Alsatian Acts of Identity: Language Use and Language Attitudes in Alsace

This study examines language use, language attitudes and identity processes in Alsace, France, where a German dialect has been spoken for fifteen centuries. Since 1945, dialectal use has rapidly lost ground to French because of the social, economic, and political dominance of the national language. Fieldwork investigation of macro level language use - through a questionnaire survey of adults and secondary school students - found clear intergenerational changes in mother tongue claiming, language proficiency and language use; additional language choice variables were identified. An ethnographic approach was used to investigate micro level language use, through analysis of recorded in situ conversations. Language choice and code-switching are shown to be important resources in the bilingual linguistic repertoire. The examination of attitudes of dialect and non-dialect speakers towards Alsatian, French and High German shows that overtly positive attitudes towards the dialect do not correlate with dialect use. Le Page's and Tabouret Keller's 'Acts of Identity' hypothesis contributes to the understanding of the Alsatian situation, since changes in linguistic behaviour have gone hand in hand with changes in value and group identification. A history of Alsace, a survey of previous research and an informal description of the dialect are given as background to the study.