Provision for minority languages in France

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Abstract
The study investigates provision for minority languages in France, involving a comparison of regional and immigrant language provision. Historic and ethnolinguistic aspects and the limited regional language provisions under the Loi Deixonne and Commission Haby rulings are summarised. Investigation of current aims and praxis reveals a slow and contested shift from assimilation towards integration and diversity. Political intention is seen as being in advance of an educational policy and praxis imbued with French humanism. Pressure from language contact across the frontiers and France's international status constitute manipulable factors for change. A small, uncomfortable breach, occasioned partly by provision for immigrant languages, has occurred in the tenaciously applied principle of French unilingual territoriality. Confusion in the regionalist goals may be preventing full exploitation of the breach. Some regional languages have declined to the critical level of bilingualism without diglossia. Others, sustained at the diglossic level by continuing extra‐frontier language contact or relative isolation, may yet benefit educationally from evolving political attitudes.

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