Minority Language Movements

Abstract

This chapter draws on data from the French island of Corsica as a springboard for the discussion of bilingual practices and language ideologies and attitudes concerning bilingualism in minority language contexts. Contexts such as the Corsican one raise interesting questions about how bilingualism is defined and experienced, both at the individual and the societal level. This is because the processes of language domination, shift and revitalization found in such contexts both disrupt and make explicit connections between code(s) and identity(ies). This approach requires a historical perspective that examines the social, cultural, political, ideological and economic forces that make and unmake bilingual speakers. Building on the previous chapter, this chapter will look at the impact of processes of language domination on minority language practice and ideology, and crucially, on the discourses and practices that arise out of minority language revitalization movements that attempt to counteract language domination and dominant language ideologies by turning dominant language ideologies against the dominant group which invented them in the first place (essentially by accepting the legitimacy of the idea that language, nation and state do indeed coincide, just not in the particular configuration the dominant state prefers).