Patrick Sauzet University of Paris 8 - Vincennes-Saint-Denis Department of Linguistics 2, rue de la Liberté F-93526 Saint Denis cédex 02 Languages and desire. Two types of conceptions seem to prevail in the field of sociolinguistics:

the first one emphasises the complementarity, not to say the functional harmony, of coexisting languages or linguistic varieties, the other one puts forward the notion of conflict. It seems more relevant to me to centre the analysis of past situations, and to organise language planning endeavours as well, around the notion of desire. According to René Girard's approach, desire is basically a mimetic process, the expression of which is kept under strict control and even tabooed in traditional societies, but enjoys an unprecedented latitude within modern societies. If so understood, desire both allows to explain diglossic stability and linguistic substitution. Put otherwise, it both explains what seems to be order and what seems to be a conflict evolving toward its resolution. In the case of Occitan, a long diglossic period, lasting at least from 16th to 19th century, corresponds to a time when mimesis, imitation of prestigious models, was subjected to a global social censure. Censure of prestigious linguistic models only was a special case. This illuminates why depreciation didn't entail substitution.
Conversely, the evidently rapid substitution process prevailing in the 20th century, corresponds to a general release of mimetic taboos within societies. The relative prestige of competing languages was not modified in the passage from one situation to the other. But the attitude toward prestigious things (prestigious linguistic varieties in particular) did change.
Desire not only allows to understand the history of Occitan. It also makes it possible to think of a future for this language. We cannot rely on the linguistic inertia a large number of illiterate monolinguals to ensure a future for Occitan. Such illiterate monolinguals no longer exist. Neither can we expect that some economical constraint would make Occitan necessary for one's survival or social advancement. People are likely to choose Occitan only insofar it is a desirable language. What can be said about the desire for Occitan today? Indeed, some form of desirability results from the very marginalisation of the language. Occitan turns out valorised as an unlearnable "patois", a form of language one can possess but could not possibly acquire. Of course such a valorisation is not exactly fit to trigger a social promotion of Occitan. It is only allows individuals to enjoy what remains of it.
I do not suggest to censure enjoying an intimate or private language, which according to the formula coined by Pierre Bourdieu, is "out of market". I only want to emphasise that this cannot be the only attitude toward Occitan, if we want this language to remain a living language. In the process of establishing such new attitudes, Occitan must unreluctantly be presented as a prestigious language : a culture language endowed with an old and rich literature, an elaborated language able to cope with all intellectual domains. Prestige can also result from associating the Occitan language to the efforts toward economical growth made by the Occitan speaking "Regions". Notwithstanding the heavy centralist French tradition, Regional institutions are now gaining strength. Relations with neighbouring entities across state boundaries (Catalonia in the first place) intensify. Cultural identity, of which language is a central and decisive part, can be involved as a symbol of these new trends. Hence the Occitan language may result connoted as something modern and dynamic. Such a valorisation is likely to receive some adhesion as knowledge of French is no longer at stake: everyone knows French now (in France) and so the prestige attached to this knowledge reduces. What we have to do then, is to make Occitan available and accessible, in order for valorisation to entail learning the language and speaking it. This doesn't preclude Occitan language from being felt, at the same time, as a linguistic medium closely connected to personal experience, as an intimate language. This relation with the language can be established even through some few extant remains: a couple of stock phases and words borrowed into local Southern French. Of course, it can also involve more extensive contact with traditional dialectal practice.
Compounding the various figures of the Occitan language, viz. Occitan as culture language and Occitan as a language of intimacy, allows to diversify the attitudes toward this language and should increase its attractiveness. A gain in social use depends on this diversification, as the promotion of unidimensional representations of occitanophony by linguistic militants often inefficiently confronted the reduction process which assigns to the Occitan "patois" the only role of being the negative face of the French language.