Conquête, survie et disparition. Italien, français et francoprovençal en Vallée d’Aoste

Sammanfattning: The present study deals with the linguistic situation in the Aosta Valley, which is situated in Northern Italy. Several languages, dialects as well as "patois" are used in this area and this thesis concerns three of them, namely Francoprovençal, French and Italian. Francoprovençal used to be the language of the people but is now decreasing. French was until the reunification of Italy in 1861 the language of religion, culture and administration but is now, in spite of the official bilingualism, more a symbol than a language. Italian, which was hardly spoken in this area a hundred years ago, is now the dominant language and the Aosta Valley tends to be unilingual.The study is based on a corpus established in 1998 and which consists of a questionnaire on linguistic abilities, habits and attitudes concerning the three linguistic varieties named above. The domains in which a language is used are essential for its existence and survival, and this thesis focuses on the vitality of Italian, French and Francoprovençal within the family, the community and the arts. The presence or absence of a language in a domain of use depends on several factors, such as environment, culture, economy and identity. Individual identity is considered in this study to be the most important factor for the survival or the death of a language and every result is therefore measured in relation to identity. This thesis makes a distinction between active identity, that may constantly change, and basic identity, which is inherited.