Cultural Production in the Corsican Language: An Identity Field in the Making

Abstract

Fields of language practice such as education, the media, the civil service, or, indeed, literature are all places where official, and therefore institutionalised languages, prevail. At the same time, they open up spaces of social values and recognition, thus offering the opportunity for declining minority languages to enter and permeate those spaces. This is why a strategy of active promotion of minority cultures is needed to ensure that they are not controlled by the dominant practices. The Corsican language is a case in point. This essay introduces three forms of identity-expression in Corsican literature – namely oraliture, militant writing, and Literature – and subsequently relocates the above issues within the cultural context of Corsica.