Regional Language Policies in France during World War II

196 Pages·2014·0.857 MB·

by  Aviv Amit (auth.)

Palgrave Studies in Languages at War
Series Editors: Hilary Footitt, University of Reading, UK and Michael Kelly,
University of Southampton, UK.
Languages play a crucial role in war, conflict and peacemaking: in intelligence
gathering and evaluation, pre-deployment preparations, operations on the
ground, regime-change, and supporting refugees and displaced persons. In the
politics of war, languages have a dual impact: a public policy dimension, set-
ting frameworks and expectations; and the lived experience of those ‘on the
ground’, working with and meeting speakers of other languages.
This series intends to bring together books which deal with the role of lan-
guages in situations of conflict, including war, civil war, occupation, peace-
keeping, peace-enforcement and humanitarian action in war zones. It will offer
an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on applied linguistics, sociolinguistics,
translation studies, intercultural communication, history, politics, international
relations and cultural studies. Books in the series will explore specific conflict
situations across a range of times and places, and specific language-related roles
and activities, examining three contexts: languages and the military, meeting
the other in war and peace-making, and interpreting/translating in war.
Titles include:
Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly (editors)
LANGUAGES AT WAR: POLICIES AND PRACTICES OF
LANGUAGE CONTACTS IN CONFLICT
Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly (editors)
LANGUAGES AND THE MILITARY: ALLIANCES, OCCUPATION AND PEACE
BUILDING
Michael Kelly and Catherine Baker
INTERPRETING THE PEACE: PEACE OPERATION, CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE
IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Hilary Footitt and Simona Tobia
‘WARTALK’: FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND THE BRITISH WAR EFFORT IN
EUROPE 1940–1946
Yonatan Mendel
THE CREATION OF ISRAELI ARABIC: POLITICAL AND SECURITY
CONSIDERATIONS IN THE MAKING OF ARABIC LANGUAGE STUDIES IN
ISRAEL
Aviv Amit
REGIONAL LANGUAGE POLICIES IN FRANCE DURING WORLD WAR II
Forthcoming:
Ian Jones and Louise Askew
MEETING THE LANGUAGE CHALLENGES OF NATO OPERATIONS: LANGUAGE
POLICY AND PRACTICE IN OPERATIONS SINCE 1994
Ellen Elias-Bursac
TRANSLATING EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETING TESTIMONY IN WAR CRIME
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Regional Language
Policies in France during
World War II
Aviv Amit
Tel Aviv University, Israel
© Aviv Amit 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-30015-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be
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ISBN 978-1-349-45303-0 ISBN 978-1-137-30016-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137300164
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amit, Aviv.
Regional Language Policies in France during World War II / Aviv Amit, Teaching Fellow,
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
pages cm—(Palgrave Studies in Languages at War)
Summary: “Although the promotion of the French language was highly centralized,
until World War II regional languages in France were able to survive as they helped
maintain and assert ‘little homeland’ identities in their respective regions. This became
increasingly difficult during Germany’s occupation of France in World War II, when the
struggle to preserve regional languages and local identities rapidly became more overt
and political. This book offers a detailed historical sociolinguistic analysis of the various
language policies applied in France’s regions (Brittany, Southern France, Corsica and
Alsace) before, during and after WWII, making it of particular interest to researchers of
both language policy and French history”—Provided by publisher.
1. Language policy—France—History. 2. World War, 1939–1945—
Influence. 3. Linguistic minorities—France. 4. Language and languages—Political
aspects—France. 5. French language—Political aspects—History. 6. Languages
in contact—France—History. 7. Linguistic minorities—France. 8. National
characteristics, French. 9. War and society—France. I. Title.
P119.32.F7A45 2014
306.44'944—dc23 2014025910
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Presentation 1
1.2 Theoretical considerations 2
1.2.1 Problems and obstacles 2
1.2.2 Epistemological framework 3
1.2.3 Research hypotheses 4
1.2.4 Basic concepts 7
1.3 Research data 9
1.3.1 R ationale for the selection of the regional
languages included in this book 10
1.3.2 Temporal frame 11
1.4 Structure of the book 12
2 History of ‘Top-Down’ Policy towards Regional
Languages in France 15
2.1 The Old Regime 15
2.1.1 Sixteenth century 15
2.1.2 Seventeenth century 16
2.1.3 Eighteenth century 17
2.2 The French Revolution 17
2.3 The Third Republic (1871–1940) 20
2.4 World War I (1914–1918) 22
3 Brittany 28
3.1 Origins of the Breton identity 28
3.2 Nineteenth century – First Emsav 30
3.3 The second period of Emsav 32
3.3.1 World War I 32
3.3.2 The idea of Pan-Celticism 33
3.3.3 The political wing of the Second Emsav 34
3.3.4 The linguistic wing of the Second Emsav 35
3.4 World War II 36
3.4.1 Collaboration and resistance 36
3.4.2 Standardization of Breton 38
3.4.3 Implementation of Néo-Breton 41
v
vi Contents
3.4.4 Introduction of Néo-Breton in schools 42
3.4.5 Radio Rennes 43
3.5 After the war 47
3.5.1 Settling accounts 47
3.5.2 Towards a third period of Emsav 48
3.5.3 The Néo-Breton controversy 50
4 Southern France 52
4.1 Historical sociolinguistic background 52
4.2 Occitan’s two norms 54
4.3 Catalan and Catalanism 56
4.4 Occitan and Catalan 57
4.5 Occitanism 58
4.6 World War II 61
4.6.1 The establishment of the ‘French State’ 61
4.6.2 The ‘National Revolution’ and regionalism 62
4.6.3 Teaching of the Oc language 64
4.6.4 ‘ Cahiers du Sud’ as the founding text of
new Occitanism 68
4.7 After the war 69
5 Corsica 73
5.1 Historical sociolinguistic background 73
5.1.1 Before French rule 73
5.1.2 The frenchification of Corsica 75
5.2 The interwar period 77
5.2.1 World War I and its effects 77
5.2.2 Corsism 78
5.2.3 Irredentism 81
5.2.4 Disagreements among Corsists 83
5.2.5 Corsican Italians 85
5.3 World War II 86
5.3.1 On the verge of World War II 86
5.3.2 Under the Vichy Regime 87
5.3.3 L anguage behaviour in Corsica during the
Italian Occupation 90
5.3.4 The liberation of Corsica 92
5.4 After the war 93
6 Alsace 95
6.1 The Alsatian distinctiveness 95
6.2 Historical sociolinguistic background 98
Contents vii
6.2.1 Alsace before 1871 98
6.2.2 1871–1918 100
6.3 The interwar period: the ‘Alsatian malaise’ and the
autonomist movement 102
6.3.1 The frenchification of Alsace 102
6.3.2 The acceptance by France of some concessions 107
6.3.3 The emergence of the autonomist movement 109
6.4 World War II 112
6.4.1 The evacuation 112
6.4.2 The de facto annexation of Alsace 114
6.4.3 Ethnic purification 117
6.4.4 The germanization of Alsace 118
6.4.5 Nazi ‘corpus planning’ in Alsace and Moselle 120
6.4.6 L anguages in the educational system and in
the church 121
6.4.7 The ‘malgré-nous’ 123
6.4.8 The attempt to purge the Alsatian dialect 124
6.5 After World War II 126
7 Evaluation and Assessment of Regional Language
Policies and Regionalist Movements in France during
World War II 132
7.1 Presentation 132
7.2 What was behind the standardization of regional
languages during the war? 132
7.2.1 Selection of a norm 133
7.2.2 Codification of form 134
7.2.3 Elaboration of function 135
7.2.4 Acceptance by the community 137
7.2.5 Discussion 139
7.3 Regionalist or nationalist movements? 140
8 From Exclusion to Inclusion? The Post-War Effects on
Regional Languages in France 144
8.1 Presentation 144
8.2 The Deixonne Law (1951) 145
8.3 The illusion of embedding regional languages in
French ‘colinguism’ 148
8.4 The role of the European Union in recognizing linguistic
diversity in France as a form of ‘symbolic capital’ 150
8.5 Promotion of regional languages as a language
right issue 151
viii Contents
8.6 The possible compromise between republican and
liberal values 155
9 Conclusions 159
9.1 On the ‘chronotopic’ dimension of World War II in
determining the fate of regional languages in France 159
9.2 Were regional language policies in France during
World War II manifestations of collaboration or rather
an opportunity to revitalize marginalized languages? 163
Notes 166
Bibliography 171
Index 184
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Regional languages in France 10
3.1 Dialects of Breton 39
4.1 Dialects of Occitan 53
Tables
3.1 Periods of Emsav 31
6.1 Nations to which Alsace has belonged 98
7.1 Haugen’s model of standardization 133
7.2 Standardization of regional languages in France during
World War II according to Haugen’s model 138
7.3 Miroslav Hroch’s (1985) three-stage model of nationalist
movements 141
ix