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The aim of this article is to explore the autonomist press in the Corsican language through topic modelling. In order to do so, the effectiveness of two topic modelling methods, LDA and LSA, will be compared on a trilingual corpus - Italian, Croatian and French - not subject to lemmatization, not only in order to assess the results obtained, but also to understand which of these methods comes closest to our previous knowledge on the subject, which is the result of a close reading.

The paper proposes to capture a century of evolution in the intergenerational transmission of Corsican. The study is based on one unpublished survey, conducted by us, and three others conducted by public institutions and researchers. During the 20th century, social changes were profound in Corsica. One consequence of these linguistic changes is presented from 1915 to the present day. It is about the intergenerational transmission of Corsican. A shift from predominantly monolingual family situations in Corsican to new monolingual situations in French is taking place on the island. The paper analyses the parental transmission in Corsican of a section of the island's population, more or less consequential depending on the period. For the most contemporary part, the factors that motivate this choice are outlined and a typical profile of parents who choose to transmit the Corsican language is established. The study of these experiments shows that the equilibrium is precarious and largely subject to the ambient Francophonie.

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The article provides an overview of the Corsican contemporary poetry. It mentions about core traits that characterize Corsican poetry writings, and requires an attention to the multiplicity of different expressions. It also informs on reappropriation of a common cultural fund accompanied by the awareness of a specific way of being in the world leading to consider the present by problematizing it in the face of the changes experienced.

In this article, we question one of the important notions of the Corsican normative conceptual apparatus: the polynomie. This concept is particularly interesting as a language ideological position that calls into question dominant ideological perspectives on standardization and normalization. This article puts the polynomie in an ideological process that calls for a critical sociolinguistic analysis that first accounts for the interaction between sociolinguistic, economic, political and ideological domains. That critical sociolinguistic perspective emphasizes that all language ideological frameworks – even those which recognize diversity – impose particular criteria and give value to some ways of speaking and being over others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals mainly with the notion of polynomie, which has occupied a large place in Corsican studies and in Corsican sociolinguistics. It is argued in this article that this concept developed by the sociolinguist Jean-Baptiste Marcellesi and the process it covers have allowed the emergence of Corsican as a "language". The aim here is to propose a synthesis that takes the form of an advocacy for a bi-plurilingual societal model potentially better adapted to the Corsican political aspirations. The implications and applications in language didactics or literary production will be discussed in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to return to the "birth" of Corsican sociolinguistics and the main notions that fuelled the emergence of Corsican as "language". The reflection goes back to the development of the 1970s and 1980s in order to better understand the context of the time and the reasons that allowed such a birth. It will also highlight the contribution of the main figures of this period and the constant relationship with Corsican sociolinguists. Two important figures emerge from this dialogue, notably Heinz Kloss and Jean-Baptiste Marcellesi whose theories have been taken up and crossed to characterize the evolution of the Corsican situation. Thus, discussed here are, in particular, the concepts of elaboration, distancing and polynomie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While remaining present in a declining social use, the Corsican langage entered in the school and medias since some forty years. In these two sphere she shows substantial progresses. What this has given rise to the changements has not been really measured or evaluated. Without pretending filling this gap, this article proposes a first analysis of a developing langage and in a profound change in regard to his usuals spaces of presence. In the backdrop compete the coming of new patterns of existence of langages said minority langages or areas necessarily renegotiated in the report of the dominant langage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the carefully managed semiotic complex found in the Corsican village of Pigna with respect to the themes of pride and profit in the valuation of minority languages. This complex includes the careful coordination of color, graphics, the use of the Corsican language, as well as high-tech soundscaping of place through QR codes that tie specific locales to Corsican music and multilingual texts. This display, labeled the "poeticizing of the economy" by a key social actor, is directed both at the many tourists who visit the village as well as Corsican visitors and locals. It is linked to an effort to embed Corsican linguistic and musical heritage in new practices that both create place and integrate tradition and modernity. On the one hand, these practices can be linked to discourses of both "pride" and "profit" (Duchêne and Heller 2012) attested in many minority language contexts. On the other hand, I argue that the Pigna esthetic indexes a shift in the framework for cultural and linguistic revitalization from one that emphasizes a return to past native speaker communicative practice to one that focuses on the collective agency and identity associated with style and stylization and "transactional," or situated authenticities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the process of didactic transposition of the Corsican language. It proposes to study the conditions for the development of school textbooks from the extension of the Deixonne Law to Corsica (1974). In addition to the precise information it provides on the quality of textbooks, their authors, the conditions for their publication, their inclusion in the various approaches to language teaching or their linguistic content, this presentation also aims to provide a context that helps to understand the systemic conditions for the recognition of a minority language.

Copyright of Lengas is the property of Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the end of XIX century nationalist movements proliferated all over Europe. During this period, an autonomist tendency emerged in Corsica. In 1923, Petru Rocca, inspired by the Sardinian Action Party, founded Partitu Corsu d’Azione which subsequently took the name of Partitu Corsu Autonomista. This party, arisen in the inner circle of intellectuals, denounced that French political system was the cause of all of the island problems and defended Corsica’s language and culture. The political newspaper «A Muvra», founded in 1920 – and partly edited in Corsican language – served as tribune of the PCA, fighting against Corsica’s “Frenchification”.

Having presented an inventory of the Corsican data concerning the dialectal terminology of meteorology (linguistic atlases, dictionaries), this article comments on the denominations of the flash of lightning bolt in Corsica and in Gallura compared with the Sardinian, Italian-Romanic data even Romanic data. If two forms present obvious analogies with the Italian-Romanic domain even with the Sardinian one (lampu as well as lùsina, the latter borrowed from the Gallo-Italian speeches), the Corsican language possesses an original lexical type in the Romanic field with accènnita - accèndita and variants. An etymological and motivational analysis of the variants of accènnita - accèndita 'flash of lightning' is set out which leads to see in this lexical family, and following the example of Salvioni, successors of CĬNNUS 'sign' and not ACCENDERE to see *ACCENDITARE like that was proposed (in particular by Guarnerio). The morphological process is also scrutinized and related to the names of thunder coming from TŎNĬTRUS and from SŎNĬTUS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Maupassant évoque, mentionne ou utilise une bonne douzaine de langues étrangères dans ses contes et nouvelles, y compris l'arabe, le breton, le corse et le grec. Quatre langues sont tout particulièrement employées: le latin, l'italien, l'allemand et l'anglais. Les langues étrangères jouent un rôle dans le domaine de l'intrigue, contribuent au cadre de l'action et à l'atmosphère qui s'en dégage, fonctionnent comme instrument descriptif des personnages et constituent un élément de la rhétorique narrative et de la thématique de l'auteur. Leur polyfonctionnalité est incontestable et leur évocation exemplifie l'esthétique de Maupassant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the different minority languages in Europe including Occitan, Breton, and Corsican. Topics discussed include language revitalization, the impact of social differentiation on first and second language speakers, and the tensions over language rights ownership. The process of language learning of immigrant women in Spain and their efforts to take part in the economy were also discussed.

This article uses the concept of stance to examine a series of activities and plurilingual heteroglossic performances and improvisations in a Corsican language-planning event. It focuses on how stances taken by performers attribute stances to the audience, as well as how stance objects (language, community, heritage) are construed in performance. This analysis is used to examine how these language-planning events mediate ideological tensions in Corsican language planning, specifically between traditional monolingual/purist ideologies and plurilingual, polynomic ones. (Stance, Corsica, performance, ideology, heteroglossia)* [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the concept of the new speaker from both a theoretical/definitional perspective and from the standpoint of a situated, ethnographic analysis. The more general and theoretical focus addresses some of the presuppositions and entailments of the new speaker concept, both as an 'on-the-ground' concept that gets operationalized by social actors and as an analytical category used by researchers. In particular, it considers how the new speaker concept elucidates criteria in relation to which minority language-speaking communities of practice are conceptualized and enacted. The ethnographic focus, on Corsican adult language classrooms, explores how new-speakerness is invoked implicitly in Corsica, where the term 'new speaker' itself is not in circulation, but is a target of language planning strategies. This ethnographic research reveals complex identity and language ideological issues that are raised about the legitimacy, authority and authenticity of Corsican language learners in a sociolinguistic context in which both formal/institutional and informal/social use of the minority language is quite restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with Differential Object Marking in Corsican. After a short introduction, it gives an overview of the main local triggering factors for marking direct objects in general (animacy, referentiality). It then presents the few main assumptions about Corsican DOM in the literature as well as findings of a new corpus study, based on written Corsican texts. Strong personal pronouns and proper names for human referents are consistently marked by the DOM marker à, but toponyms and metonymically used proper names are marked as well. Universal and negative quantifiers with a human denotation are also DOM-marked, whereas all other pronouns are not; thus animacy plays only a minor role in Corsican. The presence of determiners, quantifiers or numerals within nominals excludes the presence of à, irrespective of the nominals' denotation. Non-specific bare nominals are never DOM-marked, also irrespective of the nominals' denotation. The discussion then explains that the Corsican DOM is triggered much more by syntactic definiteness than animacy, a hypothesis strengthened by the most prominent morphosyntactic regularity at work in Corsican: nominals in combination with determiners and quantifiers cannot be marked by the DOM-marker à, even if they denote human beings. The complementary distribution of à and prenominal functional elements requires a further detailed syntactic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is being used creatively in different ways to examine language practices in multilingual communities, and a sister subdiscipline, semiotic landscapes, is emerging to include non-language elements to help better understand attitudes towards languages where two or more varieties are in competition. This article seeks to establish the extent to which the LL contributes to ‘top-down’ language revitalization, a perspective normally overlooked in favour of ‘bottom-up’ language activism. Assessing the presence and absence of the Italo-Romance language of Corsican in the French town of Ajaccio, the regional capital of Corsica, I exploit recent developments in LL studies, as well as research on language commodification, to evaluate the extent to which top-down agents revitalize a minorized language by placing it in the LL. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article relates the experience of the author as a young researcher in Corsica, France and his dealings with Corsican graffiti. It discusses the use of graffiti in Corsican language as a tool to produce powerful communication on the right to use their own language. Also discussed are the framework for researching graffiti, reading graffiti as praxis, marginalia, and empowerment.

In the Corsican adult language classrooms I attended and observed in 2011–2012, communicative competence was defined and enacted with reference to a polynomic ideology of language, identity and community of practice. This ideology defines communicative competence as made up of both “traditional” proficiencies as a “heritage” speaker of a particular dialect of Corsican and other positive metalinguistic and social stances towards linguistic variation. Overall, the analysis shows that that (1) contexts of minority language shift and revitalization complicate the definition of “communicative competence”, revealing it as social and ideological and (2) that a focus on communicative competence complicates notions like “language shift” and “revitalization”, revealing their epistemological biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To pay tribute to the contributions made by Wallace Lambert in the field of immersion education at an international level, this article highlights initiatives undertaken to revitalize regional languages through immersion education in France. Based on the immersion model, school-based programs have been implemented in France to teach regional languages such as Occitan, Basque, and Catalan in the south, Corsican on the island of Corsica, Breton in the northwest, and German in the eastern regions of Alsace and Moselle. This article points out many differences across these regional contexts, but concludes by emphasizing common issues that need to be addressed across the different regions with respect to pedagogical practices and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of language in French comics has usually been carried out on questions such as variation (especially diastratic and diatopic), focusing on lexical and syntactical elements, but seldom has the question of communication rules been dealt with, despite the fact that these are paramount in the comical effects achieved by some bandes dessinées. We will therefore carry out our analysis by examining how it is possible to explain the achievement of such comical effects through the in-depth deconstruction of the functioning of communication rules, more precisely their apparent malfunctioning when two different communities of speakers are forced to interact: Corsicans and Pinzuti (the Corsican name for non-Corsicans). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority-language planning and efforts to revitalise endangered languages have been criticised for following a model of language planning common to majority languages, i.e. promoting a prescriptive standard which reproduces hierarchies and hegemonies and diminishes linguistic diversity. An alternative is the concept of 'polynomic' languages, a pluralistic model of language without a single prestige variety or functional distinctions. This model is used in the teaching of Corsican. Research into the indigenous language variety of Guernsey reveals 'folk linguistic' acceptance of a regional variation as a source of richness, which suggests that a polynomic approach might be applicable. At the same time, notions of 'right' and 'wrong' are ingrained from Western-style education. Linguistic purism is also on the increase in reaction to perceptions of language change. This paper compares language planning in Guernsey and Corsica in the light of these challenges and discusses whether a polynomic model of language planning is feasible in such a context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains that language in Corsica, France, represents a strong factor of identity belonging. The article offers an ideological analysis of the history of linguistic claim in Corsica. The author describes three categories of resistance to linguistic domination in relation to dominant linguistic ideologies. According to the article, speaking Corsican will always be an important link to the island's history and culture, especially since it will be used more and more at school.

The article offers a social and historical analysis of the Corsican language, in the island of Corsica, France. The language, which has Latin roots, evolved with the Italian language before taking its own shape with the influence of French. The article shows a paradoxical evolution of the Corsican language, which is less used in ordinary life but is used in areas from which it used to be excluded such as schools.

The article focuses on the evolution of the society of Corsica, France, from an institutional and cultural standpoint, through the "riacquistu," meaning reacquisition, of its identity and history, language, artistic and cultural expressions. The article revolves around three periods: the "awakening" of the years 1972-1982, the following years representing new institutions and cultural expression, and the disillusionment of the years 2000.