Entretien avec le sociolinguiste Louis-Jean Calvet : " Si la langue est un « fait social » comme on l’a souvent dit, la linguistique devrait être une science sociale".

Interview with sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet: "If language is a "social fact" as has often been said, linguistics should be a social science."

Abstract

In this contribution, we present an interview with sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet, Professor at the Sorbonne (Université René Descartes) until 1999, then at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille 1). Through this exchange, Mr. Calvet shared his professional, academic and scientific experiences, while shedding light on various fundamental notions, such as spoken languages, the status of languages, official languages and other related concepts. Furthermore, in this reflection, he highlighted a phenomenon relating to the dynamics of linguistic populations, which he characterizes by the achievement of what he considers to be a maximum biomass, to then enter a logistic growth phase, marked by structural changes in the evolution of linguistic groups.