This book is the first case study of language policy devoted entirely to the fate of Corsican, a heritage language of the Mediterranean island of Corsica. It focuses on the three levels of the key participants—the state, the language activists, and the islanders—in the language debate that has taken place across the island since its purchase by France. This book highlights that the French State has sought to marginalize Corsican and the two other key constituents, namely language activists and the islanders themselves, have played their parts in attempting to redress France's famous language management. In using Spolsky's 2004 definition of language policy as the template, the three key elements of language management, language beliefs, and language practices are analyzed with regards to French and Corsican. Although both corpus and status planning are examined, language-in-education planning has been a particularly successful tool in modifying both language beliefs and language practices on Corsica. It has played an important role in effecting a substantial change in language beliefs by undermining France's heritage languages and demonstrating the usefulness and modernity of French. Organized in a chronological order, this book catalogues the different political events and contexts that have influenced how Corsicans have developed their language repertoires.

This case study is a tale of two language policies, or, more accurately, language policies for two different languages. The first of these language policies is the path by which, from a marginalized position, French came to achieve its position and status as a prestigious national standard language. A second, parallel manipulation of language use can be seen through an examination of the evolution of language management, language beliefs, and language practices relating to Corsican. A disscussion of the emergence of language activism at the end of the nineteenth century recontextualizes the analysis of language policies on French. Since its conception on Corsica, language activism has sought to engage in a process that we now refer to as the reversal of a language shift. The debates surrounding the reversal of a language shift have been guided by Fishman's (2001) four-stage linkage system, designed for the transformation of a threatened or minoritized language into the first language of a given community. The three key participants—the state, the language activists, and the islanders—are interdependent and exist in a set of reciprocal relationships. Thus the relative contributions of each of them in terms of language management, language beliefs, and language practices with regard to French and Corsican cannot be measured independently, and the functions and domains of the two languages in Corsica nowadays cannot be understood without a thorough exploration of these three strands.