This article concerns Northern Catalonia, the part of the Catalan-speaking area that today is in France. A Catalan-speaking region until the first half of the twentieth century, the effects of Frenchification -- the acceptance of the French political and economic project in the contemporary era -- and the multiple demographic changes of the…

This paper explores the experience and impact of participation in afterschool oral improvisation workshops -- bertso workshops -- for young Basque speakers. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews among young people in the Northern Basque Country, the researcher, a practicing improviser, bertsolari, herself, argues that the…

This article focuses on the family language policy (FLP) of second-generation Turkish immigrant families living in France. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 families to observe their language ideologies, practices and management strategies. The thematic analysis shows that despite generational differences of parents,…

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as 'traditional', 'new', 'learner', 'néo-bretonnant', 'brittophone', etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be…

Ethnolinguistic vitality theory asserts that Status, Demographic, Institutional Support and Control factors make up the vitality of ethnolinguistic groups. An assessment of a group's strengths and weaknesses in each of these dimensions provides a rough classification of ethnolinguistic groups into those having low, medium, or high vitality. Low…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Toronto, Ontario, this article examines the schooling behaviour of parents who have migrated from France to Canada. The population under study, engaged in a "northern" kind of migration, generally benefits from an education acquired in the pre-migration period and from the legitimacy of…

Globalisation processes, often accused of imposing uniformity the world over, also open up opportunities for minorities (including linguistic ones) to exploit a variety of spaces for self-definition and self-expression. The expansion in the use of minority languages in public signage is one consequence of this present phase of reorientation in…

This paper examines the transmission patterns of Eastern Brittany's Romance language variety, Gallo, based on quantitative data showing learning patterns of school pupils of the language and their parents in 2003 and 2004. Results confirm the sharp decline in Gallo transmission between generations. Nevertheless, Gallo transmission has not…

This paper provides a historical account of post-war state language policy within education in France, examining in particular the position and status of Corsican, one of the country's regional heritage languages. This paper outlines the treatment of Corsican by the French State and how this language management impacted upon the language beliefs…

Examines various perspectives on the issue of French language training for adult immigrants held by French informants, many of whom are engaged in such training. (EKN)

This article outlines a research project conducted in Perpignan in 1988 that sought to discover and describe the varieties of language present in the town, patterns of language use and language attitudes among inhabitants. The research took the form of a questionnaire survey, used with a representative sample of the population. (Contains 10…

The paradox inherent in a situation in which the need for political unification requires submersion of authentic local or subregional differences is illustrated by the case of Occitania (southern France), where a community is culturally and linguistically removed from the center of a movement intending to represent it. (MSE)

Describes the present state of the Basque language within the educational field in Spain and France. The article also discusses legislative issues, the number and geographical distribution of speakers of the language, the population's linguistic attitudes, and the different models of bilingual education and its results. (Author/SED)

Discusses the consequences of "language shift through erosion" on the basis of an analysis of the gradual disappearance of Dutch as a native language in French Flanders. Sketches the theoretical language-in-contact framework, breaking down the chronological evolution into diglossic, bilingual and (almost) monolingual phases. (37…