Written multilingualism challenging French hegemony in the cemetery

Abstract

This study examines how a historical, multilingual space is written and constructed, thus questioning monolingual French language ideology. Two cemeteries in Menton, next to the Italian border on the French Riviera, were visited and documented. The presence of Italian is clearly observable, because of the historic proximity to Italy. But also many other languages are represented, such as for example English, Russian, Polish or German: the city also has a history of being a therapeutic town where many foreigners spent time to recover or stayed because of a mild climate. This is also reflected in the linguistic landscape of the cemeteries. Building on the notions of space/place and of heterotopia, the cemeteries are examined from a qualitative, interpretative perspective. Iconicity in writing and script choice is discussed, as well as multilingualism both on cemetery level, and as pertaining to individual tombstones. The construction of linguistic spaces is examined. The results show that other national languages in the cemeteries do not challenge national French as such. However, graves of African soldiers may still question France’s colonial history and the presence of Occitan can be seen as a reminder of a former vernacular.