Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

104 Language Planning and Education
One should not overlook, moreover, increased provision of Breton teaching at the
universities of Brittany – Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes, Université Catholique de
l’Ouest (UCO) – where in 2003 an estimated 769 students were enrolled on single
or dual degree courses, or, indeed, on courses for adults more generally. Enrolment
on the latter, principally evening classes, stood at around 5,400 individuals, and
further numbers participated in summer camps for learners and Breton enthusiasts,
the best known of which are those run by the KEAV organisation (Kamp Etrekeltiek
ar Vrezhonegerien).
Beyond the education domain, Breton has extended its presence in the broadcast
media with the arrival on air in September 2000 of a new, privately funded digital
TV channel, TV-Breizh, which now provides competition for the very limited
Breton-language output (four hours weekly) of the existing terrestrial channel,
France-Ouest (Moal 2000). On radio, meanwhile, France-Bleu Breiz-Izel, part of the
national network, broadcasts two hours of Breton programmes daily, adding to the
output of four independent local radio stations. In the print media, there are a variety
of weekly, monthly and quarterly Breton-language publications, all with restricted
circulations, but no daily Breton newspaper. The two regional dailies – Le Télégramme
and Ouest-France – are almost entirely in French, though they do carry
weekly Breton-language columns, focusing mainly on language learning issues
(Texier and O’Neill 2000). Another development worth mentioning is the
establishment in 1999 of a language promotion agency, the Office of the Breton
Language (Ofis ar Brezhoneg), but as its powers and remit are still uncertain, it is
difficult to gauge its eventual impact.
4.3.3.1 Weaknesses in Breton revitalisation
There is progress to report, then, but there are also weaknesses, one of the most
significant of which is the division within the Breton-speaking community between
native speakers and néo-bretonnants, the principal activists of the revitalisation
movement (McDonald 1989; Jones 1998a, 1998b). The latter, like some other
minority language movements (e.g. the Irish case), has a membership that is
predominantly middle class, educated and politically mobilised, and this sets it apart
socially and politically from the mainly elderly, country-dwelling native speakers,
who tend to be illiterate in Breton and inclined – after decades of state-led marginalisation
of the language – to regard it negatively.
The social meanings attached to the Breton language by the two groups are,
therefore, quite different. For the native speakers, Breton is, as suggested earlier, an
expression of a local, parochial identity, one that they are not unhappy to leave
behind: ‘tout ça [Breton], c’est le passé ’ (all that’s in the past) was the comment of
one of Jones’s informants (1998b: 135). The néo-bretonnants, on the other hand,
passionate in their support for Breton-medium education, see the language as an
indispensable constituent of a regional pan-Breton identity.
Reinforcing, and perhaps underpinning, these contrasting outlooks are differences
in the kind of Breton used. Native bretonnants mainly speak a home-transmitted