L'(in)sécurité linguistique et les locuteurs francoprovençaux de l'Italie du Sud

Speakers’ attitudes and linguistic representations play a crucial role in the dynamics of maintenance/loss of endangered languages. Researches have shown the importance of psycholinguistic parameters in the study of such languages. This article deals with an analysis of some Franco-Provençal minority languages spoken in Faeto and Celle San Vito (Apulia, Italy). The analysis focuses on the relationship between the self-assessment of the competence of Franco-Provençal─an endangered language─and the level of the linguistic security/insecurity shown by native speakers. The epilinguistic discourse reveals that Franco-Provençal encourages a strong feeling of a statutory and identity security. On the other hand, the clearly positive self-assessment of the Franco-Provençal competence is an indication of a formal security. The feeling of linguistic security involves therefore the representational and symbolic dimension of Franco-Provençal. Several linguistic behaviors declared by speakers also reveal, however, the instability of such a feeling of linguistic security. Finally, the analysis of the lexical competence, based on data elicited by translating words from and into Franco-Provençal, brings out a feeling of formal linguistic insecurity, which speakers generally tend to conceal.