Revitalising Language In Provence - A Critical Approach

Few question the importance of the survival of languages in today's world. Yet why is it that many language revitalisation movements have a wider social agenda? And why do people choose language- and not, say, religion, ethnicity, or politics-to express claims and positions in the world? A stark rise in language revitalisation movements in recent years has necessitated a clearer understanding of the field-a need filled by Revitalising Language in Provence: A Critical Approach. Through a detailed analysis of Southern France's Provencal movement, one of Europe's longest standing language revitalisation projects, lames Costa reveals that "language revitalisation" is often more than it appears to be-and how "saving a language" may not be the primary objective of many such movements. Costa shows that language revitalisation constitutes an attempt to renegotiate the very terms of historical contact between groups which are themselves generated through that very process. He examines questions about how language revitalisation generates groupness, in particular, the underlying question of all such movements- how one is to distinguish between legitimate language and speaker. Revitalising Language in Provence: A Critical Approach offers illuminating insights into not just keeping language alive, but how people come together to act and articulate opinions on how society should be ordered-and who should take part in ordering it-in the contemporary world. The preface to the work is by Lenore Grenoble.

James Costa is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology at the Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France.