| Abstrakt: |
The use of the name Béarnais is based not on "pure" linguistics but on the fact that it is an autoglossonym whose identity is deeply rooted in a distant and prestigious past. On the other hand, the use of the term Gascon, which is applied to a wide variety of romance varieties spoken in the southwest of France (including the Béarn), is justified by internal linguistic criteria. In the Gascon-speaking region, the number of speakers, at all levels, varies from 3% in Bordeaux to 35% in the Hautes-Pyréneacutees. That means more than 500,000 people in total. But the future of the language is uncertain because family transmission has diminished since World War II, even in rural areas, and is now very rare. Furthermore, Béarnais and Gascon are taught to only a little over 1% of school children, so there are now few expert and active speakers under the age of fifty. The language is spoken only in closed networks, usually made up of older people, who are very emotionally attached to their language, but few of whom make it an ideological issue or are preoccupied by its future. Béarnais and Gascon are the focal point of ideological conflicts. Occitanists consider Occitan, the unifying name given by some linguists to all of the Oc varieties (including Gascon), to be a language. Their objective is to raise the status of Oc dialects, which are now perceived as the low varieties of a diglossia. In Gascony they attracted a small but active intellectual elite who have succeeded in imposing their views at the institutional (regional) and academic levels. However, official surveys have shown that the terms used most often to designate the Oc language spoken in Gascony are "patois" and "Béarnais." The speakers either know nothing of Occitan or consider it to be a foreign language that threatens their own identity. Some speakers have, therefore, revived the nineteenth-century militant "Félibres" movement."Gasconists,"and especially... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
