The Use of Occitan in Practice: The Great Representatives of the Institute for Occitan Studies in the Second Half of the 20th Century
Abstract
One of the most important missions of the modern Occitan movement consisted, since its establishment in the 19th century, in the defence and propagation of the Occitan language. That observation is evident, but only at the theoretical level.
If we put aside the proclamations and the program of the movement, what practice will we discover? Not only the existing literature, but also consultations agreed by some of the best-informed researchers (Georg Kremnitz, Christian Lagarde, François Pic, Patrick Sauzet) demonstrate that the question of the use of Occitan in everyday life among the representatives of the movement has not yet been scientifically researched or documented. The author of the contribution will focus on the linguistic practice of the great personalities of the Occitan movement that has been structured and concentrated since 1945 around the Institut d'Estudis Occitans (IEO), namely Max Roqueta, Robèrt Lafont, Bernat Lesfargas, Bernat Manciet and others.
The communication will summarize the results of a survey, carried out in the fall and winter of 2022 within the community of Occitan regionalists and within the families of the personalities concerned, and will compare those results with the written linguistic practice, evidenced by the voluminous correspondence of Bernat Lesfargas. The communication is based on wider research, carried out as part of a thesis project, which tries to analyse the network of Catalan contacts of the Occitan poet, translator, editor, teacher and activist Bernat Lesfargas.