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French Language Policies and the Revitalisation of Regional Languages in the 21st Century pp 37–62Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Linguistic Classification: The Persistent Challenge of the Langues d’oïl

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Abstract

This chapter will scrutinise how dictionaries and encyclopaedias reveal French language ideology through their definitions of “language”, “dialect” and “patois”. First, the Langues d’oïl, due to their linguistic and territorial proximity to French and Paris, must continue to work to convince the national administration and even their speakers that they are separate languages from French. A second point of analysis is a branch of the Occitan Movement in the south which has opposed the recognition of the Langues d’oïl as separate languages as it would undermine the goal of unifying the Occitan dialects as one language. This study shows the type of implications language classification and disputes on linguistic terminology can have on programmes of language revitalisation at both the national and regional levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All translations were completed by this chapter’s author.

  2. 2.

    The Method in Lexicology: French Domain.

  3. 3.

    According to Encrevé, the encyclopaedia still employs this entry (P. Encrevé, personal communication, 2013); in personal correspondence, Encrevé declined to indicate if the article needed to be updated for the twenty-first century.

  4. 4.

    The “Pétition” was not published until 1906.

  5. 5.

    And yet, two of its authors were born in a Langue d’oïl region; Henri Gaidoz hailed from Normandy and Charles de Gaulle was born in the historical Picard-speaking city of Valenciennes in the Nord; however, both were interested in Breton, whereas Hyacinthe de Charencey was interested in Basque; both languages were/are obviously not French.

  6. 6.

    C’est une erreur de s’imaginer que les dialectes sont partout des corruptions de la langue littéraire. Même en Angleterre, les patois ont des formes qui sont plus primitives que la langue de Shakespeare, et la richesse de leur vocabulaire surpasse, dans beaucoup de cas, celle du vocabulaire des auteurs classiques de n’importe quelle période. Les dialectes ont toujours été les sources jaillissantes où a puisé la langue littéraire plutôt que des canaux dérivés qui s’alimentaient chez elle; on peut dire tout au moins qu’ils ont été comme des courants parallèles qui coulaient l’un à côté de l’autre, bien avant le moment où l’un d’eux prit sur les autres cette primauté qui est le résultat de la culture littéraire. (Pétition 1906: 2)

    (It is an error to believe that dialects everywhere are corruptions of the literary language. Even in England, ‘patois’ have more primitive forms than the language of Shakespeare and the quality of their vocabulary surpasses, in most cases, the quality of vocabulary of classical authors from any period. Dialects have always been springs from which the literary language drew rather than diverted canals that fed from it; one can say at least that they were parallel currents that ran next to one another before the moment when one of them took primacy over the others as a result of literary culture.)

  7. 7.

    General Delegation to the French Language and to the Languages of France.

  8. 8.

    Cultural Democracy and the Right to be Different: Report presented to Jack Lang, Minister of Culture.

  9. 9.

    By the Languages of France.

  10. 10.

    While the administrative region of Picardy no longer officially exists as of 1 January 2016 due to the passage of the 2014 Territorial Reform, its former inhabitants remain attached to the idea of Picardy. Moreover, the media, such as the Courrier picard, still refers to it within its new larger region, Hauts-de-France.

  11. 11.

    History of France of the Regions.

  12. 12.

    University Institute for Teacher Training.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Patrick Seán McCrea

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  1. Patrick Seán McCrea
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Correspondence to Patrick Seán McCrea .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Michelle A. Harrison

  2. School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland

    Aurélie Joubert

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McCrea, P.S. (2019). Linguistic Classification: The Persistent Challenge of the Langues d’oïl. In: Harrison, M.A., Joubert, A. (eds) French Language Policies and the Revitalisation of Regional Languages in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95939-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95939-9_2

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