LE FRANÇAIS EN VALLÉE D’AOSTE -À la recherche d’une langue perdue?

Abstract

The Aosta Valley is an autonomous region in North-Eastern Italy, where for historical reasons the French language is the official language together with Italian, however little spoken today. The purpose of this study is to examine the present situation of the French language in the Aosta Valley. What is its role in daily life and in which domains? What is its influence on peoples’ identity? Is the French language disappearing? Our method was to make a number of interviews based on a questionnaire. We visited the Aosta Valley in October 2015 and made interviews with seventeen residents. Before designing the questionnaire we consulted earlier research and especially the thesis of J-F Josserand (2003), to be able to make some comparisons. Our study shows that the situation of the French language is very complex, if not a paradox, and that French is still very important for the regional identity (which is much stronger than the national identity) both as a symbol of autonomy and as a political instrument. There is a total consensus that French should remain the official language and continue to be compulsory in school, even if there is a certain pessimism concerning the future. However, we can conclude that we have found that the French language is not yet lost.