Louis-Jean Calvet Explained

Louis-Jean Calvet (born 5 June 1942) is a French linguist.[1] [2] [3]

Biography

As a student at the University of Nice, where he was a student of linguist Pierre Guiraud, Calvet was elected in 1964 to the national bureau of the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France. There, he was in charge of information and held the position of chief editor for the monthly publication 21.27. Then, as a student at the Sorbonne with André Martinet, he pursued a doctoral thesis titled Le système des sigles en français contemporain ("The System of Acronyms in Contemporary France"),[4] and then another doctorate on "Langue, corps, société" ("Language, Body, Society").[5] Calvet was first professor at Paris Descartes University, and then at Aix-Marseille University, a position that he held until 2012.

From his first publication (Linguistique et colonialisme, in which he first introduced his concept of glottophagy), he has analyzed the relationships between linguistic discourse and colonial discourse on languages, as well as the links between language and power (La Guerre des langues, 1987) and the linguistic role of cities (Les Voix de la ville, 1994). He thus participated in the creation of a French field of sociolinguistics, of which he is one of the most well known representatives. His works have been translated in over twenty languages, and he has been invited to speak at numerous universities all over the world.

Having been the director of the Languages and Societies collection at the publishing house Payot for several years, he has published the works of authors such as Sylvain Auroux, André Martinet, André Chervel, Christian Cuxac, Tullio De Mauro, Ivan Fonagy, Pierre Guiraud, Nancy Huston, Morris Swadesh, Jean-Didier Urbain, Marina Yaguello, etc. In addition to his academic activities, Calvet is also a journalist, contributing to the weekly publication Politique hebdo, in which he takes on cultural phenomena, in particular music, from a sociological and political standpoint, as well as writing about ethnic and linguistic minorities.

Publications

Honours

He was awarded the Sociolinguists Worldwide Award in 2012, the Ptolemy prize from the International Forum of Geography in 2016,[6] and the George Dumézil prize from the Académie Française in 2017 for his word La Méditerranée, mer de nos langues ("The Mediterranean, sea of our languages").[7]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: De vive(s) voix - Louis-Jean Calvet enquête sur les "glottotropies". January 6, 2020. RFI.
  2. Web site: "La Mediterranee: mer de nos langues" di Louis-Jean Calvet - SaltinAria.it - Teatro, Musica, Libri, Cultura, News. Sophie. Moreau. www.saltinaria.it.
  3. Web site: Macron Wants a French Empire Built on Language. Aaron. Timms.
  4. [Système universitaire de documentation|SUDOC]
  5. [Système universitaire de documentation|SUDOC]
  6. "FIG - Louis-Jean Calvet et Patrick Leigh Fermor doubles lauréats du prix Ptolémée 2016 - Saint-Dié Info" archive
  7. Web site: Prix Georges Dumézil Académie française. live. http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.academie-francaise.fr%2Fprix-georges-dumezil. 2020-09-24. 2021-07-25. www.academie-francaise.fr.