Title: Breton Language and Economy in Brittany
Date and Time: October 19, 15:30
Venue : Library Art Gallery
Speaker : Jean-Rémi Carbonneau, Université de Montréal
Abstract: The use of minority languages in business in Europe is not always a given, particularly in countries where there is no legal right to use these languages, such as in France. There, the policy of monolingualism pursued for more than two centuries has contributed significantly to the decline of all so-called “regional languages.” Consequently, these languages were gradually displaced from the public sphere and the business world, until, beginning in the 1950s, there was an abrupt break in their transmission within families. In the context of a highly centralized state, a “bottom-up” revitalization policy could develop only with great difficulty over the course of the following decades; to this day, this policy encompasses various social spheres, including the business world. Using Breton as an example, this article aims to show how the use of minority languages in the economy is promoted by various private institutional actors and public-private partnerships. The analysis examines the role of the Comité d’études et de liaison des intérêts bretons (CÉLIB), the business network Produit en Bretagne, and the Office public de la langue bretonne.
Bio: Jean-Rémi Carbonneau is assistant professor at Université de Montréal’s Department of World Literatures and Languages and holds the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Linguistic Minorities. He has given several seminars at Freie Universität Berlin and Bard College Berlin in Germany on federalism, nationalism, and minorities in Canada, as well as on comparative politics. His research focuses on language policies and regimes, language contact and conflict, nationalism, and the legal, political, and sociological conditions for the revitalization of minority languages in Western Europe and Canada.