Poeticizing the economy: The Corsican language in a nexus of pride and profit

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the carefully managed semiotic complex found in the Corsican village of Pigna with respect to the themes of pride and profit in the valuation of minority languages. This complex includes the careful coordination of color, graphics, the use of the Corsican language, as well as high-tech soundscaping of place through QR codes that tie specific locales to Corsican music and multilingual texts. This display, labeled the “poeticizing of the economy” by a key social actor, is directed both at the many tourists who visit the village as well as Corsican visitors and locals. It is linked to an effort to embed Corsican linguistic and musical heritage in new practices that both create place and integrate tradition and modernity. On the one hand, these practices can be linked to discourses of both “pride” and “profit” (Duchêne and Heller 2012) attested in many minority language contexts. On the other hand, I argue that the Pigna esthetic indexes a shift in the framework for cultural and linguistic revitalization from one that emphasizes a return to past native speaker communicative practice to one that focuses on the collective agency and identity associated with style and stylization and “transactional,” or situated authenticities.