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De la géographie à la politique : les asymétries du continuum roman / Von der Geografie zur Politik: die Asymmetrien des romanischen Kontinuums

L’Éditrice et les Éditeurs / Die Herausgeberin und die Herausgeber

Dalla geografia alla politica: le asimmetrie del continuum romanzo

La curatrice e i curatori

La Catalogne : un atout pour la revitalisation du catalan septentrional ?

Chrystelle Burban
Catalan, a regional language of France in an advanced state of substitution, is part of a cross-border area linking Northern Catalonia to the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (Spain), whose language normalization policy appears to be a success story that could contribute to a revitalization of Catalan north of the Pyrenees. Our aim is to assess the nature of the influence of Southern Catalonia as a driving force for Catalan in the region, by drawing on a qualitative survey conducted among northern Catalan speakers who attended immersion schools. At first, we discuss the historical and sociolinguistic context in order to show the driving role of Catalonia within the Catalan Countries and even more so with regard to Northern Catalonia. We then analyze the respondents’ discourse to identify the positive effects and sticking points that arise in Northern Catalonia in its relationship with Catalonia in terms of language. Finally, we will show that Catalonia exerts an ambivalent and limited influence in Northern Catalonia, and that the linguistic perceptions and practices of southern Catalans towards northern Catalans can lead to devaluing representations and inhibit the use of Catalan. Furthermore, the language policy of the French state, as well as the permanence of the physical and mental border, contribute to limiting the scope of the influence that Catalonia could exert.

Catalan et occitan : deux langues romanes « soeurs » en étroit voisinage. D’une supposée communauté de destin aux clivages actuels

Christian Lagarde
The starting point of this reflection is the current situation, which contrasts Occitan, a language ‘seriously endangered’ or even ‘on the brink of extinction’, with Catalan, which is not. This comparative approach to the fate of the Occitan and Catalan languages is based on the doubly dynamic and productive perspective of endangerment (no longer just as a fact but as a process) and, conversely, empowerment (as ‘will to master’), which relies on the agency of the social actors who are, individually and collectively, the speakers of a given language, including ‘endangered’ ones. This paper shows how the evolution of the two sister languages in question intersected in the 19th century, in a kind of misunderstanding of the fraternization between a Mistralian Provence willing to ‘maintain’ a tradition that would later fade, and a Catalonia laying the foundations for a political and cultural autonomization within the Spanish state that would, on the contrary, assert itself in the following century and right up to the present day.

Mehr Schein als Sein? Eine Studie zur Sprachenlandschaft in Liguriens ,okzitanischen‘ Ortschaften Olivetta, Realdo, Borniga und Verdeggia

Ralf Christoph
In the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010a), the varieties of Occitan were characterized as “definitely endangered” and “severely endangered” from extinction. Studies were carried out in the Occitan regions of France, Italy and Spain to survey the speakers even before. In Liguria, where despite discrepancies between language policy and linguistic positions, the so-called Intemelio and thus Ligurian varieties Royasc and Brigasc were declared as Occitan minority languages according to the law legge 15 dicembre 1999, n. 482, scientific studies on their presence are scarce. This article adopts the approach of Linguistic Landscape research to analyze the visibility of Occitan in the declared ‘Occitan’ places of Auriveta (Ital. Olivetta), and, in the municipality of Triora, Reaud (Realdo), Bornighe (Borniga) and Verdeja (Verdeggia). For this purpose, a photo corpus was created on site including labels, signs and traces of linguistic identification in public (paths, roads, buildings) and semi-public (houses, doors) areas using the corpus-driven approach. A heterogeneous linguistic landscape between Italian, Occitan (in the form of the ‘Vivaro-Alpine’ variety), Royasc, Brigasc and French can be observed in all locations, whereby the constructed Occitan identity is expressed linguistically through the two Intemelian, Ligurian varieties of Royasc and Brigasc – a paradox that deserves to be highlighted.

Le paysage linguistique de la place Émile Chanoux à Aoste : une analyse diachronique « en temps réel » (2014-2024)

Anja Mitschke
The comparison of two samples collected ten years apart (2014 and 2024) illustrates how the characteristics of written elements in the public space of the city of Aosta have evolved. Émile Chanoux square is located in a relatively stable glottopolitical context, where the autochthonous minority language Francoprovençal coexists with the two official languages, Italian and French. The linguistic choices manifested in the signage produced by official (top-down) and commercial (bottom-up) actors reveal the roles and functions they attribute to each language. After one decade, the square has become increasingly Italian-speaking and monolingual. This development is highlighted through an analysis of the languages present, their interrelations, the textual multilingualism, their semantic references, and the morphosyntactic complexity of the units of analysis. The study is based not only on data from the ‘regular’ linguistic landscape but also takes particular account of stickers affixed spontaneously by different actors. On the one hand, the findings shed light on the enduring characteristics and components of a linguistic landscape; on the other hand, they provide empirical evidence of the dynamic nature of the Valdostan linguistic situation.

Ladin and its speakers: Multilingual repertoires and language attitudes

Ilaria Fiorentini
This paper explores the sociolinguistic situation of Dolomitic Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance minority language spoken in various varieties in northeastern Italy, in the regions of Trentino-South Tyrol and Veneto. The area has historically been multilingual, and since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been no monolingual adult Ladin speakers. The main objective of this paper is to describe the current state of multilingualism in the different areas of the Ladin-speaking region, identifying speakers’ language repertoires, the domains in which the different languages are used, and the attitudes that speakers exhibit toward them. The analysis will be based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected through surveys (e.g., Survey Ladins, CLaM 2021) and interviews.

L’italiano in Svizzera fra asimmetrie sociolinguistiche e misure compensative

Matteo Casoni and Sabine Christopher
In Switzerland, Italian is an official language in a minority situation in a context of institutional and societal multilingualism. This sociolinguistic reality is characterized by the distribution of speakers within the traditionally Italian-speaking area (Ticino and the Italian-speaking Grisons) as well as in the areas where other national languages are dominant. The article describes some sociolinguistic features from a language vitality perspective, highlighting characteristic asymmetries. We identify three main factors generating asymmetries between majority and minority language communities: demography, autochthony and prestige. A series of status and acquisition language policies are examined, mainly at a federal level, taking into account their compensatory effects and assessing their outcomes in terms of political and social equity and acceptability. The analysis of the language policies shows that status policies compensate asymmetries to a large extent, while acquisition policies tend to merely weight them. Overall, although asymmetries are not completely removed, the policies can be considered fair in that they are socially and politically acceptable.

L’intercompréhension comme réponse à la mise en danger des langues romanes régionales : regards sociolinguistiques, perspectives didactiques

Thomas de Fornel and Typhaine Manzato
This article examines intercomprehension as a response to the endangerment of regional Romance languages, considering it both as a (socio)linguistic and didactic approach. It builds on the concept of the Romance linguistic continuum, which is both a historical reality and a pedagogical tool for teaching, learning, and promoting related regional and national languages. Intercomprehension is analyzed here as a process that fosters the recognition and utilization of the linguistic diversity inherent to Romance-speaking areas. By engaging in a reflection on the role of regional languages in the historical development of intercomprehension and its more contemporary emergence as a pluralistic approach, we also question the idea of an intuitive predisposition to intercomprehension among related languages. Through case studies in France, Italy, and Italian-speaking Switzerland, we present various didactic initiatives contextualized which, on the one hand, strengthen the link between learning languages and regional languages and, on the other, raise awareness of the importance of all (varieties of) languages within the same linguistic continuum.