thirds of respondents who did not have a mastery of the heritage language nevertheless wish it to be passed to future generations at home.

Notes 1. For a full explanation of this technique, see Milroy (1987, 66). 2. Distanciation is the process where, in the case of two or more languages in contact, activists seek to remove the influence of one language – often in terms of the lexicon – on another, normally for ideological reasons. 3. This figure is according to France’s official office for national statistics, INSEE, for the population of the island in 2006. 4. Fishman (2001a, 15) sees the third stage as schooling in the threatened language. The final stage is achieved after schooling has been completed, when there exist activities for adolescents and young people in this language.

Chapter 8

8.1

The Conclusions – Two Languages, Two Language Policies?

In this examination of language policy on Corsica, it has become clear that we are analysing more than the gallicisation of a Mediterranean island or the subsequent attempts to revitalise a heritage language and reverse a language shift to French. In fact, this case study is a tale of two language policies or, more accurately, a language policy for two different languages. The first of these language policies is the now well-trodden path which indicates how, from a marginalized position, French came to achieve its position and status as a prestigious national standard language. Whilst little has appeared in print on the assimilation of Corsica into the Frenchspeaking world, there is a large body of published information that examines the royal and republican language management strategies designed to sideline France’s heritage languages and establish French as lingua franca across the State (see, for example, Judge, 2007). Much, for example, has been written on Brittany and the vast area where Occitan is spoken, with coverage also given to Alsace, the Basque country and French Catalonia. Corsica, however, remains the poor relation when it comes to assessments of the spread of French since the emergence of the nation-state.1 In response to this academic sidelining of the island, this case study has explored language policy on Corsica since its purchase by France at the Treaty of Versailles in 1768. In using Spolsky’s 2004 definition of language policy as the template by which to assess and evaluate language policy, the three key elements of language management, language beliefs and language practices have been analysed with regards to French. For the greater part of the period since 1768, France has pursued language management on Corsica very much as it has across France. Under the Ancien Régime, French was to become the language of the courts and then of formal administration, although this process was slower on Corsica (as much for topographical reasons as for socio-political reasons). The Revolution saw Corsica initially engage in an attempt to regain its independence but the island was soon brought into line by force and by the abandonment of the island by the British and the great Corsican leader Pasquale Paoli. From the turn of the nineteenth century, language management was intended to be uniform and bring about, through the R.J. Blackwood, The State, the Activists and the Islanders, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

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passing of various language laws and official decrees, the establishment of French as the national standard language. In turn, language beliefs and language practices across France, including – with some delay – on Corsica, changed to the detriment of the heritage languages, and to the advantage of French. These upheavals in language beliefs and language practices were enhanced by extra-linguistic factors – above all by the Industrial Revolution, which accelerated the pace of change across France, greatly facilitated communications between regions, and intensified internal migration for economic reasons. The establishment of a free, universal and secular school system and a series of armed conflicts hastened the changes in language beliefs and practices. However, if this synopsis were the sum total of this case study, there would be little to distinguish it from the excellent analyses charting the rise of French as one of the great standard languages of Europe. This evaluation of language policy on Corsica has investigated a second, parallel manipulation of language use by examining the evolution of language management, language beliefs and language practices relating to Corsican. The development of these three strands – in terms of Corsican – is marginalized in studies of minority languages and misrepresented, or simply misunderstood, in popular writings including the various arms of the twenty-first-century media. The backcloth against which this entire project is set is the fundamental fact that Corsican has never been the official language of the island, not even during the days of independence under Pasquale Paoli. Language beliefs and language practices in Corsican have been coloured by the fact that Corsican lacks all the associations of an official language, like many heritage languages within and beyond the borders of France. It has been one aim of language activists and sociolinguists committed to the revitalisation of Corsican to change the representation of language use on the island in order to understand the relationship between French and Corsican beyond the constraints of a diglossia; at different times, the focus on co-officiality or on bilingualism has sought to shift the emphasis in this relationship away from questions of power or dominance. However, it is neither unfair nor unhelpful to recognise Corsican as fulfilling the role of an L language for island life. As has been demonstrated, under some circumstances, it is generous to posit Corsican as such since, in many homes and workplaces across the island, it has been marginalized to such an extent that it no longer even serves as an L language. Nevertheless, Corsican remains part of the island’s repertoire, it exists within the linguistic landscape, it is unquestionably a key marker of Corsican cultural identity and a revitalisation programme dating back beyond the start of twentieth century continues to work for the normalisation of this heritage language. In this analysis, the principal method of critically discussing language policy on Corsica since the 1768 Treaty of Versailles has been the dovetailing of Spolsky’s three strands of language policy with the three principal agents on Corsica in the form of the State, the language activists and the islanders. In this conclusion, we shall seek to measure the relative contributions of the three agents in terms of language management, language beliefs and language practices. For ease of comparison, it would be desirable to analyse each agent independently but, as has already been demonstrated throughout this study, it is impossible to compartmentalise the State, the activists and the islanders neatly, since the three are

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interdependent and necessarily exist in a set of reciprocal relationships. Therefore, although we shall endeavour to measure each agent in turn, cross-referencing is inevitable.

8.2

The Language Activists

Although the title of this book places the State as the first constituent of language policy on Corsica, in evaluating the roles played by the three agents, it is more practical to tackle first the language activists. From the outset of this conclusion, we should acknowledge that squeezing under one umbrella term the spectrum of all the language activists who have given time, energy and even financial support to Corsican is potentially problematic. Even for the same heritage language, language activism has meant differing things to different groups of people over the two hundred and fifty years of French rule. Strange bedfellows indeed are Petru Rocca, Pascal Marchetti and the unknown graffiti artist who writes Corsican language slogans on the walls and rocks of the island. These three individuals would, in all probability, identify themselves – to a greater or lesser extent – as language activists. This study has recognised a long list of Corsicans who have made a public commitment to the use of Corsican and sought to achieve a greater position and status for the heritage language than it has enjoyed since 1768. A dedication to Corsican for over two centuries, from Santu Casanova’s first publications on the language to the regular contributions made today by Marchetti in the island’s press, has been critical in maintaining the heritage language in the islanders’ linguistic repertoire. It is unwise to venture into the territory of supposition and predict what might have happened had not generations of activists committed themselves to a language policy for Corsican, but we assert that it is not unreasonable to argue that Corsican would not be in the relatively stable position in which it finds itself today had it not been for the activism on its behalf of individuals and collectives. As has been illustrated and evaluated above, language activists have committed themselves to the Corsican language across the centuries, concentrating at different times on different areas of language policy. Since the launch of A Tramuntana fresca e sana, there has been a continuous campaign to enhance language beliefs towards Corsican. This journal and its successors demonstrated the utility of the language in the modern era simply by printing in Corsican. Considered by the majority (throughout the ages) to be a spoken language, Corsican was effectively relegated by its own speakers; those who wrote would invariably do so in Tuscan Italian, an act that subconsciously diminished Corsican in modern Western Europe. Deliberately or unintentionally, sections of islanders were complicit in the early marginalisation of Corsican by virtue of the fact that Tuscan Italian was considered the only appropriate language for writing purposes. This mindset was exploited, although perhaps inadvertently, during the decades of forced assimilation that saw the ousting of Tuscan Italian from the island’s linguistic repertoire. During the evolution of this repertoire over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, domains

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vacated by Tuscan Italian were filled not by Corsican, but by French, which became the language of administration, of the law, of writing. It was the work of language activists that counterbalanced this manipulation of language practices, and subsequently of language beliefs, by actively writing in Corsican. Language beliefs, which have been under considerable pressure from the prestige attached to French since France purchased Corsica in 1768, are of critical importance in the endeavours of language activists to ensure the continued vitality of the language. Negative, or possibly merely ambivalent, beliefs and attitudes towards Corsican throughout the nineteenth century led to the incremental abandonment of the heritage language, minorising the position of Corsican within island life. Language activists have sought to reverse this process by demonstrating that Corsican plays a significant part in cultural identity. The fact that Corsican is recognised as such is demonstrated in Chapter 7 which draws attention to conclusions reached from the results of the five surveys. It is, nevertheless, important to recall that there is a widely held local belief that it is not necessary to speak Corsican in order to be Corsican – the heritage language is not, in the eyes of the islanders themselves, the non-negotiable essence of Corsican-ness, a point to which we shall return. Nevertheless, language activists have, over the course of the past two and a half centuries, sought to manipulate language beliefs by using the cultural significance of the heritage language. Although not boasting a notable literary history or a vibrant Corsican-language film industry, a position for the heritage language has been created within music and, most notably, popular song. Corsican-language singers and groups enjoy local popularity and, whilst they do not threaten the ascendancy of French singers and English-language music from the USA (or, to a lesser extent, the UK) they continue to perform in the heritage language. The golden age of cultural output in Corsican in the 1970s has not quite been matched since but language activists have continued to use the heritage language and, in doing so, have generated positive language beliefs towards Corsican. Although the findings presented in Chapter 7 suggest that over a third of the island’s population state that they are not able to speak Corsican, language beliefs are generally very positive, with majorities of non-corsophones expressing a desire to speak the language and to have their children learn Corsican. Although not solely responsible for the favourable view of Corsican, we argue that, during the two hundred and fifty years of French Corsica, language activists have contributed in a fundamental and significant way to shaping the attitudes of islanders towards the heritage language. Given the circumstances which coincided to create the language situation on Corsica, it serves little purpose to attempt to discern whether it is more straightforward to manipulate language beliefs than language practices. Language activists, however, have participated in the transformation of both categories and have been prominently involved in corpus planning for Corsican, especially in the twentieth century. Although subsequently discredited as individuals, the first great language activists, such as Santu Casanova and Petru Rocca, changed language practices in a fundamental way by writing in – and thereby nurturing reading in – Corsican. Where these activists recorded sayings, idioms and other items of expression in Corsican, they also engaged in a form of corpus planning by creating a formal lexi-

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con for the heritage language that has provided what could be considered as a literary history for a language lacking a canon of great works. During the first decades of the twentieth century, despite the fact that French’s dominance in the island’s linguistic repertoire was at its apogee, islanders continued to employ Corsican proverbs, folk songs and sayings. These turns of phrases continue to be used amongst Corsicans today, even by those who would not identify themselves as corsophones.2 Language planning has been undertaken by a line of language activists which stretches back to founding fathers such as Casanova and includes the efforts of activists who founded the numerous language associations, such as Salvatore Viale, Parlemu Corsu, Lingua Corsa and Scola Corsa. These associations and societies each sought to encourage debate on the issues pertinent to Corsican, such as its internal variety – seen as problematic to the heritage language’s detractors – or the changing phonology of Corsican in the light of contact with French. As with the continued efforts to enhance language beliefs towards Corsican, the work of language activists in corpus language planning is of considerable importance. Similarly, associations and organisations, such as l’ADECEC – The Association for the Defence and Study of Central and Eastern Corsican – have, on the one hand, been committed to recording items of the Corsican lexicon and, on the other hand, neologising in order to enable the heritage language to meet the demands made of all languages in the modern era, where technology and communications advance at high speed. This work to expand the Corsican lexicon is matched by strategies to diffuse these new terms across the island, and the work of language activists employed at the CRDP, the regional centre responsible for teaching material (le Centre Régional de Documentation Pédagogique), should be highlighted, since the activists produce the text books used by teachers across the island to teach Corsican in schools. The work by language activists to change language practices can be identified at different levels across the island. At one level, we can note the diffusion of specific terms through the CRDP’s text books. Given the question of internal variety and the results of contact with French, the involvement of dedicated activists in the production of these books is remarkable, since it means language activists are indirectly involved in the teaching of the generations of children passing through the island’s schools. Language activists, through their contributions to teaching materials, also play a key role in the debate surrounding ideological issues, such as distanciation – the process by which there is deliberate intervention in the structure of Corsican in order to differentiate it from French as much as possible (see Blackwood, 2004c). In terms of changing language practices, the various language associations have pledged themselves to encourage the (re)acquisition of Corsican by adults on the island, with the organisation of the merendelle and the Ghjurnate Corse as well as the teaching of Corsican in evening classes. Although the high-tide mark, generally accepted to have been the 1970s, has not been matched since, language activists continue to work to change language practices of adults, something which Fishman (2001a, 15) argues is the key first and second stages of his four-step strategy to reversing a language shift. In the twenty-first century, language activists, in their various associations, continue in their efforts to change language beliefs and language practices, using

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resources such as the on-line Corsican-language resource managed by l’ADECEC. At their website, visitors can use the Corsican-French and French-Corsican dictionaries as well as consult the on-line Corsican language database, participate in the chat room discussions and listen to speech and music resources amongst other possibilities. As movements as well as individuals, language activists have sought over the centuries to influence language management. Although some, such as Kaplan & Baldauf Jr (2003, 6), reason that language management can be undertaken at a micro-level, in corner shops or private businesses, in terms of language policy on Corsica, the most prominent examples of language management – language management that has changed the practices of a significant number of people – has remained the remit of the State. Anecdotally, examples abound of customers addressing waiters or shopkeepers in Corsican. However, there are no cafes, bakeries or tobacconists on the island where the heritage language is the de facto language of communication. Whilst language practices in family-owned businesses and the neighbourhood bar may include spontaneous exchanges in Corsican, language activists have not achieved an island-wide consensus on bottom-up language management in favour of Corsican. This does not mean, however, that language activists have not attempted to influence language management, especially during the twentieth century. An analysis of the role of language activists in language management is not as straightforward as the above evaluation of their manipulation of language beliefs or language practices. Part of the reason for the potential difficulties in scrutinising this role is the fact that language management is more directly politicised than the areas of language beliefs or language practices. To a certain extent, this results from the fact that language management itself is more politicised in France than other countries, partly because language management since the Revolution has been characterised as the prime method for achieving national unity and partly because political opponents of the French State have used Paris’ language management strategies to illustrate France’s ambivalence towards its regions. Consequently, language management on Corsica, as across France, has become a political issue, and this has meant that the line between language activists and political activists on the island has been blurred. This blurring has been particularly striking in the past few decades as political decentralisation has led to the greater involvement of islanders in the administration of the State. We can observe, therefore, at this point the blurring of the language activists and the State. As elsewhere in France, language activists have been absorbed into the process of top-down, official language management. Ager (1996, 126–131) discusses the involvement of pressure groups in language management, although his case study looks at organisations committed to the protection and extension of the French language rather than groups lobbying on behalf of regional heritage languages. He identifies (1996, 126) three categories of pressure groups: those that are closely involved in language policy, those normally consulted on these matters and finally those whose views are received but who are merely kept informed of developments. In the case of Corsica, at Ajaccio, some individuals have been absorbed into the language policy process but do not contribute directly to debates on language man-

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agement at State level. There are also language activists who are consulted by Ajaccio, such as those invited to join the Scientific Committee of the Corsican Language and Culture Council as part of the recent Regional Training Development Plan. It is also the case that there are activists and groups who wish to contribute to language policy on Corsica but who are not directly consulted and whose work effectively runs in parallel to language management by Ajaccio or by Paris. This then leads us to ask at what stage do elected individuals who might consider themselves language activists become part of the State as understood in this study? Are nationalist members of the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio, especially those who sit on bodies such as the Corsican Language and Culture Council, to be considered language activists or part of the State apparatus? For the purposes of this conclusion, we venture that although such individuals are part of the system of governance in France, they should be understood as language activists. It is thus fair to note that language activists have played a considerable, albeit indirect, part in language management in favour of Corsican. Given the historical intransigence of the State in terms of language management, we can safely assert that the involvement of language activists in this arm of language policy is most notable after the Second World War. Before this milestone, there is no tangible language management in favour of Corsican since, in this area, the State had expended all its energy in marginalizing the heritage language in order to accelerate the linguistic gallicisation of Corsica. However, with Smith’s third wave of ethno-nationalism (1991, 125), language activists on Corsica sought to lobby on behalf of the heritage language. Above, we have traced extensively the emergence of regionalism and its links with language activism, set against the passing of the loi Deixonne and the significance of the omission of Corsican from the law’s provisions. As highlighted above and by others, such as Fusina (1994, 110–111), elected representatives of the islanders did not seek language management on behalf of Corsican for the reasons set out in Chapter 4. The absence of these representatives was counterbalanced by the activities of language activists in the 1950s who, in the name of their associations, began the process of formally lobbying for language management in favour of Corsican. To assess the success or failure of pressure groups, it is important to identify their demands. As early as 1959, language activists at the annual merendelle called for mandatory Corsican language teaching on the island. As has been demonstrated above, by Jaffe (2001, 285–286) and in Chapter 7, the majority on the island does not support compulsory language classes for Corsican. It is also fair to highlight the fact that language activists were realists as much as they were idealists. They acknowledged that a State that had aggressively sought to sideline all its heritage languages was not likely to grant such a demand and, therefore, language activists called for incremental gains for Corsican: the extension of the loi Deixonne to include Corsican; an increase in the number of hours of optional teaching; an obligation for schools to offer this teaching; bilingual education. Judged against these criteria, language activists have been highly successful in influencing language management for Corsican. It would be naïve, however, to see these developments solely as achievements for the island’s language activists. Language management was shaped to a great extent by the changing political

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trends and the election of France’s first Socialist President. Collectively, language activists across France have played a significant part in language management, pressuring their local elected representatives as well as national political figures. Over the same timeframe, continent-wide bodies such as the Council of Europe and what is now the European Union have also enjoyed an increasingly important role. It remains, however, important to recall that language activists, during the most dramatic years for Corsican (when, not unrealistically, one local perspective was to fear the disappearance of heritage language as a medium of communication) continued to act on behalf of the heritage language and to encourage favourable language management.

8.3

The State

In evaluating the role played by the State in language policy for Corsican on Corsica, it is important at the outset to acknowledge that the State is not simply a dehumanised entity or a machine situated in Paris, directing the affairs of France. While the State is an apparatus for managing a given territory, working within the parameters of a Constitution as well as adhering to precedence, it is operated by individuals, be they civil servants or elected representatives. We should not, therefore, consider the State as a faltering Leviathan, blindly following a path dictated by the Constitution. For the period examined in this study, the State has known several incarnations, starting with the King’s rule during the Ancien Régime and, passing through the Revolution, reaching today the twenty-first century and the fifty-year-old Fifth Republic. As noted above, the State’s language policy for French has been well documented, to the extent that it is now used as an example for strict – almost ruthless – language management in favour of the national standard. It is therefore unsurprising that the involvement of the State in language policy on Corsica is heavily coloured by aggressive language management in favour of French and by efforts to turn language beliefs and language practices against the heritage languages. Language management, as noted above, is the strand of language policy on Corsica that is most clearly and straightforwardly governed by the State. Since the purchase of the island in the late eighteenth century, the State has engaged in a process of legislating to insist upon the use of the national standard language – French – in what we can describe as the H domains of language use on Corsica. With the passing of the Treaty of Versailles, language laws, such as the Edict of Villers-Cotterêts, were applied on the island and the campaign to remove Tuscan Italian from its H position began. This campaign was part of a wider approach to assimilate the island into France, but was not embarked upon with particular enthusiasm by the Kings of France who adopted a laissez-faire attitude to most aspects of administering Corsica. Even at the Revolution, language management for the island could be described as pragmatic, given the recognition by the State of the linguistic realities of Corsica as well as other regions of France. It was not until the ideological victory of the Jacobins in the mid-1790s that language

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management actively turned its sights on Corsican and France’s other heritage languages in order to force the use of the national standard. This programme of language management against Corsican (and Breton, Basque, Occitan and others) has been traced and evaluated above and is not the primary focus of this conclusion. Of much greater interest has been language management in favour of Corsican which, despite the French State’s notorious reputation, has been enacted slowly and progressively during the second half of the twentieth century. The causation for this potentially surprising language management demands closer evaluation. Given the difficulties of enacting language management in favour of Corsican discussed above, it is clear how the State has earned its reputation for reluctance in this area. The State, working within the strict parameters of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, has not been enthusiastic in its management of Corsican. A number of factors for this hesitancy have been traced in this case study. One of the most important contexts has been the perceived need for national unity, achieved by the imposition of one national standard language. During the eighteenth century, this premise was especially valid on Corsica, which was a new part of the territory of France and one which did not immediately express its attachment to Paris. The short-lived struggle for independence at the Revolution and the nature of the relationship between Corsica and what was then the new Republic of Italy are two of the principal reasons for the seriousness with which the assimilation of the island into France was treated. A key part of this assimilation was language management, and this linguistic gallicisation was achieved comprehensively, we argue, by the outbreak of the Second World War. After the Liberation, this drive for national unity, based in part on one national language, seems less valid as a justification for the resistance to language management in favour of Corsican. The ideology of the Liberation and the islanders’ demonstration of loyalty to France (exemplified by the Bastia sermon of 1939 and the sacrifice of Corsican soldiers in conflict) testifies to the bond between Corsica and la Grande Patrie. Therefore, the refusal to consider language management in favour of Corsican, as implied by the omission of the heritage language from the landmark legislation of the loi Deixonne, appears unjustifiable and unfair. With the post-war rise of ethno-nationalism, the spirit of the Liberation championing freedom over oppression and the assurance of the unity of France by the end of the Second World War, it is possible to consider language management in favour of Corsican as an inevitable development. However, such reasoning fails to acknowledge the entrenched position of the State. We must look, therefore, elsewhere – and certainly to extra-linguistic factors – to explain the key shift in language management. It is at this stage that the other agents in language policy on Corsica become apparent as critical components in language management in favour of the heritage language. Thanks, amongst other factors, to neglect and armed conflict, post-war Corsica’s economy was in serious difficulties and was worsened by continued emigration from the island. The growth of regionalism across Europe – Smith’s ethnonationalism (1991, 125) – did not bypass Corsica. Regionalists, including language activists, began their dedicated lobbying of the State, through their elected representatives, for the acceptance of Corsican as a language of France. Clearly, there

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was no suggestion that language management in favour of Corsican was going to reverse the decline in Corsica’s economy or halt the desertion of the island’s agricultural and fishing industries. Instead, the demands for the acknowledgement of Corsica’s uniqueness were part of an appeal for a recognition of human values. The nationalist movements’ resorts to violence cannot be disregarded when seeking to understand the State’s reluctant language management of Corsican. Despite the repugnance of the assassinations of individuals, most dramatically illustrated by the murder of Prefect Erignac, the concerted bombing campaigns have forced the State to respond to the distinction of Corsica, even though support for nationalism is a minority position on the island and such displays of violence are treated with disgust and contempt by the overwhelming majority of Corsicans. The process of decentralisation and devolution, begun by the State in the 1980s, has been encouraged by both islanders and language activists, and has been accelerated at different points during the last thirty years by these extra-linguistic factors. One of the most recent significant developments has been the Matignon Accords which included language management as a key element of the proposals to pass oversight of internal affairs to the islanders in the form of the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse. In enabling islanders, in the form of the elected and appointed representatives at the Regional Assembly in Ajaccio, to plan their own language management, albeit within the limits of the Constitution, the State has ensured that Corsican is now arguably France’s most legally protected heritage language. The State has devoted more time and energy to language management for Corsican than for any of the other languages of France. It can be reasoned that much of this language management has been undertaken by those to whom the State trusted responsibility for the official treatment of Corsican rather than by the State itself. Nevertheless, the State has, in the light of representations made to it by voters on the island, by language activists and by supra-national organisations such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, enacted language legislation to protect Corsican and even to modify favourably language practices. One of the most recent manifestations of this commitment to Corsican has been the support by the State, personified by its President, Nicolas Sarkozy, of the launch a Corsican digital television channel, Via Stella, in October 2007. In Ajaccio on the day of the first broadcast, President Sarkozy (having taken his entire cabinet with him to the island for their weekly meeting) declared that France would continue to support and encourage the use of Corsican. This evaluation of the role of the State in language management cannot be glossed as a post-war volte-face encouraged by language activists or espoused by benign elements within the State’s apparatus. Representatives in Paris, including former President Jacques Chirac, are never slow to call upon the Constitutional Council or the State Council (the body that advises the government on administrative matters) in order to verify the legitimacy or appropriateness of language management favourable to Corsican or any of the other heritage languages. The State clearly places French at the heart of the Republic, as per Article 2 of the Constitution, and demonstrates frequently its desire to protect the national standard, not only from outside threats such as English but also from internal challenges posed by the

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heritage languages. In front of the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse on 30 October 2007, President Sarkozy underlined his commitment to French as the language of the Republic, despite his explicit support for Corsican, both in and beyond the precincts of the island’s schools. Nevertheless, it is imperative to recall that, since the Second World War, the State, with its iron grip on language management in France, has enacted legislation favourable to Corsican. Measuring the impact of the State in terms of language practices and language beliefs is less straightforward than evaluating its role in language management, partly because both language practices and beliefs cannot directly be changed by the State. The nature of languages is such that a State cannot act in a way that immediately modifies language beliefs. It is more feasible to change language practices and there are numerous examples of an insistence on the use in French, from the punishing of school children for speaking in Corsican and the rejection by the State postal service of letters addressed in a heritage language to the refusal by the Banque de France to process cheques not written in national standard language. Throughout this study, we have noted the mechanisms employed by the State to guide language practices in order to comply with the priorities of France as understood in Paris. Institutions such as the army and, above all, the school system have been exploited to their full potential in dictating language practices under a given set of circumstances. However, these institutions are modern phenomena, anchored in the nineteenth and, above all, twentieth centuries, so changes in language practices were difficult if not impossible to effect until Corsica’s recent past. Moreover, not all sections of French society immediately passed through these bodies, and generations too old for school or for active service continued to use Corsican as they always had done, regardless of the position taken by the State. Only when in contact with the apparatus of the State could islanders be obliged to adapt their language practices but there is much anecdotal evidence of civil servants using Corsican when the use of French was not merely appropriate but a legal requirement.3 The accumulative change in language practices was achieved by the State in part by a significant shift in language beliefs, although this was only indirectly caused by the State. As a part of a rapidly evolving Europe during the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent transformations of the economies of the continent, modern France centred its economic growth in urban centres. These industrialised concentrations were far removed from the mountain villages of Corsica, where subsistence farming was the norm. Internal economic migration led to the depopulation of the Corsican interior as it became widely known that livings could be made in mainland factories. As testified in communities across Europe, heritage languages became less useful in the modern era. Improved communications made it feasible to move from rural corners of the countryside to the sprawling cities where labour was required but, in these urban centres, workers would communicate with each other in a lingua franca, normally the standard language. In France, at the same time, the State itself became one of the biggest employers, demanding francophones to occupy posts in the domestic and colonial civil service. Social and economic mobility ensured that generations came to appreciate the intrinsic value of speaking French rather than Corsican and, as demonstrated in studies into Breton, Occitan or

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Alsatian, language beliefs changed dramatically. Credit for French’s increased prestige cannot be wholly accorded to the State and, throughout this study, we have analysed the key extra-linguistic factors at play in the transformation in language beliefs on Corsica.

8.4

The Islanders

Although the islanders appear last in both this book’s title and these conclusions, they are in no sense the least important agent in language policy on Corsica. In one respect, the islanders are the constituency upon whom this whole case study is focussed. Whilst, by virtue of the organisation of France, the State may have the upper hand in language management and whilst language activists may dedicate themselves to protecting and nurturing the heritage language, it is the language practices and language beliefs of the islanders that are at the centre of language policy on Corsica. As with the two other principal agents examined in this study, the islanders cannot be considered as a single, discrete entity. We have already noted the blurred boundaries between certain language activists and the State. The erosion of a clear distinction between groups of agents also must be born in mind when seeking to differentiate the islanders from the State or the activists. It is true that the majority of activists are islanders themselves: unsurprisingly, Corsican language activism is more of a concern for the inhabitants of Sartène and Calvi than it is for the citizens of Dijon or Toulouse. It is not, however, the case that the majority of islanders are language activists and while the surveys presented in Chapter 7 suggest that islanders are favourable towards Corsican, it does not follow that most islanders can be considered activists. This cleavage does not, however, seek to divide the island into activists and ‘the ordinary folk’, nor does it intend to set the committed against the ambivalent, or the proponents of the heritage language against its opponents. The islanders are simply those who do not commit themselves professionally or actively to language activism. At the same time, there are also islanders who are part of the working mechanism of the State, in that they have either joined the civil service or are elected representatives at various levels of the administration of France. Given the relatively high proportion of islanders that have sought employment in the State apparatus, it is only right that civil servants (a category much wider in France than in, for example, the United Kingdom) are included in the surveys of Chapter 7. As such, the respondents to the five surveys include teachers, a postman, a librarian and civil servants from official bodies such as Customs and Excise, the Ministry for Agriculture and the local Police Service. When measuring the involvement of this final set of agents in language policy on Corsica, it would be incorrect to understand the islanders as not so much active participants but rather as passive recipients of the effects of language management. The contributions made by the language activists and the State to language practices and beliefs towards Corsican have been evaluated through the linguistics trends and patterns discerned amongst the islanders. We have scrutinised the success of language

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activism in terms of language practices and language beliefs in a comparable way to which we have critiqued the State’s language management – both of French and of Corsican. Whilst it would be impossible to deny that the islanders have been respondents to the actions of the State and the language activists – as demonstrated by the majority position adopted in the debate on mandatory Corsican language classes – they also engage intellectually with the issues pertaining to their heritage language, occasionally defying the will of the State, of the language activists or of both agents. It must, however, be acknowledged that the islanders have been complicit in the marginalisation of Corsican over the two and a half centuries since the Battle of Ponte Nuovo. This assertion does not seek to criticise, to blame or to judge the islanders for their shift to French, but it is important to acknowledge that this shift is at the cornerstone of this analysis of language policy on Corsica. Over the space of less than two hundred years, the majority of islanders changed their language practices to the detriment of Corsican, preferring – with good reason – to switch to French in a number, if not the majority, of domains. One of the principal causes for this change in language practices was a seismic shift in language beliefs. As has been argued throughout this case study, it is misleading to understand the transformation of language beliefs in terms of Corsican falling out of favour whilst the prestige of French soared. Conscious of the reputation of Corsicans in popular culture, not least in the adventures of Asterix the Gaul, Goscinny and Uderzo’s Roman-era cartoon hero, it is vital to state that this shift to French and away from the heritage language was not a product of laziness, machismo or touchiness. Language beliefs towards Corsican have remained sympathetic and even enthusiastic, as is attested by a fondness for Corsicanisms that spans the twentieth century – from the early recording and publishing of proverbs and idioms in A Muvra to the continued use of Corsican-language sayings by noncorsophones a hundred years later and, of course, by the favourable conclusions from the five surveys presented in Chapter 7. What has changed since the Battle of Ponte Nuovo has been the decline, encouraged by the French State, in language beliefs toward Tuscan Italian and the undeniable improvement in attitudes towards French. We have evaluated extensively the likely reasons behind this transformation of language beliefs towards French, underscoring the significance of the economic advantages offered by a mastery of the national standard language. As communications, both on the island and between the island and the mainland, improved, islanders became aware of the potential advancements offered to someone with a working knowledge of the French language, something which became increasingly attractive as Corsica’s economy stagnated and poverty worsened. Islanders, struggling with hardships exacerbated by Corsica’s historical and topographical contexts, rightly identified French with modernity, employment, financial reward, responsibility and personal advantage. Although the rhetoric of the Republic of France chided and humiliated corsophones, especially within the formal institutions of the State, the evidence presented in this study points, in terms of language beliefs, to no wholesale rejection or dismissal of Corsican. By the time of the Liberation in 1945, Corsica was unquestionably a Frenchspeaking island. Whilst not abandoning their heritage language completely, the

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islanders had altered their language practices to such an extent that French had become the first language of the island. By the middle of the twentieth century, whilst there were no monolingual corsophones on the island, there were monolingual francophones. This linguistic division of the island has hardened over the final decades of the twentieth century. Whereas there is little to suggest that the islanders’ language beliefs stiffened against Corsican, it is clear that language practices in Corsican were transformed to the detriment of the heritage language. It is not the case that Corsican was somehow haemorrhaging speakers; instead, over the course of two centuries, intergenerational changes were equating to an incremental abandoning of Corsican, domain by domain. In the eighteenth century, the island’s new bourgeoisie was the first subset of islanders to change their language practices on the basis of their power position on the island and their dependence upon the King – a francophone – for the privileges they enjoyed. Their position and their relationship with Versailles (and then, after the Revolution, with Paris) meant that, in the island’s diglossia, the domain of administration, political organisation and the judiciary switched to French. Let us not forget, however, that this domain was not previously associated with Corsican but with Tuscan Italian. Whilst language practices in terms of the heritage language did not change with this political upheaval, the significance of this switch lies in the fact that it heralds the introduction of French into the island’s linguistic repertoire. This transfer of domains was facilitated by extra-linguistic factors as well as changing language beliefs, and concentrated initially on domains marked by their formality, such as administration, commerce, the law and literature. The change in language practices in the domains most pertinent to the field of reversing language shift, above all in the home (but also in community and recreational pursuits from hunting to football), was a twentieth-century phenomenon. The penetration of French into the key L domains is not complete, and this case study does not assert that Corsican has been abandoned completely by islanders. Based on the projections from the results of the five surveys presented in Chapter 7, almost three in every five islanders speaks Corsican with his or her family. Although we do not suggest that this use of the heritage language in domestic situations is consistent, uniform and complete, based on the answers given by islanders, there is a continued practice in using Corsican at home. Whilst French has entered every dwelling on the island, at the same time Corsican has far from vanished from daily use. On one level, the transfer of these fundamental domains from the L to the H language is part of a wider trend across Europe, where – notwithstanding successful campaigns to reverse language shifts in places like Wales, Catalonia and Slovakia – the use of heritage languages declined over the course of the twentieth century. On another level, the islanders do not appear to be ready to allow Corsican to disappear from the island. The conclusions presented in Chapter 7 testify to a strong emotional attachment to Corsican, framing future language practices within the context of consistently favourable language beliefs. The vitality of the heritage language, demonstrated by the solid reported usage of Corsican, is threatened by the clear generational break in language practices (borne out by the stated use of the heritage language in the 2005 school pupil survey) but not by negative language

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beliefs. Language beliefs towards Corsican, such as the majority perspective that wishes future generations to learn the heritage language, are not a potential source for disquiet amongst language activists. Indeed, the linguistic battle for hearts and minds has been won – more precisely, it was not really ever under threat. The challenge facing those committed to reversing the language shift to French is the translation of these positive language beliefs into actual language practices amongst islanders. The first stage of Fishman’s four-step linkage system (2001a, 15) is the use of the threatened language – Corsican – as a second language for adults of childbearing age. It can be reasoned with some confidence, based on the results from the five surveys presented here, that this is already the case on Corsica. The next step requires the threatened language to become the first language in the domain of the family-home-neighbourhood-community. This is no significant achievement in itself, although it is only the halfway point in Fishman’s model for reversing a language shift. According to the results presented here, this goal has not been reached. Although over half the participants to this longitudinal study state that they speak Corsican at home, only a small minority speak Corsican with their children and, in the majority of cases, these offspring are already of childbearing age. Only a third of the school pupils interviewed stated that they speak Corsican and we can generalise, therefore, that the establishment of the heritage language as the language of the home and the community has not yet been achieved. This judgement appears to identify the current position, in Fishman’s universalised strategy to revitalise a minorised language and reverse a language shift, of Corsican, but it is nevertheless important to refer to the final two stages of his model. The third stage calls for schooling in the threatened language, something that is already being established on the island thanks to the proposals for the development of bilingual education in secondary schooling and with the creation of the network of bilingual primary schools. Given the popularity of these bilingual classes, where demand exceeds supply, we can assert with confidence that language beliefs towards the heritage language remain positive to the extent that parents are prepared to take decisions that run counter to the position adopted last century. Whereas during the earlier decades of the twentieth century a majority of islanders sought to encourage their children to learn and speak French, now that the ascendancy of the national standard language is undeniable, parents are now opting not only for their children to learn Corsican as part of their formal education, but are also ensuring that their offspring are taught through the medium of the heritage language. Nevertheless, despite the popularity of bilingual education, it is important to qualify the enthusiasm with which such conclusions can be greeted. Bilingual education on Corsica, whilst taken by 3,558 primary school children in the academic session 2007/8, is not the case for the majority, reaching only 15% of the pupils on the island. Moreover, we must recall the warning made by Comiti (2005, 69) that the heritage language increasingly runs the risk of becoming isolated within the school system. Whilst Corsican progressively enjoys institutional protection which, in a number of ways, exceeds the progress made by France’s other heritage languages (Sibille, 2000, 69), it is simultaneously threatened by its cloistering within the island’s network of schools. We have acknowledged that the majority of

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school pupils does not speak Corsican and is, therefore, only using the heritage language within the classroom. It is therefore far from being the case that Fishman’s fourth stage for reversing language shift, namely activities (such as sport and other leisure pursuits) in the threatened language for post-school adolescents and young adults, is being attained. Furthermore, Comiti’s anxieties, substantiated by the language practices detected from the five surveys presented here, chime a chord with Fishman’s warning regarding his four-stage strategy. This strategy is conceived to establish a base position for a threatened language from which it can transcend its minorised position within a diglossia, rather than being an end in itself to the process. Fishman (2001a, 15) cautions thus: Were this linkage to come apart, then the school would again lapse into being only a SL [second language] institution and the threatened language would become compartmentalised there, having neither backward nor forward linkages. The latter, indeed, is exactly what has occurred in many threatened language schooling efforts and has resulted in disappointment and disillusionment, with schools and with RLS efforts as a whole.

Based on the findings reached in this study, it is possible that Corsican will become isolated within the schools of the island, exposing islanders to the disappointment and disillusionment highlighted by Fishman. It is clear that language practices in Corsican are stable and that language beliefs towards the heritage language are buoyant to the extent that they constitute a considerable asset for revitalising and normalising Corsican. It is also clear that language management of Corsican is more favourable now than it has ever been since the transfer of sovereignty of the island to Paris in 1768. Language activism is sustained, well organised and directed at enhancing language practices amongst school children through corpus planning and proposals for status planning. In evaluating the reversal of the language shift to French within the context of language policy on Corsica, this study identifies language practices in Corsican outside the classroom for the post-Baby Boom generation as the Achilles heel of any attempt to reverse the language shift towards French. Older islanders continue to use Corsican. Younger islanders are taught the heritage language at school (although the effectiveness and extent of this teaching remains to be evaluated). Corsican remains a salient marker of cultural identity and of in-group membership, even amongst non-corsophones. However, beyond the maximum of three hours per week inside the classroom, there is little evidence of Corsican being used as a genuine means of communication by the generations born in the late twentieth century. If we were bold enough to suggest the next challenge in the normalisation of the island’s heritage language, we would propose that attention ought not to focus on appeals for more language management in favour of Corsican, or in the lobbying for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (although both steps would, in different ways, further facilitate the reversal of the language shift). Instead, language activism might wish to channel its efforts into changing language practices of teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings within the neighbourhoods, communities and towns on the island so that these generations, who demonstrate positive attitudes towards the heritage language, can find fora in which to speak Corsican.

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Notes 1. By way of example, Judge (2000, 50–68) gives coverage to the heritage languages of France in her examination of nationalism and the regional languages. In this analysis, four pages are dedicated to Breton, three and a half pages are devoted to Basque, Occitan is discussed over the course of three pages, Alsatian is covered in two and a half pages but only one page is taken up in the discussion of Corsican. 2. For example, in an early survey, I interviewed two friends, both of whom said that they did not speak Corsican. Once the recordings were completed, the three of us together went to a café where the conversation – in French – included three idioms in Corsican. This vignette illustrates another point, namely that one local perspective is that it is not enough to use expressions and sayings in Corsican in order to consider oneself a Corsican speaker. 3. On a number of times, I have been in a post office on Corsica where customers – normally elderly – have spoken with the cashier, a State employee, in Corsican as financial transactions were made.

Appendix A

Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Dislocation Stages (1991, 395) I. RLS to attain diglossia 8. Reconstructing Xish and adult acquisition of XSL. 7. Cultural interaction in Xish primarily involving the community-based older generation. 6. The intergenerational and demographically concentrated home-familyneighborhood: the basis of mother tongue transmission. 5. Schools for literary acquisition, for the old and for the young, and not in lieu of compulsory education. II. RLS to transcend diglossia, subsequent to its attainment 4a. Schools in lieu of compulsory education and substantially under Xish curricular and staffing control. 4b. Public schools for Xish children, offering some instruction via Xish, but substantially under Yish curricular and staffing control. 3. The local/regional (i.e. non-neighborhood) work sphere, both among Xmen and among Ymen. 2. Local/regional mass media and government services. 1. Education, work sphere, mass media and governmental operations at higher and nationwide levels.

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Index

A abertzales, 4, 10 n1 Academia corsa, 36 Academic Commission for the Corsican Language and Culture (la Commission Académique de Langue et Culture Corse), 68, 69 Académie de Corse, 83, 88, 89, 90, 94–96, 98–99 Académie française, 54, 69, 83 acquisition planning, see languagein-education planning activists, 4–5, 7–10, 20, 27, 34–38, 43–84, 85–86, 94–101, 103, 113–115, 118, 120, 130 n2, 132, 133–138, 140, 142–145 l’ADECEC, 59–60, 63, 82, 135–136 Aix-en-Provence, 50–51 Ajaccio, 13, 18, 20, 24, 29, 32–33, 36, 39, 68, 71–74, 83, 84 n1, 85–95, 100, 101 n2, 104, 108, 122, 136–140 Aléria, 58–59, 67, Algeria, 32, 52–55, 59 L’Almanacco Popolare di Corsica, 39 Alsace, 14, 28, 44, 131 Alsatian, 45, 48, 65 n1, 89–90, 142, 147 n1 Ancien Régime, 12–14, 15, 18, 22, 24, 29, 35, 69, 76, 131, 138 Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, 15–16, 20 L’Année Corse, see l’Annu Corsu L’Annu Corsu, 38 Aragon, 11 ARC, 55 L’Archivo Storico di Corsica, 39 Arfé Resolution, 77 armed forces, 21, 32–34, 65 n3, 141 Arrighi, Jean-Marie, 83, 90, 95 Association for the Correct Usage of Administrative French, 58 autonomism, 35–44, 52, 54, 58–62, 68

B Balagne, 22 Balladur, Edouard, 75 Banque de France, 141 Barère de Vieuzac, Bertrand, 15 Bas, Pierre, 57 Basque, 4, 10 n1, 15, 18, 23, 35, 41, 44–48, 52, 55, 57, 75, 89–90, 131, 139, 147 n1 Bastia, 13, 19, 24, 29, 32, 33, 36, 39, 41, 43, 56, 62, 101 n2, 104, 122, Bastia Sermon, 39, 139 Bastille Day, 30 Bayrou, François, 88 bilingual education, 88–90, 94–99, 125, 137, 145 bilingualism, 12–13, 22, 71–72, 127, 132 black hussars, 28, 41, 46 n1, 101 n1 Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon Bonifacio, 11, 39, 104 Bonnet, Bernard, 91, 101 n3 bon usage, 45, 46 n7, 58 Bozzi Report, 67 Breton, 1, 18, 23, 24, 34, 41, 47–48, 52, 55, 57, 70, 75, 89–90, 119, 139, 141, 147 n1 Brittany, 14, 15, 18, 24, 35, 44, 45, 47, 78, 95, 119, 131

C Canada, 30 Calvi, 18, 25 n6, 33, 90, 142 Cap Corse, le, 9 Carnot, Sadi, 33 Catalan, 1, 8, 18, 41, 47–48, 55, 57, 89, 90 Catalonia, 4, 19, 131, 144 Carcassonne, Guy, 79–80 Carlotti, Dominique, 43 Casanova, Santu, 35–36, 52, 133, 134, 135

157

158 Castagniccia, 22 CCECV (Council for Culture, Education and the Environment), 68, 71–72, 94 Centre Régional de Documentation Pédagogique, 82–83, 135 Centre for Corsican Studies, 50–51 Cerquiglini, Bernard, 79–80, 89 Cervione, 18 Chief Education Officer, 68, 87–89, 93, 95, 99, 115 Chiorboli, Jean, 82, 83 Chirac, Jacques, 4, 58, 80–81, 140 Ciano, Gian, 39, 40 circulaire Bayrou, see circulaire n° 95–086 circulaire n° 92–234, 88 circulaire n° 95–086, 87–89 civil service, 21, 30, 31, 32, 46 n7, 141 Clemenceau, Georges, 46 n4 Code corse, 13 Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, 73–74, 91, 94–96, 98–100, 140, 141 Committee for the Study and Defence of the Interests of Corsica (le CEDIC), 51, 53 Common Market, see European Union Communist Party of France, 47–48, 84 n2 Companions of France, 42 Constitution of the French Republic, 68, 73–77, 79, 80–81, 84 n3, 85–86, 93, 138–140 Constitutional Council, 68, 73–76, 78–81, 86–87, 93, 113, 119, 140 Consulate, 20 Contrat de Plan, 83, 85–86, 91 co-officiality, 71–72, 132 Cooper, Robert (1989), 1, 2–4, 6, 82 corpus planning, 2–5, 49, 59, 63, 82–83, 134, 135, 146 Corsica Antica e Moderna, 39 Corsica Nazione, 81, 82 Corsican Days, 60, 62–63, 96, 135 Corsican Language and Culture Council, 94–96, 98, 100, 137 ‘the Corsican people’, 73–74, 79–80, 84 n2, 113 Corsicanism, 36 Corte, 13, 18, 19, 33, 39, 51, 55, 60, 69, 70, 83, 104 Council of Europe, 7, 9, 77–80, 138, 140 cultural identity, 5, 7–8, 35–38, 44, 49, 51, 59, 69, 82, 87, 93, 113–115, 119, 132, 134, 146 Cyrnéistes, 38

Index D decentralisation, 68–71, 96, 115, 136, 140 Décision n° 2001–454 DC, 93 Décision n° 91–290 DC, 73 Décision n° 94–345 DC, 76 Décision n° 99–412 DC, 80–81 decolonisation, 6–7, 51–53 Defence of the French Language, 55, 57, 58 Deixonne, Maurice, 47 see also loi Deixonne diglossia, 9, 11–13, 16, 18, 19, 21, 27, 35, 43, 44, 64, 92, 132, 144, 146, 149 distanciation, 105, 130 n2, 135

E Edict de Villers-Cotterêts, 14, 29, 75, 138 education, 6, 14, 16–20, 22–24, 28–31, 36, 39, 41, 45, 47–49, 50–51, 54, 56–58, 68–74, 78, 81, 83, 85–101, 105–106, 108, 111, 114, 115–119, 122–129, 132, 135, 137, 141, 144–146, 149 England, 15 see also Great Britain and the United Kingdom English, 55–56, 75, 98, 134, 140 Erignac, Claude, 91, 115, 140 ETA, 4 ethno-nationalism, 44, 137, 139 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, 7, 74, 77–83, 146 European Union, 55, 74, –75, 77, 85, 88, 138, 140 Euskera, 4 see also Basque Evian Accords, 52

F Fascism, 38, 45 Félibrige, 4 Ferry, Jules, 23, 28–29, 88 Fifth Republic, 55, 67, 76, 138, 139 First Empire, 20 Fishman, Joshua (1991), 4, 7–8, 64, 96, 97, 118, 120, 121, 123–124, 149 Fishman, Joshua (2001), 7–8, 109, 124–125, 128–130, 135, 145–146 Flemish, 18, 48, 65 n1 FLNC, 59 FR3, 86, 87 Franchi, Jean-Joseph, 82–83 Francia, 59

Index Franco-Prussian War, 24, 27, 34 FRC, 51, 55 French language, 1, 6–7, 8, 9, 11, 12–15, 16–25, 28–36, 38, 39, 41, 42–43, 44–45, 47–48, 52–53, 54, 55–56, 57–58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70–72, 74–76, 77, 79, 83, 88, 89–90, 95, 100, 104, 108, 109–110, 112, 118–120, 131–132, 134, 135–136, 138, 140–146

G de Gaulle, Charles, 41, 43 Gazetta Corsa, 19 Genoa, 9 11–12, 19 Geronimi, Dumenicantone, 59, 63, 83 Ghjurnate Corse, see Corsican Days Giacomini, Pierre-Paul, 56, 60 Giornale Patriottico di Corsica, 19 Girondins, 15, 17 Grandes Ecoles, 23 Grande Patrie, 38–39, 52, 139 Great Britain, 55 see also England and the United Kingdom Great War, 22, 31, 33–34, 36, 39–40, 42, 43 Grégoire, l’Abbé, 17–18, 25 n8 Grimaldi, Eugène, 43 Guizot, François, 24

H Haby, René, 57 Hebrew, 25 n9 Henri II, 11 High Committee for the Defence and Expansion of French, 58 Hitler, Adolf, 40–41

I Industrial Revolution, 22, 27, 132, 141 irredentism, 38–40, 43, 48 Irredentists, the Trial of the, 43 Israel, 6, 25 n9, 30 islanders, 1, 4–5, 7–10, 11, 21, 45–46, 81–82, 103–130, 142–146 Italian, see Tuscan Italian Italy, 9, 19, 31, 38–42, 48, 62, 106, 139

J Jacobins, 15, 17, 24, 61, 76, 138 Jospin, Lionel, 70, 78–81, 91

159 Le Journal du Département de la Corse, 19 Joxe, Pierre, 73 July Monarchy, 24–25 Juppé, Alain, 90, 95

L Language Co-Operative (le Collectif pour la langue), 81 language-in-education planning, 2–4, 19, 22–24, 28–29, 31, 63, 74, 82, 88 Lauriol, Marc, 57 Liberation (1944–45), 42–45, 46 n6, 47, 61, 63, 65 n3, 76, 86, 139, 143 Lingua, 71, 94 Lingua Corsa, 36, 50, 51, 135 Lingua Matria, 72 linguistic landscape, 30–31, 42, 43, 94, 132 Livorno, 19 loi 2002–92, 93 loi 92–554, 74 loi Bas-Lauriol, 57–58 lois Deferre, 68, 93 loi Deixonne, 46 n5, 47–49, 55–61, 65 n2, 73, 80, 82, 86, 88–89, 137, 139 loi Haby, 57 loi Jospin, 70 loi Joxe, 73–74, 93 loi Toubon, 55, 75–77, 79 Louis XV, 11 Louis XVI, 15

M Maastricht Treaty, 74–75 Maistrale, 36, 38 see also Versini, Antoine mandatory Corsican language education, 49, 51, 70, 92–93, 98, 115–119, 127, 137, 143 Marcellesi, Jean-Baptiste, 83, 84 n5 Marchetti, Pascal, 59, 63, 82, 133 Marseille, 22, 47 Matignon Accords, 91–93, 98, 101 n4, 115, 140 merendelle, 36, 50, 51, 60, 115, 135, 137 Mezana, 90 Mistral, Frédéric, 40 Mitterrand, François, 68–70, 78 de Montalivet, le Comte, 24 Montedison, 62, 67 Morocco, 52, 53 Moscovici, Pierre, 80 music, see song

160 Mussolini, Benito, 35, 37–42 U Muntese, 50, 60 A Muvra, 36–39, 41, 43, 64, 82, 143

N Napoleon, 20–23, 25, 46 n3 Napoleon III, 24, 27, 30, 32 nationalism, 1, 4, 5, 12, 30, 35, 36, 49, 52, 54, 59, 60–64, 67, 71, 81, 85, 91, 94, 137, 140, 147 n1 Nelson, Horatio, 25 n6 Nice, 22, 38 normalisation, 4, 8, 35, 70, 98, 120, 129, 132, 146

O Occitan, 1, 4, 18, 23, 40, 47, 70, 87, 89, 90, 131, 139, 141, 147 n1 Occupation (1940–1945), 39–42, 43, 44, 48 Office for French Vocabulary, 55, 58 oppositional essentialism, 49, 117, 122, 127, 129 oppositional romanticism, 118, 125 OVRA, 42

P Pantaloni, Jaques, 93 Paoli, Pasquale, 11, 15–16, 20, 55, 69, 104, 131, 132 Paris, 5, 7, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25 n7, 28, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 47, 50, 54, 55, 61, 62, 63, 68, 71, 74, 76, 81, 83, 84 n1, 85, 87–92, 95, 99, 113, 117, 119, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 146 Parlemu Corsu, 50, 135 Partitu Corsu d’Azione, 36 Péry, Nicole, 78 Pétain, Philippe, 40–42 Pisa, 9, 11–12, 19, 23 Poignant, Bernard, 78 Poignant Report, 78–79, 80 polynomia, 83, 84 n5 Pompidou, Georges, 58 Ponte Nuovo, the Battle of, 11, 12, 126, 143, Porto-Vecchio, vii, 104, 106, 108, 111 pressure groups, 60, 63–64, 72, 81, 86, 136, 137 Propriano, 39

Index R railway, 32–33 Regional Assembly, 68, 71–74, 78, 85–87, 91–92, 94, 96, 98–100, 137, 140 see also Ajaccio Regional Training Development Plan (le PRDF), 94–101 regionalism, 36–45, 51–53, 57, 67–68, 69, 137, 139 Research Group into French Technical Terms, 55, 58 Reversing Language Shift, 7–8, 63–64, 96, 97, 124, 128, 144–146, 149 see also Fishman, Joshua (1991) and Fishman, Joshua (2001) Revolution, the French, 6, 12, 14–18, 20, 21, 25, 25 n7, 36, 47, 68, 76, 79, 87, 92, 101, 131–132, 136, 138–139, 144 revitalisation, 4, 7, 35, 45, 61, 67, 76, 80, 83, 84 n4, 87, 92, 94, 96, 97, 100–101, 103, 110, 118, 124–126, 129, 131, 132, 145–146 Richelieu, Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis de, 69 U Rigiru, 60 Riventosa, 90 RLS, see Reversing Language Shift Rocca, Petru, 36–37, 41, 43, 50, 115, 133, 134

S Salvatore Viale, 36, 135 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 101 n4, 140–141 Sartène, 12, 104, 108 Savary, Alain, 70 Savoie, 38 Scaramoni, Fred, 43 Scola Corsa, 60, 62–63, 71, 135 schools, see education Second Empire, 24–25 Second World War, 36, 39–43, 44, 46 n6, 56, 61, 67, 139 Sedan, 27 Sgio, 11, 12 Silvani, Paul, 42 Slovakia, 144 Socialist Party of France, 9, 47, 68, 70–71, 73, 78–79, 91, 138 song, 19–20, 37, 61–62, 64, 134–136 Soviet Union, 6–7, 25 n3

Index

161

Spolsky, Bernard (2004), 1, 3, 7, 8–9, 13, 47, 74, 78, 100, 103, 120, 131–132 Stalin, Josef, 4 State Council, 72, 75, 140 status planning, 2, 64, 69, 82, 146

U Union du Peuple Corse, 81 United Kingdom, 55, 79, 99, 142 see also England and Great Britain United Nations, 56 University of Corte, 18–19, 60, 69–70, 83, 86

T de Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice, 17 Il Telegrafo, 39 Terminology Commission, 58 Thiers, Jacques, 49, 83 Third Republic, 27–33, 40–41, 76 Toubon, Jacques, 75 Toulon, 22 Toulouse, 87 A Tramuntana fresca e sana, 35–37, 64, 82, 133 Treaty of Versailles (1768), 11, 51, 131, 132, 138 triglossia, 16, 18, 21, 30–31, 42 Tunisia, 38, 40, 52, 53 Tuscan Italian, 9–10, 11–13, 16–20, 23–24, 29–32, 35, 37, 39, 41–42, 46 n6, 88, 92, 133–134, 138, 143–144

V Versini, Antoine, 36 Via Stella, 140 Viale, Salvatore, 19 Vichy, 39–42, 44 Virgin Mary, 46 n3

W Wales, 91, 144

Y Yvia-Croce, Hyacinthe, 43

Z Zuccarelli, Jean, 56

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