Langues en contact / langues en conflit ; trente ans de sociolinguistique périphérique : cinq concepts revisités

Abstract

The author proposes to interpret the title of this colloquium, not in the sense of a sociolinguistic exception of France, but in the sense of a sociolinguistics specific to French sociolinguists. It reviews the history of the use of several concepts (periphery, conflict, functionings/representations and diglossia), analysing in particular the way in which they have been taken over from American sociolinguistics and redefined in order to account for the French or Catalan situations. This article also allows us to understand the intellectual path taken by its author, who is taking stock of several years of research on Occitan sociolinguistics.

Keywords

• sociolinguistics
• Occitan (language)
• diglossia
• conflict
• is there a French sociolinguistic exception? (colloquium)