FR4151

11.04.05

Emma Douglas

Examine the process of language / dialect death and illustrate its working in twentieth-century France

Language death refers to the process of extinction or obsolescence of a language or dialect because it no longer fulfils the social and political needs of the community who speak it. Despite the continued importance given to the regional languages and dialects in France (and France’s recent signing of la charte européene des langues regionale et minoritaires in 1999), the history of political centralisation, which is  unique to France, has led to irreversible situations of diglossia where the regional dialect or language lacks in prestige and becomes marginalised. For the purpose of this paper I will discuss the two processes of language death, which Aitchison describes as ‘language murder’ and ‘language suicide’. The process of ‘language suicide’ will be defined and in turn illustrated in an examination of la langue d’Oïl dialects. Likewise I will refer to the dramatic decline in the use of regional languages in France in order to demonstrate the process and consequence of language murder. This paper will also seek to challenge McMahon’s view that Aitchison’s terms to describe the processes of ‘language death’ do not refer to the attitudes of the speakers of the dying language and are therefore inappropriate.

Language suicide is a process caused by unstable diglossia, defined as a situation where the old language which is similar in origin and structure to the new language, gradually merges with the dominant language until it is no longer identifiable. The language concerned seems to commit suicide. Derek Bickerton, in his study of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea describes this process as ‘decreolisation’. This process can also be applied to dialects where a local dialect and a more prestigious variety are spoken. According to Bickerton, the most superficially noticeable aspect of this process is vocabulary borrowing. Due to the similarity of the two languages or dialects involved, words infiltrate from the less prestigious to the more prestigious variety, especially where the minority language lacks vocabulary.  McMahon develops this idea by discussing the speed of this process. The old language does not immediately disappear and a continuum of dialects is set up with an acrolect- the superstrate or prestigious variety at one end, and the basilect- a deep creole or a local dialect the other.

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As suggested by Lodge, this type of process can be observed in la langue d’Oïl dialects in northern France which are engaging in a gradual process of convergence with Standard French. These dialects developed from Latin and although it is almost impossible to draw up dialect boundaries, Ager is able to group these dialects into three zones according to their syntactical and phonological similarities. In this respect, the ability of the dialect to conform to Standard French corresponds to distance from Paris and the region where the dialect is spoken. The dialect of Francien spoken near Paris, (which was actually, out of ...

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