Question jurassienne et idéologies langagières : langue et construction identitaire dans les revendications autonomistes des minorités francophones (1959-1978)

Author / Creator

Cotelli Kureth, Sara, author

Available as

Online

Summary

This study analyses, in a sociolinguistic approach, the speeches on the language of the Jura autonomist movement during the twenty hottest years of the struggle for the creation of the 23rd Swiss c...

This study analyses, in a sociolinguistic approach, the speeches on the language of the Jura autonomist movement during the twenty hottest years of the struggle for the creation of the 23rd Swiss canton. It explores the hypothesis that the language ideologies present in this discourse participated in the construction of the identity of the separatist Jurassians as a French-speaking linguistic minority endangered under the tutelage of the canton of Bern with a German-speaking majority. A varied corpus has been analysed, consisting mainly of the autonomist weekly Le Jura Libre, of the publications of the Rassemblement jurassien (RJ) and of its members and of archival documents. The Jura case shows once again that language ideologies are not so much about language as about society, classifying French speakers and bilinguals, creating an impermeable symbolic border between Bernese and Jurassians. Sharing these ideologies with other minorities, the RJ amplifies very traditional received ideas on bilingualism, the excellence of French, Germanization or linguistic determinism that it reinterprets and directs in a direction allowing it to make French a symbolic weapon. This linguistic position is pushed to its climax until it becomes a real posture of political combat in the context of the Jura Question. Germanization or linguistic determinism that he reinterprets and directs in a direction allowing him to make French a symbolic weapon. This linguistic position is pushed to its climax until it becomes a real posture of political combat in the context of the Jura Question. Germanization or linguistic determinism that he reinterprets and directs in a direction allowing him to make French a symbolic weapon. This linguistic position is pushed to its climax until it becomes a real posture of political combat in the context of the Jura Question.

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