Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Minority languages and language revitalisation 95
whether from outside Brittany or simply from other Breton-speaking communes,
and the resulting very attenuated sense of a wider Breton identity, realised through
the language, certainly appears to be one of the factors contributing to its decline,
whose course we now turn to examine in a little further detail.
Charting the decline of Breton
For many commentators (e.g. Press 1992, Moal 2000, Texier and O’Neill 2000), the
decline of Breton is traceable back to the Duchy period of the late Middle Ages,
when the upper strata of Breton society – the aristocracy and higher clergy – adopted
French in recognition of its greater prestige and power, leaving Breton to the lower
social orders – the peasantry, the workers, the fishermen and craftsmen. Around the
same time French established itself in the towns, there developing an ascendancy that
over time restricted Breton mainly to the countryside and to rural life.
The French Revolution of 1789 marks a further stage in Breton’s decline, for, from
this period on, the Jacobin legacy of a centralised state unified around the French
language cast a dark shadow over regional languages, which were viewed as a
potential threat to the integrity of France and to the ideal of one state, one nation,
one language (see Judge 2000). One expression of this ideology was the exclusion of
Breton from the domains of education, law and administration; another, in its most
malign form, was its denigration by public authorities. We have already provided
examples of this, but it is not difficult to find others: for example, as late as 1927 we
find the National Minister for Education, de Monzie, declaring that:
Pour l’unité de la France, la langue bretonne doit disparaître. [For the linguistic
unity of France, the Breton language must disappear] (Kuter 1989: 78)
Not surprisingly, such hostility, combined with domain restriction, encumbered
Breton with a negative symbolism, which was eventually internalised by its speakers.
It came to be seen – by outsiders and Bretons themselves – as a social handicap, as a
marker of a backward peasant identity and as a ‘barbarous relic’ (Timm 1980: 33),
and it was this as much as any other factor that prepared the way for the later collapse
of intergenerational transmission.
The introduction of free, compulsory and secular elementary education under the
Jules Ferry laws of 1882 to 1887, the establishment of universal military conscription
in 1889 and the development of the railways, which reached Brest in 1864, all also
played a part in undermining Breton: the first two because they were instrumental
in disseminating French–Breton bilingualism, a necessary condition, of course, for
bringing up the next generation as French speakers, and the last because it paved the
way for an increased out-migration of young Bretons to the Paris region in search of
employment opportunities.
To these may be added the First World War, which drew a large proportion of
the Breton male population into the French-speaking military, and during which
an estimated 120,000 Bretons were killed (Press 1994: 217). In their absence, the
women assumed a greater role in the management of farm businesses, bringing them