“Corsican sociolinguistics”: Key words and concepts of a cross-linguistic theory

Abstract

This article presents the set of the central concepts of so-called “Corsican sociolinguistics” mainly elaborated by Marcellesi. It also shows the history of their collective elaboration within Marcellesi’s research center and on the Corsican ground. It aims at showing that they constitute a whole coherent sociolinguistic theory which is useful for many sociolinguistic situations and not only for Corsican.

Jean‐Baptiste Marcellesi (1930‐2019): A major contribution to sociolinguistics as a social linguistics

“…Here I present 1 some of Marcellesi's key concepts, drawing notably on Blanchet (2020) for translations into English of terms such as polynomie , the difficult‐to‐translate play on words reconnaissance‐naissance , satellisation , individuation , glottopolitique, hégémonie . ‘Polynomia’, ‘recognition‐birth’, ‘satellization’, ‘individuation’, ‘glottopolitics’, ‘hegemony’… these concepts have strongly influenced sociolinguistics, especially—but not exclusively—in the francophone world.…”

“…This volume also includes a long interview with Marcellesi (conducted and transcribed by Bulot and Blanchet themselves 2 ), which provides additional insight into Marcellesi's life and career. A second recent publication provides further access, this time in English: Blanchet (2020) is a synthesis of some of Marcellesi's key concepts, as a contribution to an issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on Corsican sociolinguistics (Colonna, 2020). It is to these concepts that we now turn, drawing on Blanchet's text (quotes are from the originals but edited where necessary for clarity) and other key contributions (by Alexandra Jaffe and Julia Sallabank).…”

“…Also, the size of the tribute we are paying here to Marcellesi, does not allow us to develop further or comment on certain extracts. In order to correct this defect, even partially, we refer to the publication in French (Marcellesi, 2003b) in which Marcellesi's main articles appear, and, for non‐French speaking readers, to Blanchet's publication in English (Blanchet, 2020) in which the translation of the concepts above are commented on. Insofar as Jean‐Baptiste Marcellesi has been hardly translated beyond isolated quotations, it is difficult to pay homage to him without taking this opportunity to propose, even surreptitiously, a few extracts to English‐speaking readers, even if this may, in the end, cause more frustration than satisfaction.…”

“… 3 3 Blanchet notes about this translation: “It should be noted that the use of the word ‘birth’ (in French naissance ) does not include languages into a biological vision of social processes: it just relies on a play on the word naissance ‘birth’ and reconnaissance ‘recognition’, which are very similar in French.” (Blanchet, 2020:12). …”

“… 4 4 Blanchet's note to his own translation: “The opposition between langue and parole , quite untranslatable into English, is one of the basic Saussurean dichotomies that separates a hypothetical structural homogeous system ( langue ) from its supposed “uses” ( parole ) activated in organised discourses (or speech)” (Blanchet, 2020:18). …”