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  • The State, the Activists and the Islanders: Language Policy on Corsica
  • Rodney Ball
The State, the Activists and the Islanders: Language Policy on Corsica. By Robert J. Blackwood. (Language Policy, 8). Heidelberg: Springer, 2008. xii + 162 pp. Hb €85.55.

As the author observes, Corsican has been relatively neglected in the literature on France's regional or 'heritage' languages, even though it is probably the best protected of them all, thanks to the Matignon Agreements of 2000. This thorough and detailed study goes a long way towards making good the deficiency. The three actors identified in the title are investigated in respect of their mutual relationships and also in terms of the engagement of each with language use, attitudes and policies, a principal aim being to assess how far reversal of language shift (à la Fishman) has been achieved and to determine the relative importance of deliberate policy and non-linguistic factors in the process. Though a little too cartesian to be entirely convincing, this scheme does provide a useful framework for the rest. Firstly, we are given a historical account of Corsican multilingualism, starting from the acquisition of the island by France in 1768, but with most of the emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among other things, the three-way relationship between French, Tuscan Italian and Corsican in the early period is well highlighted, with a French/Corsican diglossia replacing an Italian/Corsican one; there is interesting information about the linguistic effects of the Second World War; useful discussion is provided of the implications for Corsican of twentieth-century language legislation in France–notably the Deixonne, Haby, [End Page 128] Bas-Lauriol and Toubon laws; and the role of the FLNC and other activists in liberalizing administrative policy and public attitudes towards Corsican is well brought out. Secondly (and this is a particularly valuable component), there is a detailed account of the current state of affairs, mainly based on the author's own fieldwork. This gives as close an insight as could be expected into current language use and attitudes–and various intriguing paradoxes emerge. Thus, now that the goal of near-compulsory Corsican tuition in schools has been achieved, actual use of the language is declining among young people: inter-generational transmission within the family is the really important factor, but is less and less in evidence these days. However, none of this has had any adverse effect on the islanders' attitude to their heritage language: this is more positive than ever, whether they are speakers of it or not. One aspect which could do with more attention, however, is the question of local variation in pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. This is often a stumbling block for language activists, but not so in Corsica, it would seem: one wonders why, such variation being as prevalent on the island as it is elsewhere. All in all though, this is a most welcome study, even if the author's style and expression are sometimes inelegant, not to say clumsy–occasionally the exposition even verges on the impenetrable. And there is some awkward fluctuation between French and English in respect of names of organizations and institutions: thus on p. 96 'Collectivité Territoriale [sic] de Corse', 'Corsican Language and Culture Council', 'Académie de Corse' and 'Regional Assembly' all occur within the same four lines.

Rodney Ball
University of Southampton
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