L'Exception française? Post-war Language Policy on Corsica

This paper provides a historical account of post-war state language policy within education in France, examining in particular the position and status of Corsican, one of the country's regional heritage languages. This paper outlines the treatment of Corsican by the French State and how this language management impacted upon the language beliefs of the islanders. In turn, the islanders' language beliefs, especially those of dedicated language activists, came to affect state language policy, and this paper will show how, from its lowly position at the Liberation, Corsican was initially excluded from the limited legislation permitting the teaching of regional heritage language and yet has emerged at the start of the 21st century as arguably the most protected of France's minority languages.