Public policy for the Corsican language: From revitalisation to normalisation?
Résumé
The policy of normalisation of the Corsican language carried out by Corsica’s institutions encounters the statute of languages in France, which supports the linguistic supremacy and monopoly of French in the public area. The vitality of Corsican underlined in the first general sociolinguistic survey makes it endangered even if a large majority of people support bilingualism and the project of co-officiality is approved by the Corsican Assembly. What are the main ways and results of public policy to save, revitalize and normalize the Corsican language in the context of the success of the assimilation of French minorities, a crisis of national identity in France, and cultural globalisation for a small population of 320,000 people who live on an island in the Mediterranean Sea?