The Franc-comtois in Franche-Comté, an endangered re-gional language in France: state of play and perspectives

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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen University of Groningen

Faculteit der Letteren Faculty of Arts

MA Multilingualism

Supervised by: Dr Charlotte Gooskens Second reader: Dr Nanna H. Hilton

The Franc-comtois in Franche-Comté, an endangered

re-gional language in France: state of play and perspectives

MA Thesis by Maxime K.F.M.-J. Verrier 2018/2019

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my family and friends, in the Netherlands, in France or anywhere else in the world, for supporting me, listening to me, encouraging me, and sometimes hosting me, during the writing of this thesis.

I would like to thank Dr Charlotte Gooskens, my thesis supervisor, for her support, and her precious advice and recommendations. Likewise, I would like to thank the pro-fessors and instructors of the MA Multilingualism at the Groningen University for the quality of their teaching, and for making me familiar with methods, notions, ideas and theories that proved to be fundamental in this work.

And last but not least, I would like to thank all the respondents to my online ques-tionnaire, as well as all the interlocuters who have helped me tremendously in the writing of this thesis: Billy Fumey, Marianne Meiller, François Busser, Alain Seguin, Claude Juillerat, Louis Marline and Jean-Philippe Gable.

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1. Introduction

Since the nineteenth century, most regional languages of France have been de-clining. One out of twenty people born after 1970 had a parent addressing them in a regional language (Filhon 2011). According to Filhon (2011), this evolution is related to different factors. On the one hand, the importance of the monolingual nation-state ideol-ogy created a national community with French as its language, and as a key to upward mobility, and attached regional accents to stigmata linked to the rurality. On the other hand, the increase of the amount of migrations led, for some people, to a renegotiation of the identity, with an attachment to several places, instead of just one home-community. Since the seventies also, there has been, in France, a raise of regionalist move-ments, calling for more autonomy and more recognition of their regional identity (Filhon 2011). Some of them notoriously linked their claim to the use of their language, such as the Bretons or the Basques, while the Oïl languages other than French have been much less promoted and safeguarded. This can be related to their proximity to French, which made it easier to deem them as “badly spoken” Frenches, and to merge them with French into regional Frenches (Walter 2007).

According to Walter (2007), where regional languages keep being used, they are not transmitted within the family anymore, but through associations and teachers, mostly to people trying to retain a connection with their grandparents’ linguistic background. In this case, these young learners of heritage languages fit in the definition of “new speakers” as advanced by O’Rourke et al. (2015). Besides, in their 2003 study, Eloy et al. presented the learning of Picard, a regional Oïl language, by immigrants, and they showed that many of these working-class immigrants learned Picard with their co-workers, and that the knowing of this language played an important role in their integration and affiliation within this social group.

It must be noted that in some Hexagonal regions, the regional languages are more present. In Brittany, for example, the Breton language is officially recognized by the regional council, and there is a whole network of French-Breton bilingual schools, called the Diwan schools (Loyer 2007). However, Oïl languages usually lack this kind of recog-nition, also due to their lower vitality.

Since the nineteenth century, various groups have worked on the preservation and documentation of Franc-comtois throughout its linguistic area, without necessarily

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engaging in political activities. Nevertheless, in recent years, there has been a slight in-crease in the interest in the Franc-comtois language. New groups and associations were created, putting the language and the relationship between the territory, the population and the language into focus. This move happened in the context of a general surge of interest for the regional languages, with them being more and more often the topic of discussions and debates between the promoters of a French-only monolingualism, and those advocating for the acknowledgment of the regional and minority languages. More generally, this surge of interest seems to be related to two factors: the ongoing debate, since the nineties, regarding the ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, and the realization that the last speakers of many of these languages are now growing older and older, threatening the survival of said languages.

This thesis aims to study the current state of the Franc-comtois language in Franche-Comté. I chose this subject because my grandfather was from this region, lived there around five years as a child, and, as far as I know, neither he, nor his parents, who left the region when they were around thirty, spoke the language. I wanted to find out how people, nowadays, perceived this language, if there was an interest in it, as it exists in other regions, and if people somehow connected it to their regional identity and herit-age.

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Franc-comtois is a Oïl language mostly spoken in the East of France (North of Franche-Comté) and in the North-West of Switzerland (Jura) (see Figure 1). Oïl lan-guages are Romances lanlan-guages, which developed in the North of what is now Hexago-nal France (the part of France located on the European continent), as well as in the South of present-day Belgium, the West of nowadays Switzerland, and the Channel Islands (see Figure 2). The use of this language has been declining for centuries, as I aim to explain in this work, and nowadays, the populations of these regions (North of Franche-Comté and Swiss Jura) rather use French in their daily interactions. According to the UNESCO, like all other Oïl languages (with the exception of French), Franc-comtois is severely endangered, meaning that it is spoken only by grandparents and older generations, and that while parents can still understand it, they do not use it anymore with their children or among themselves (Moseley 2010). It has never had a widespread standard, and is rather made up of several local varieties. It is also known as jurassien, comtois, patois de

langue romane, or parlers comtois d’Oïl. Among the varying possibilities to define a

Figure 1: Linguistic map of Franche-Comté showing where Franc-comtois and Francoprovençal are spoken. Aavitus [Username], (2018 August 19]. In Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from https://commons.wikime-dia.org/wiki/File:Carte_linguistique_de_Franche-Comt%C3%A9.png.

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language, a dialect or a patois, I decided to base mine on Walter’s one (Walter 2008) on the one hand, and on the one developed by Chambers and Trudgill (Chambers, Trudgill 1998) on the other hand. I will call “patois” the local variety of a language, “language” a means of communication shared by a group of speakers, and designated as such for lin-guistic reasons (intercomprehension among its speakers, and distinction with other lan-guages), as well as for cultural, historic and political reasons. In the course of this work, I will use the word “Franc-comtois” to refer to the language, and the word “patois” to refer to local varieties of this language.

Figure 2: Linguistic map of Hexagonal France, as well as French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland and Jersey, showing the different regional languages. In blue are depicted the Oïl languages, in green Francoprovençal, in red the Oc languages, in dark red the Catalan language, in yellow the Germanic languages, in light purple the Basque language and in darker purple the Breton language. Franc-comtois is labeled “frc”. Laboratoire LIMSI UPR3251 – CNRS, (n.d.), Atlas sonore des langues

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Franche-Comté is a traditional and historic region of France, having been a free county of the Holy Roman Empire (hence its name), temporarily under the control of Habsburg Spain, then a French province, from 1678 to 1790, and finally a French re-gional authority from 1982 to 2016, before it merged with Burgundy to form the new region Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (see Figure 3). It is made up of four departments: Doubs, Haute-Saône, Jura and Territoire de Belfort (see Figure 4). These centuries of existence as its own entity led to the development of a rather strong feeling of identity, which I aim to study in this work. This region is located at the East of Hexagonal France, between Switzerland, and the former French regions Alsace, Lorraine, Champagne-Ar-denne (now Grand Est) Burgundy (now in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) and Rhône-Alpes (now in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes). This rather rural region is famous for its figures such as the writer Victor Hugo (born 1802 in Besançon, Doubs), the philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (born 1809 in Besançon, Doubs), the painter Gustave Courbet (born 1819 in Ornans, Doubs), the biologist Louis Pasteur (born 1822 in Dole, Jura); for its gastronomy (Comté cheese, Cancoillotte, Montbéliard and Morteau sausages, and vin jaune); and for the Peugeot company, created in Sochaux (Doubs) in 1810, among other things.

Figure 3: Map of the French regions in 2015 prior to the 2016 reform, showing the Franche-Comté region as it was from 1982 to 2015. Lvcvlvs [Username], (2012, October 13). In Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from https://commons.wikime-dia.org/wiki/File:1005_regions_colors.png.

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I will start by reviewing the existing literature and documentation regarding Franc-comtois (or its patois), and theoretical literature about endangered languages. Then, after explaining my methodology, I will talk about the Franc-comtois identity, and the place and role of language in this identity, before discussing its perception, trying to see if it is associated with rurality and authenticity. Afterwards, I will study the transmission of the Franc-comtois language, or the lack thereof, first in a familial context, and then outside of the family, through groups and associations for example. Finally, I will ques-tion the future of this language, on the basis of the work done by different movements, the action of institutional actors, and the existing interest in the language.

Figure 4: Map of Franche-Comté as it was from 1982 to 2015 showing its departments. Blum, J., (2007, August 7). In

Wikime-dia Commons. Retrieved from https://commons.wikime-dia.org/wiki/File:Franche-comt%C3%A9_administrative.svg.

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2. Literature review

2.1. Literature regarding the state of the Franc-comtois lan-guage

The regional languages of France have been subject to a certain interest among researchers, and several books and articles have been written about them. The first book describing the situation of most regional languages of Hexagonal France, which could almost be seen as a pre-sociolinguistic study, is Gazier’s 1880 book (Gazier 1880). This is actually a collection of letters sent to Henri Grégoire by people from different regions describing the situation of the languages spoken in said regions, in response to his ques-tionnaire featuring questions such as “L’usage de la langue française est-il universel dans

votre contrée. Y parle-t-on un ou plusieurs patois ?” (Is the use of French universal in

your land? Do people speak one or several patois?1_{, Grégoire, quoted in Gazier 1880, p.}

8). Grégoire was a French priest, otherwise famous for his role in the abolition of slavery and of feudalism, who was in charge of writing a report about universalizing the use of the French language and annihilating the patois, presented in front of the National Con-vention in 1794 (Gazier 1880).

Since the second half of the twentieth century, a number of linguists and anthro-pologists, such as Vigier, Walter, Abalain or Kranzer, have grown an interest in the question of France’s regional and minority languages, under a social perspective (Vigier 1979, Walter 2008, Abalain 2007 and Kranzer 2015). This occurred in the context of an advanced decline of these languages, while regional identities were growing stronger (the loi Defferre turned the administrative regions into regional authorities, meaning into decentralized local government authorities, in 1983, Loi n° 82-213 du 2 mars 1982

relative aux droits et libertés des communes, des départements et des régions, Law no 82-323 of 2 March 1982 on rights and liberties of communes, departments and regions)

and some of the languages in question were given more space in neighboring countries, such as Catalan or Basque in Spain. These linguists and authors generally focused on the “universalization” of the French language of France and on the process of decline of regional languages, sometimes dealing with a particular region. Nevertheless, most of these studies did not deal with Oil languages, but rather with languages, which were

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less linguistically “related” to French (such as the Oc language or languages) if at all (Basque).

Besides, specific figures are lacking, because of the absence, until the end of the twentieth century, of any nationwide census or study focused on the use of regional and minority languages, since Grégoire’s 1794 report. The first national linguistic inquiry was made by the national statistics institute (INSEE) alongside with the 1999 census (Cassan, Héran, Toulemon 2000 & Héran, Filhon, Deprez 2002), when there was al-ready a raised interest in the regional languages. According to Héran’s 1993 article, the “loss rate” for what he calls the Gallo-romance languages (Oïl languages, Francopro-vençal and Occitan) is 95% (Héran 1993), meaning that 95% of the parents who had one of these languages as their first language did not use it with their children. Interest-ingly, Héran also mentions the temporal, spatial or social distance to the French lan-guage as a determining factor to the loss of regional or immigrant lanlan-guages. In the case of the so-called Gallo-romance languages, he mentions the extent of the cultural contact, as well as the domination of French related to the republican ideology (Héran 1993). It appears in the INSEE inquiry that, in general, regional languages were mostly transmit-ted only occasionally and, generally, by just one parent. This is mostly the case with the Oc language and the Oïl languages, whose use was already decreasing in the previous generations (Héran et al. 2002). The study also shows that around 35% of parents trans-mitted to their children the language they got from their parents, when this language was not French, and this figure is lower when it comes to regional languages, being less than 30% when it comes to fathers transmitting the Oïl languages to their children (Hé-ran et al. 2002). Following this study, around 204,000 adults used the Oïl languages with people other than their children (Héran et al. 2002). The information provided by this study is useful, but the grouping of Oïl languages can be misleading, specifically when comparing different languages. One can be tempted to thing that they are in bet-ter-off shape than most other regional languages of France, because it appears that they are third behind Alsatian and the Oc language when it comes to the adults having had the regional language usually transmitted by their parents, second to the Oc language when it comes to those having had it occasionally transmitted, and second to Alsatian for those who transmitted it to their children. However, one must consider the fact that these figures, given in absolute numbers by Héran, Filhon and Deprez, are the sum of all Oïl languages, while other languages are presented individually.

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This raised interest regarding regional languages can be linked, as a cause and/or a consequence, to the debates around the ratification of the European Charter, which was signed by France in May 1999 (see Verrier 2007 for more information about the non-ratification by France). However, the Oil languages were treated like one by this study. The results of this inquiry were studied by Héran, Filhon and Deprez in 2002, in an article where they presented the decline of regional languages, noting that some were “better-off” than others (Héran, Filhon, Deprez 2002). Clanché also studied the results of this inquiry in 2002, focusing on the question of transmission of regional and foreign languages (Clanché 2002). This decline had already been studied in 1993 by Héran following an enquiry led by the INSEE towards parents of school children (Héran 1993), showing roughly the same results.

Very few studies have been realized about the sociolinguistics of Franc-comtois, specifically. Many Franc-comtois linguists or philologists were mentioned in Bour-quin’s 2003 book. Until the second half of the twentieth century, most books about the Franc-comtois language were glossaries, or phonetic and phonological studies (Bour-quin 2003). Dondaine, in her 1972 book gives some sociologic information (Dondaine 1972). Her youngest respondent was 47 (Dondaine 1972), and in the areas where it was still present, Franc-comtois was spoken by peasants over 55 years old and understood by those over 35 years old, and every speaker was at least bilingual with French. This implies that Franc-comtois had ceased to be the main language of communication, and had already been in a “one-way” use, from the parents to the children, while the children likely responded in French, among those born in the thirties (who were around 35 years old in 1972). Likewise, Sorkine’s 1972 documentary show that many young people were not able to understand the language anymore (Sorkine 1972). With the generation of people around 35 in 1972 not being able to speak the patois anymore, likely for hav-ing exclusively spoken French even when addressed in patois inside of the family, we can safely assume that they did not use the patois to address the next generations, and that as a consequence, next generations are neither able to speak, nor to understand it. We can relate it with the post-war clash between generations and with the opposition between values perceived as “traditional” and others as “modern”, as mentioned by Clade in his article (Clade 1997), which deeply affected the ways of life in rural com-munities, and made them move towards a national homogenization process, including through the use of the national language, French.

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In 1992, Marconot published an article dealing with the linguistic history of the region, the then use of the language, the challenges faced by patois in France, and the imprint of Franc-comtois on the regional French language (Marconot 1992). In 1996, a symposium was organized about the regional languages and regional French of the North of Franche-Comté and in Swiss Jura, and dealt with the history and sociolinguis-tics of said languages (Société belfortaine d’émulation 1997). The proceedings of this symposium are divided into four main parts, dealing with different aspects of the re-gional language: the history, the linguistic borrowings, the local and rere-gional aspects of the language, and its practice and writing. These books and articles provide us with much useful information about the state of Franc-Comtois in Franche-Comté (as well as in Swiss Jura), about its use, its speakers, its status, with around twenty years of difference, showing that, the use of the language has been in general decline leading to the speakers being older and older, despite there being movements and actions (includ-ing institutional ones) aim(includ-ing at sav(includ-ing and protect(includ-ing it.

Around twenty years later, in 2015, a documentary film, Le patois fait de la

ré-sistance (The patois puts up reré-sistance), was made by Baptizet, presenting speakers of

the different patois of Franche-Comté, as well as groups and clubs. Besides offering an insight into the activities of these associations, it gives us, through the interviews of speakers and members of said groups, an “inside” view and analysis of the situation of their language. In this documentary, Luc Baverel, Paulette Bôle-Richard, Jeanne-An-tide Chabot and Emile Jacquet say that, with the exception of themselves, they do not have anybody to speak patois with anymore. Chabot mentions speaking it to her daugh-ters, who are able to understand it, and who speak some, while Jacquet says that his can understand it, but are unable to speak it. Chabot declares that in her village, nobody speaks patois (Baptizet 2015). It should be noted that these four interviewees come from the Saugeais (Doubs), located in the Francoprovençal-speaking area of Franche-Comté. However, I can assume that the sociolinguistic situation of this zone is comparable to the one of the Franc-comtois speaking area. All of these works show how the patois was linked to the rurality, and declined because of the fact that the countryside and its inhabitants were associated with the idea of backwardness, in a context in which the city and its lifestyle set the pace and were seen as a model.

More recently, Bendinelli, a linguist at the Université de Besançon, started a so-ciolinguistic study of the Franc-comtois language, as was mentioned to me by Meiller

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and confirmed by Bendinelli through emails. She met with people from several groups and associations of speakers, and tries to find out more about the institutional support (or lack thereof) of the language.

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As mentioned in the introduction, the Franc-comtois language is considered by the UNESCO as a severely endangered language (Moseley 2010). This classification is realized in the framework of numerous studies about endangered languages. Besides the UNESCO’s atlas of endangered languages (Moseley 2010), which gives a thorough over-view of the state of numerous endangered languages across the world, detailing the soci-olinguistic and politic dynamics (or lack thereof) for many of them, Austin and Sal-labank’s 2011 handbook of endangered languages includes many contributions regarding this field. In the introduction to this volume, Austin and Sallabank define endangered languages as languages which “may no longer continue to exist after a few more gener-ations as they are not being learnt by children as first languages” (Austin & Sallabank 2011, p. 1). This process of endangerment can ultimately lead to language death, which is defined by Mufwene as the “community level loss of competence in a language” (Mufwene 2004, quoted in Sallabank 2012, p. 100). According to Dorian, there are three symptoms of language death: “fewer speakers, fewer domains of use, and structural sim-plification” (Sallabank 2012, p. 101). This process is often associated with language shift, defined by Pauwels in her book about language maintenance and shift as “the gradual replacement of one’s main language or languages, often labelled L1, by another language, usually referred to as L2, in all spheres of usage” (Pauwels 2016, p. 18).

To counter or reverse this process, language policy can play an important role, to act on the three symptoms evoked by Dorian (Sallabank 2012). To address the decreasing number of speakers, measures can be taken to implement immersion education in the language, as has been the case with the Basque language in Spain, leading to many chil-dren socializing in Basque (Sallabank 2012), and such measures can have other outcomes, such as an increased awareness and interest in the language from the wider community, as it has been the case in Wales (Sallabank 2012). Another type of measure, targeting the whole community, and not just children, is the creation of spaces for socializing in the language, with cafés or clubs, for example (Sallabank 2012). These measures correspond to acquisition planning.

Prestige planning consists in encouraging people to use a language, which has often been used less and less due to it being associated with poverty and backwardness (Sallabank 2012). To address the lack of domains of use, Sallabank notes the importance of the linguistic landscape, and of the mass media, and the extent of the language’s

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presence in the media (written and audiovisual) is also part of prestige planning (Sal-labank 2012).

Following Dorian, “reduced use of a language will lead also to a reduced form of that language” (Dorian 1977, quoted in Sallabank 2012). In this case, it can be necessary to create words (neologisms) to talk about technologic innovations, for example. This is part of corpus planning, which also involves the creation of a standard (Sallabank 2011). Standardization is defined by Ferguson as:

the process of one variety of a language becoming widely accepted throughout the speech community as a supradialectal form – the ‘best’ form of the language – rated above regional and social dialects, although these may be felt to be appropriate in some domains. (Ferguson 1998, quoted in Costa et al. 2017)

For minority languages, it is often tightly related to status planning, in that it involves being acknowledged as a language, and not anymore as a dialect. Like for majority lan-guages, it is often about acknowledging a dialect, or a variant over others, and this choice can be the source of potential conflicts or rivalries (Costa et al. 2017). However, Costa, De Korne and Lane list three major differences between the standardization processes of majority and minority languages: for minority languages, it occurs in the context of an existing hierarchy, with the minority and marginalized status being seen as reasons for the standardization; standardization of minority languages happens in a context where knowledge, norms, and standards are more widely shared, discussed and questioned, and subject to the approbation of the whole community; the standardization of a minority language is not meant to lead to an exclusive use of the language, following the mono-lingual ideology present in nation-states, which is the idea of one language guaranteeing the unicity of the nation, and thus of the state (Costa et al. 2017).

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3. Research questions and objectives

Following these elements, and considering the fact that Franc-comtois is a se-verely endangered language, according to the UNESCO, I wanted to see the extent of endangerment of this language, and, on the one hand, the actions being done for the re-versal of this language shift process, and on the other hand, the actions that could be done, in function of the opinions on the language, on the associative network, and on the public and institutional (potential) support. I decided to focus my study around several research questions, aiming to study, as exhaustively as possible, the current state of the Franc-comtois language, by analyzing the responses to a questionnaire I prepared:

1. How is this language associated to Franche-Comté?

a. Are Franc-comtois attached to their regional identity?

b. Do they see this language as being part of said regional identity? 2. How is the Franc-comtois language perceived in Franche-Comté?

a. Is the distinction between the Franc-comtois language and the French variant of Franche-Comté clear?

b. Is this language associated with rurality? c. Is this language associated with authenticity? 3. How is this language transmitted nowadays?

a. Is it transmitted in families?

b. Are there new speakers of this language?

4. How is this language used nowadays, and how can its future be shaped? a. Are the associations and groups promoting its use active?

b. How do institutional actors use and recognize the language, and can this stance shape the future of the language?

c. Are Francs-comtois favorable to a “return” of the language? d. Which challenges would this language face if it were to “return”? The Franc-comtois language, like other Oïl languages, has been associated with rurality, while French was associated with progress and knowledge, and got a civic value in the context of the Revolution and subsequent nation-building. Its closeness to French led people to believe that it was a broken version of French, whose noble form was the written one. These elements, coupled with the central government’s will to eradicate the regional languages, with the massive migration from the countryside to the cities, and

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with the development of state-led education, and national media led to a massive decrease in the number of speakers of this language.

For these reasons, I expect the regional identity to be connected to Franche-Comté’s history, but not necessarily to the Franc-comtois language, which would rather still be subject to a negative perception, linked to something from the past, opposed to the modernity brought by the French language. Besides, because of the decrease in the presence of this language, I expect people to identify more with their accent, their ex-pressions, present in the French spoken there. This identification can, in my opinion, have led to a confusion between the Franc-comtois language and the Franche-Comté variant of the French language, which I expect to find in my results. On the other hand, also because of this language not being as present as it used to be, I think that most young people will not have any understanding of the language, if only they have ever been sub-jected to it. I expect the youngest speakers of this language to be older than seventy, as I think that most baby boomers are not able to speak it, having been subjected to the om-nipresence of French from early on, particularly through the media. And since I do not expect people to associate this language with their identity, I do not expect to find new speakers of this language. Finally, I expect the different groups of promoters of the lan-guage to be met with the indifference of the region’s inhabitants, if not with their rejection towards this idea of revitalizing an element from the past associated with the stigma of rurality and backwardness.

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4. Methodology

To study the modern situation of Franc-comtois in Franche-comté, I used an online questionnaire (Appendix 1) to collect some data about the situation and the per-ception of Franc-Comtois in Franche-Comté. This questionnaire was prepared with Google Forms. Besides the introductory questions (age, relation to Franche-Comté...), it had three yes-no questions about the Franc-comtois identity, three questions about the language (all yes-no questions, with one using a 1 to 5 scale), and ten yes-no questions about the opinions on the place of the language. As I was expecting to receive a limited number of answers (I did not think that I would get more than 100 answers), all the yes-no questions, with the exception of the one using a scale, were open and the contestants had to pick either between “Yes”, “No” and “Other”, or between “Yes”, “No”, “Maybe” and “Other”, and the “Other” option always left them with the possibility to write their own response. At the end of each part, they could also add a comment or a precision. I used three different media in the questionnaire. In the introduction, there was a map showing the area, in the Franche-Comté region, where Franc-comtois and Francoproven-çal were spoken. Then, in the part about the difference between Franc-comtois and re-gional French, I put, on the one hand, a YouTube video called “10 expressions

franc-comtoises!” (10 Franc-comtois expressions!, loutiful 2016), and presenting regional

French, and on the other hand, an audio recording of Aesop’s The North Wind and the

Sun in Franc-comtois, taken from the Atlas sonore des langues de France (Speaking atlas

of the languages of France, https://atlas.limsi.fr/).

I used the social networks to get contestants to this questionnaire. It was posted on my personal Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and reposted by people I know as well as by people I do not. I also posted it on several local groups, which were either dedicated to the promotion of the Franc-comtois identity or to connect inhabitants of a city or of a wider area. For the latter, I targeted groups made for the main cities of the Franc-comtois speaking area of Franche-Comté (Besançon, Lure, Vesoul), but also a group made for supporters of a local football club (the FC Sochaux Montbéliard), a group for the defense of regional languages, and a local group of the Paris region (with more than 450,000 members). I decided to include this latter group because Paris, being the center of a mac-rocephalic country (the Parisian urban unit has more than 10 million inhabitants, in a

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country of less than 68 million inhabitants), has historically attracted populations from the whole of France.

I received responses from 1,338 participants, from 13 to 85 years old (average age = 36.5), 62.2% female, 37.2% male and 0.3% other. 1,302 of them (97.3%) lived or had lived in Comté and 1,233 (92.2%) declared having origins in Franche-Comté. The population of Franche-Comté being in 2013, in average, 40.6 years old, with 50.9% female and 49.1% male (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques 2016), we can assume that the demographics of the northern part of the region are similar, and thus, that the sample of respondents is quite representative in terms of age, but much less in terms of gender.

I first looked at the percentages of respondents for every option that was offered for each question. Then, since many respondents had written their own answers, I turned them, when possible, into standardized answers, such as “slightly agree”, or “neutral”, with the help of an external person, Soukaïna El Mguielle. I did so in order to consider each response, when it answered the asked question, and in order to acknowledge the fact that the contestants may have wanted to reply neither “Yes”, nor “No”. For example, when a man replied “Totalement FC” (Totally Franc-comtois), when asked if he was, totally or partially of Franc-comtois origin, I turned this into a “Yes”. Likewise, when another man replied “Disons une politique de conservation de la langue comme un

pat-rimone” (Let’s say a policy of conservation of the language as a heritage), I turned it into

a “Rather yes”. I processed these results informatically using the software Microsoft Ex-cel.

I then used the software RStudio, and processed the “pure” answers (those corre-sponding to the offered choices) and then, both the “pure” and “standardized” answers. In order to do so, I turned them into numbers, and, for each question, I made a gradation from “yes” to “no”, with “slightly agree”, “maybe or neutral” and “slightly disagree” in between. For one question (If you could, would you learn Franc-comtois?), I added an extra value, corresponding to the people who said that they already knew the language.

Firstly, I wanted to study the feeling of affiliation and of belonging in Franche-Comté. In order to identify which kind of links made someone feel Franc-comtois, I tried to find if there is a relationship, on the one hand, between having lived there and feeling from there, and on the other hand, between having origins there and feeling

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comtois. Then, I tried to find a relationship between finding regional affiliations im-portant, feeling Franc-comtois, and being proud of it. I also wondered if the feeling of pride could be related to how much Franc-comtois people heard. Finally, I questioned the role of age and gender in this feeling of pride.

Secondly, I questioned the ideas towards this language, and their association with several independent variables. I first wondered if the ideas related to the place of the language were related to the amount of Franc-comtois one heard, to the ideas regarding regional identities, and/or to the feeling of pride associated with being Franc-comtois. Then, I wondered if the will to learn the language was related in any way to one feeling Franc-comtois and to one being proud of it. Here also, I questioned the role of age and gender in the ideas related to language.

I also went to Franche-Comté twice during the course of this research. The first time, I wanted to attend a colloquium dedicated to the languages of Franche-Comté, but since it was canceled due to a lack of participants, it turned into a meeting with the or-ganizer, Billy Fumey, leader of the Institut de promotion des langues régionales de

Franche-Comté. The second time, I met again with him, and he showed me around the

city of Besançon (Doubs), capital of the province from its annexation to France until the Revolution, and of the region from its creation to its fusion with Burgundy, while pre-senting and explaining to me the urban dynamic in relationship to the language. I also interviewed Marianne Meiller, the president of the Union des patoisants en langue

rom-ane de Belfort (http://patois.belfort.free.fr/), along with her father François Busser, in Belfort (Territoire de Belfort), and Alain Seguin, president of the association Neut’ bé

patois (Our beautiful patois, http://lepatoisetles1000etangs.e-monsite.com/), in Luxeuil-les-Bains (Haute-Saône), asking them questions about the activities of their associations, their members, and the state of the language, in their opinion. Finally, on my last day there, I went to Porrentruy, in the Swiss canton of Jura, where I met Claude Juillerat, former president of the Société jurassienne d’émulation (Emulation society of Jura), and Antoine Glaenzer, the cantonal archivist of Jura. However, due to technical issues, I was unable to record any of these interviews and meetings, but I took notes over the course of them.

In complement to these interviews, I sent a questionnaire to Marianne Meiller and Alain Seguin, also prepared with Google Forms (Appendix 2). This questionnaire had 23

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questions and was meant to collect data on the makeup of their respective associations, and their activities, on the one hand, and their opinion on the presence and role of the language in the society, on the other hand. In a similar fashion as with the questionnaire dedicated to the “general audience”, they had the possibility to add comments and re-marks at the end of each section and at the end of the form.

In addition to this, I studied written sources, such as research articles, press arti-cles, or books and brochures written by language groups, audiovisual sources, such as YouTube videos, movie documentaries, or radio programs, on interviews and on ques-tionnaires. Most information about the history of Franche-Comté, and about the devel-opment of Oil languages, can be obtained in books and articles, which can either deal with Franche-Comté specifically, or with the Oil languages or France more generally. Few written sources are written about the sociolinguistic situation of the Franc-Comtois language. However, some of these articles offer a very interesting and valuable historical overview of the situation. Besides, they can be used in combination with the letters to Grégoire (from the eighteenth century), with the information provided in Dondaine’s 1972 study, and with Baptizet’s 2015 movie.

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I will take into account the personalized answers, which I turned either into “yes”, “no” or “maybe” or into values falling between these offered choices. Out of all respond-ents, less than 3% had not lived in Franche-Comté, and more than 92% had Franc-comtois origins. 94% of the respondents felt Franc-Franc-comtois. For more than four fifths of the respondents, regional identity plays an important role, while for less than 16%, it does not at all. 91% were proud of being Franc-comtois, and only less than 5% were not proud at all (Figure 5).

More than three quarters of the respondents claimed that they were aware of the difference between the Franche-Comté French and the Franc-comtois language, and a fifth were not (Figure 6). On a Likert scale from 1 (always) to 5 (never), when asked how often they heard Franc-comtois being spoken, around a fifth of the respondents replied 3, 4 or 5, while 1 and 2 were only chosen by around 15% (Figure 7). However, as I will explain in subsection 6.1, the quantitative results of these two questions are hard to use because there seems to be a confusion, among many respondents, between the Franc-comtois language and the French from Franche-Comté. Nevertheless, the customized an-swers to these questions helped in providing much useful information.

0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% 80,00% 90,00% 100,00% 1 2 3 4 5

No Rather no Partly / Neutral Rather yes Yes

Figure 5: Presentation of the results to the following questions: 1. Do you live or have you lived in Franche-Comté? 2. Are you, fully or partly, of Franc-comtois origin? 3. Do you feel Franc-comtois?

4. Does regional affiliation play an important role for you? 5. Are you proud of being Franc-comtois?

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Almost two fifths of the participants said that the state and the local authorities should politically support regional languages, and around 35% said “maybe”. A majority of contestants were clearly in favor of bilingual welcome signs, and almost a fifth replied “maybe”. Likewise, when asked about bilingual street signs, the answers were rather po-larized, with a bit less than half of the respondents agreeing, and almost a third disagree-ing. However, when it comes to bilingual signs in public places (such as public transpor-tation, museums or public institutions), the responses were divided into three thirds, with those against slightly outnumbering the number of those in favor (Figure 8).

Almost half of the respondents supported the idea of offering optional Franc-comtois classes in schools, a quarter were neutral or said “maybe”, and slightly more than

No Yes

Figure 6: Are you aware of the difference bet-ween those two labels (French from Franche-Comté and Franc-comtois)?

Always Often

Sometimes Rarely Never

Figure 7: Do you hear Franc-comtois being spoken? 0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% 80,00% 90,00% 100,00% 1 2 3 4

No Rather no Maybe / Neutral Rather yes Yes

Figure 8: Presentation of the results to the following questions:

1. Do you think that the state and the local authorities (regions, departments, communes) should implement a policy of support to the Franc-comtois language?

2. Are you in favor of bilingual town signs in French and Franc-comtois? 3. Are you in favor of bilingual street signs in French and Franc-comtois?

4. Are you in favor of bilingual signs in French and Franc-comtois in other public places (signs in public transportation, in museums, in institutions...)?

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a quarter rejected it. Nevertheless, when asked about making such classes compulsory, the answers were totally different: almost three thirds against, and only a bit more than 10% replied in favor. Corroborating the interest for optional classes in schools, almost half of the respondents expressed an interest to learn the Franc-comtois language, if of-fered with the possibility, and a quarter said “maybe” or were neutral (Figure 10). When asked if they wanted Franc-comtois to have in Franche-Comté a place similar to that of Alsatian in Alsace, of Breton in Brittany, and of Basque in the Basque Country (which are notorious in France for the strength of their regional identity and the relative presence of their regional languages, as opposed to other regions), a majority were in favor, and only a quarter against (Figure 9).

0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% 80,00% 90,00% 100,00%

1

2

3

No Rather no Maybe / Neutral Rather yes Yes

1. Do you think that optional Franc-comtois classes should be offered in the region's primary and secondary schools?

2. Do you think that compulsory Franc-comtois classes should be offered in the region's prima-ry and secondaprima-ry schools?

3. Do you wish to see Franc-comtois have a place similar to that of Alsatian in Alsace, of Breton in Brittany, or of Basque in the Basque Country?

No Rather no

Maybe / Neutral Yes Already know it

Figure 10: If you could, would you learn Franc-comtois?

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The support was of lesser importance when it came to the presence of Franc-comtois in media (public TV and radio and regional newspapers), with two fifths in favor, and less than a third against (Figure 11).

6. Do you want Franc-comtois to be present in public regional media (France 3 Franche-Comté, France Bleu Besançon, France Bleu Belfort-Montbéliard)?

7. Do you want Franc-comtois to be present in regional newspapers (L'Est Républicain...)?

0,00% 10,00% 20,00% 30,00% 40,00% 50,00% 60,00% 70,00% 80,00% 90,00% 100,00%

1

2

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4.2. Quantitative analysis of the collected data

To facilitate the treatment of the data collected through the questionnaire dedi-cated to the wider public, specifically for the questions related to the opinions on the place of the regional languages, I averaged the answers given to the nine questions re-garding the opinions on the place of the regional languages (all the questions of the page 5 of the questionnaire, excepted the one regarding the will to learn the language), which I had, as mentioned in section 4, turned into a Likert scale, to account for the people who gave an answer that seemed to fall between the three categories that I had offered.

In order to find out the existence of correlations between different elements, I conducted five different Spearman’s tests (since I had made the data ordinal). The first one had the age as the independent variable (IV) and the pride of being Franc-comtois as the dependent variable (DV) (with 5 levels similar to a Likert scale); the second one had the pride of being Franc-comtois as the IV and the averaged opinions as the DV; the third one had age as the IV and the averaged opinions as the DV; the fourth one had the pride of being Franc-comtois as the IV and the will to learn the language as the DV (with 5 levels: No, Probably not, Maybe, Yes, I know it but I would learn more; I excluded an-swers from people who wrote that they already knew it and who did not show interest in studying it more); the fifth one had age as the IV and the will to learn the language as the DV. For several of these Spearman’s tests, the low number of different levels made it difficult to check the assumption of monotony. For this reason, we decided to rely on the results of the tests.

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4.3. Results of the quantitative analysis

There was no significant relationship between the age and the pride of being Franc-comtois, ρ (1310) = 0.030, p = 0.263.

There was a significant positive relationship between the pride of being Franc-comtois and the opinions in favor of the public presence of this language, ρ (1310) = 0.215, p < 0.001. The prouder someone is of being Franc-comtois, the more in favor of this language being present publicly used is. This is a small effect size.

There was almost a significant negative relationship between the age and the opinions in favor of the public presence of this language, ρ (1332) = -0.091, p < 0.001. The younger someone is, the more in favor they would be of the public presence of Franc-comtois. However, the effect is too small to be relevant.

There was a significant positive relationship between the pride of being Franc-comtois and the interest in learning the language, ρ (1263) = 0.306, p < 0.001. The prouder someone is of being comtois, the more willing they are to learn Franc-comtois. This is a medium effect size.

There was a significant negative relationship between the age and the will to learn Franc-comtois, ρ (1284) = -0.162, p < 0.001. The younger someone is, the more interested in learning Franc-comtois they are. This is a small effect size.

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5. The regional identity of Franche-Comté

5.1. A strong regional identity

The regional identity of Franche-Comté appears to be rather strong and important. This appears in the results of our research, where almost 92% of the respondents claimed to be proud or rather proud to be Franc-comtois. This feeling of pride, as it could be expected, is related to the importance given to regional affiliation. Even when only con-sidering the importance given to regional affiliation, the Franc-comtois appear to be quite attached to the presence and expression of regional identities, with more than 83% of the respondents having a positive attitude towards them.

This attachment to the Franc-comtois regional identity is also present in the “cus-tomized” responses to our questionnaire. Several respondents mentioned different ele-ments of the Franc-comtois culture (mostly the Franc-comtois cuisine) that they were proud of, such as the cheese (Cancoillotte or Comté), the Morteau sausage, the Pontarlier pastis, the landscapes (mostly the rural landscapes, the farms, but also the pine woods), the climate with the four seasons, the Montbéliarde cows, the simplicity and down-toearthness, and for one person, the FC Sochaux Montbéliard (a football club). Several also said that they were attached to the Franc-comtois history and traditions, and the tra-ditional Franc-comtois motto “Comtois rends-toi! Nenni, ma foi!” (Comtois, surrender! Nay, my faith!) appeared a dozen of times in the responses. Several respondents rejected the fusion between the regions Burgundy and Comté, claiming that Franche-Comté has its own history, its own traditions and its own identity, and they said that they did not feel any sense of belonging with this new region. Only one respondent, originally from Franche-Comté and now living in Burgundy, said that the new region made his feeling of belonging grow. Some respondents also evoked the fact that they felt or that they had felt Franc-comtois when confronted to another (regional and/or national) iden-tity, for example when travelling outside of Franche-Comté. While professing their pride of being Franc-comtois, many respondents said that they did not think that Franche-Comté was better than any other region, and that they would feel the same way about another region if they came from there.

However, in several responses, the participants regretted the fact that their region was often mocked and suffered from a negative vision and negative stereotypes. Most of

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these stereotypes are, according to them, related to the rurality, with Franc-comtois peo-ple being seen as peasants, and as too simpeo-ple. One of them wrote: “La Franche-Comté

est souvent moquée et dévalorisée alors qu’il s’agit d’une région magnifique, pleine de ressources tant naturelles, qu’historiques et culturelles. Nous sommes des gens simples, ce qui est souvent moqué également, alors que c’est quelque chose que j’apprécie énormément.” (Franche-Comté is often made fun of and denigrated, while it is a

magnif-icent region, full of resources, as much natural as historical and cultural. We are simple people, which is also often made fun of, while it is a thing that I deeply appreciate.). Another respondent wrote that she knew people who, because of this image, were not proud of their being Franc-comtois.

Some respondents, on the other side, gave contrasting answers. One of them, when asked about the importance given to regional identity, said that she found depart-mental identity more important. Another one did not feel proud of being Franc-comtois, and wrote that this region does not have an identity as strong as the Breton or the Alsatian ones. One gave importance to regional identity, but only in relation to the region where one lives. Likewise, another respondent claimed that, as of today, he feels more Breton than Franc-comtois, because he lives in Brittany.

On Facebook, the page “Je suis Comtois. Franche-Comté” (I am Franc-comtois. Franche-Comté) is liked by more than 15,600 people. This page posts and shares pictures of Franc-comtois cities, towns and landscapes, regional news, and also memes and jokes related to the region, and images to profess one’s pride of being Franc-comtois. Likewise, the page “Memes de Franche-Comté” (Franche-Comté memes), dedicated to memes in relation to the region, is followed by around 6,600 people. Below is an example of an image from the first page (Figure 12), and of a meme from the second one (Figure 13).

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Figure 12: "And on the 8th day, God created the Franc-comtois, because even Burgundians need heroes" (Je suis Franc-Comtois. Franche-Comté 2019).

Figure 13: "When you arrive at predrinks in the Haut-Doubs and you see all the bottles of 'homemade' alcohol on the table" (Memes de Franche-Comté 2019).

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5.2. The place of language in this identity

Proud Franc-comtois people tend to be more in favor of the public presence and use of the Franc-comtois language: there is indeed, as mentioned in section 4.3, a signif-icant positive relationship, albeit of a small effect size, between the pride of being Franc-comtois and the opinions on the language. Likewise, there was a significant positive re-lationship, of a small or medium effect size following the method used, between the pride of being Franc-comtois and the interest in learning the language. This means that the prouder one is of being Franc-comtois, the more in favor of its presence in society, and the more interested in learning it they are.

However, in the part dedicated to the comtois identity and pride, the Franc-comtois language was never mentioned by the participants in the study. This can be un-derstood as showing that, unlike the gastronomy and the landscapes, the Franc-comtois language is not seen as a fundamental part of the regional identity, and that Franc-comtois people rather associate their region with other distinctive elements, most of which can be shared outside of Franche-Comté (everybody can enjoy the traditional food and the re-gional landscapes, whereas in order to use the language, one must have prior knowledge of it). The elements seen as constitutive of the regional identity are “postcard-able” ele-ments: they can be shown and presented as a showcase for the region, while this is more difficult for a language which is rarely present in public spaces, and even less in its writ-ten form, unlike Breton, for example, in Brittany.

In Sorkine’s 1972 documentary, the interviewee talking about the Franc-comtois

Noëls says that, because of the decline of the language, Franc-comtois often needs to be

substituted by French. This indicates that, in these traditional pieces, which are a quite important part of the Franc-comtois folklore, the majority language replaced the tradi-tional language, which lets us question the importance given to the heritage language in the context of the transmission of these practices and works of art. However, it should be noted that, like the Franc-comtois language, the Franc-comtois Noëls were not once men-tioned by the respondents to the study in the part dedicated to identity and pride, suggest-ing that they are not perceived as an important part of the regional identity either.

In contrast to this, Billy Fumey informed me that the supporters of the FC Sochaux Montbéliard recently (around 2010) created a banner with an inscription in Franc-comtois. However, I have not been able to find any documentation regarding this

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banner, and I did not get any positive answer when I asked about it in a Facebook group for FCSM supporters. It is important to note, that the FCSM, as mentioned to me by Billy Fumey, was traditionally supported by workers of Sochaux (Doubs)’s and Montbéliard (Doubs)’s factories, mostly of the Peugeot factories, and among said workers, many came from outside of Franche-Comté (from other French regions or from abroad). The exist-ence of this banner is rather relevant in that it connects this football club, which is the most important and highest ranked football club of the region, and has a rather important place in the regional identity (it was mentioned several times by respondents, including in the part dedicated to pride and identity). Through the language, it enroots the club and, in this process, its supporters, in the folklore of this territory, regardless of the personal background of the fans, while it appears, as I will discuss later, that very few immigrants (from other French regions or from abroad) learned the Franc-comtois language.

Finally, although the Franc-comtois language does not appear to be seen as a fun-damental part of the regional identity, the Franc-comtois French is seen as important in said identity, and several respondents mentioned it, its (strong) accent and its expressions in their responses related to the Franc-comtois identity and pride. This can be explained by the fact that, unlike the Franc-comtois language, which is barely spoken nowadays, the Franc-comtois French is widely used in the region, making it easier for people to identify with something they speak and/or hear in their daily life. Another explanation can lie in the fact that on the one hand, Franc-comtois is not the only regional language of Franche-Comté, the other one being Arpitan (or Francoprovençal), and on the other hand, there is a multitude of dialects and patois of Franc-comtois, and, as we will see, there does not appear to be a widespread awareness around the Franc-comtois language as a language.

Different examples show a certain attachment and interest towards the Franche-Comté French. The Facebook page “Ce qu’un Comtois dit” (What a Franc-comtois says), followed by more than 19,000 people, presents short texts (generally a couple of sentences) in Franche-Comté French, using the typical Franche-Comté French vocabulary, and transcribing the accent using diacritics and apostrophes. This page is based on a book, Moi j’parle le comtois ! Pas toi ? (I do speak Comtois! Don’t you?), which has the same aim. Besides, as noted by Souilla in his 2015 article “Savez-vous

parler bourguignon et franc-comtois ?” (Do you speak Bourguignon and Franc-comtois?)

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Franc-comtois comedian, La Madeleine Proust, is famous and popular in the whole re-gion. She impersonates a Franc-comtois old lady, using the Franche-Comté French with a thick accent and many local expressions, making it easy for the audience to recognize situations and persons they encounter in their daily life, as mentioned in the above para-graph.

Likewise, in 2015, when asked about his “funny” Haut-Doubs accent, Lilian Re-naud, former cheese maker and winner of The Voice France, replied “Ouais, y a un

ac-cent ... assez prononcé, mais moi je l’aime bien” (Yes, there’s a rather strong acac-cent, but

I like it, Réservoir Prod 2015). Then, when the host Sophie Davant asks him if he tries to get rid of this accent, he replies “Nan, surtout pas, nan ! Je veux pas le gommer, et

puis pourquoi ?” (No, definitely not! I don’t want to erase it, and why (would I do it)?).

This shows a certain attachment to the regional accent, which is a rather distinct one, despite the negative stereotypes that it can carry, in relation to the negative clichés asso-ciated with the Franc-comtois identity in general, and in this case, in opposition to Davant calling it a “funny accent”, and asking if he tries to get rid of it, as if it were a normal process.

In line with this latter comment, many respondents, in the part regarding Franc-comtois identity and pride of the questionnaire, mentioned the bad image suffered by the Franc-comtois accent. A woman wrote that the Franc-comtois accent was “pas facile à

assumer” (difficult to be at ease with), another one said that “il faut s’habituer à notre accent” (one needs to get accustomed to [their] accent), and a man wrote “On se moque souvent de notre accent. Pour beaucoup, le Franc-comtois reste le bouseux, le pécore, le consanguin” (People often make fun of our accent. For many, Franc-comtois people are

still seen as bumpkins, rednecks, inbreds), suggesting that there is, for many people, a real stigma surrounding this accent in French.

In France, regional accents from outside Paris are often frowned upon, disre-garded and made fun of, as it has been shown in Lacroux’s 2017 article “«Mais vous

croyez vraiment percer en radio ou en télé avec votre accent?»” (‘But do you really think

you will succeed on radio or TV with your accent?’) or in Cloris’ 2018 article

“«Glot-tophobie» : quand les accents excluent” (‘Glottophobia’: when accents exclude),

specif-ically, as mentioned in the above paragraphs, the Franc-comtois accent. According to Blanchet, quoted in Cloris’ article, a study led around ten years ago showed that

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glottophobia (discrimination based on the accent) was the second cause of denial of em-ployment after xenophobia (Cloris 2018). Candera, quoted in the same article, said that “en France, on associe les accents régionaux à la ruralité et au manque d’éducation” (in France, regional accents are associated with rurality and lack of instruction, Cloris 2018), and she adds that with the ongoing homogenization, accents will only retain a folkloric function. Knowing that fact, we can say that being proud of one’s Franc-comtois accent, willingly wanting to keep and preserve it, in a context where people are pushed to adopt the Parisian accent, can be seen as a political act, an act of resistance, or at least as a statement in favor of one’s linguistic regional identity.

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6. The perception of the Franc-comtois language

6.1. Confusion between Franc-comtois and French from Franche-Comté

Despite there being a video presenting expressions in French from Franche-Comté and an audio sample of Franc-comtois to show the difference between both labels, many people seem not to have understood the third part of the questionnaire. Some of them, when asked if they were aware of the difference between those labels, answered that they did not understand the question, or asked which labels were being referred to. For others, it appeared in the responses to the following questions. For example, to the question “Is Franc-comtois spoken in your family?”, a woman replied “Oui nous utilisons

tous des expressions typiquement FC” (Yes, we all use typically Franc-comtois

expres-sions), a man wrote “Sans s’en rendre compte on utilise des expressions franc-comtoises.

C’est naturel on ne s’en rend pas compte” (Without noticing, we use Franc-comtois

ex-pressions. It is natural, we do not notice it), and another woman answered, in the remarks and comments section “Pour moi ce n’est pas un langage mais des expressions” (For me, it is expressions rather than a language).

This confusion can be found in other spaces. In the 2015 article by Souilla

“Savez-vous parler bourguignon et franc-comtois ?” (Can you speak Burgundian and

Franc-comtois?), mentioned in subsection 5.2, what is presented as “Franc-comtois” is the re-gional French from Franche-Comté, through some expressions. Likewise, the Facebook page Ce qu’un Franc-Comtois dit mentioned in subsection 5.2 also deals exclusively with this regional French and not with the Franc-comtois language. This difference is the object of a subsection in Walter’s 2008 book Aventures et mésaventures des langues de

France, where she explains that there are, on one side, languages distinct from French,

and on the other side, French language as it developed in the different regions of France (Walter 2008).

It appears, not only in the responses to the questionnaire, but also in the literature, that people more likely refer to the Franc-comtois language as “patois”. They associate this label with a town, an infra-departmental geographic area, a department or the whole region. This shows that the awareness related to the Franc-comtois language is rather linked to the local level, and thus to individual local variants and dialects of the language,

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and not on the language perceived as a whole. This distinction was emphasized to me by Alain Seguin during our meeting, because it can be source of problems when trying to write a glossary, for example. This can indeed be a problem, since the Franc-comtois language has never been widely unified nor standardized (although written standards have been established, they have never been in use in the whole Franc-comtois speaking area).

However, it is important to point out that the regional French of Franche-Comté is influenced by the regional languages existing in the region (Franc-Comtois and Fran-coprovençal), as was explained to me by Alain Seguin. Walter explains this process as being “une sorte de « grignotage » du patois par le français, ce qui créera

progressive-ment un « patois francisé », qui finira bien souvent par se confondre avec le français régional” (a sort of ‘grazing’ of patois by French, gradually creating a ‘Frenchized

pat-ois’, which will often merge with the regional French, Walter 2007, p. 168). Marconot, in a 1997 article, mentioned his mother, who used many patois words while speaking French (Marconot 1997a). An example of this influence is the use of the definite article “le” or “la” (equivalent to “the”) before people’s names, as mentioned both by loutiful in her 2016 video about the regional French (“la Francine”, the Francine, loutiful 2016), and by Busser in his book about the Franc-comtois language (“lou Djôset”, the Joseph, Busser 2013, p. 27). This situation can be compared with the influence of substrate lan-guages on two English varieties in contexts of language contact, Hong Kong English and Colloquial Singaporean English, studied by Schröter and Kortmann (Schröter, Körtmann 2016). However, a major difference between these situations is the fact that in the Franc-comtois case, a language shift process has been underway, leading to an important de-cline of the Franc-comtois language, making it an endangered.

I had decided not to use the label “patois” because of its negative connotation, inherited from the language policies of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as discussed in appendix 5. This negative meaning associated with this word is mentioned by Walter in her 2008 book, saying that this word has been treated with disdain particu-larly since the end of the nineteenth century, because of schoolteachers punishing and humiliating pupils using words in patois. However, I used two labels which, unlike

“pat-ois”, are barely used and are confusing for the respondents, as many wrote in their

an-swers. Opposing in the questionnaire the “franc-comtois”, a regional language spoken only in a part of the region, to the “français régional de Franche-Comté” (regional

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French from Franche-Comté), a variant of French spoken in the whole region, and much more used than the former, was probably a mistake. Because of this confusion, we cannot be sure of which variety the respondents were referring to in their answers, unless they explained it in a “customized” answer, making it impossible to process most answers in this part.