Regionale Wirtschaft und Förderung der bretonischen Identität und Sprache

Abstract

Regional Economy and the Promotion of the Breton Identity and Language

The use of minority languages in economic life in Europe is not always obvious, especially in countries where there is no legal right to use these languages, such as France. There, the policy of monolingualism pursued for more than two centuries has contributed significantly to the decline of all so-called “regional languages”. These languages were gradually squeezed out of the public and economic spheres, and from the 1950s onwards, there was an abrupt break in their transmission within families. In the context of a highly centralised state, it was therefore difficult over the following decades to develop a “bottom–up” revitalisation policy, which to this day encompasses various areas of social application, including the economy. Using the example of Breton, this article aims to show how the use of minority languages can be promoted in the economy by various private institutional actors and social-state partnerships. We analyse the role of the Comité d’études et de liaison des intérêts bretons (CÉLIB), the Produit en Bretagne business network and the Office public de la langue bretonne.