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linguistics

Claude Hagege : A Linguist and a Professor

by Emmanuel Thevenon
For the first time in France, the highest award of the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) has been given to a linguist. Claude Hagege, a professor at the College de France, is a polyglot humanist who has drawn up a new linguistic theory by comparing the various languages in the world.
IN 1985. during the literary television programme called Apostrophes. presented by Bernard Pivot. France was completely won over by the intervention of Claude Hagege who had come to present his latest work "L 'Homme de Paroles'. This essay on theoretical linguistics, written bj' a professor at the ‘Ecole Pratique des Hatties Eludes, was to become a big bookshop success, in spite of the harshness of the words. Since then. Claude Hagege has restored linguistics to the brilliant image that it had with Naom Chomsky s generative grammar, before it once again became considered as a merely technical subject.
The French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) is giving its award to a sharp shooter of linguistics" as Hagege calls himself. In spite of his reputation. Claude Hagege does not head the laboratory of languages and civilisations with oral traditions in which he works. Besides the internationally famous research carried out by this professor who holds the chair of theoreti cal linguistics at the College de France, the CNRS also distinguishes a subject which is undergoing a revival. Today, to meet new challenges (language teaching, dialogue between man and machine, the context of communication, etc.), the "sciences oi language" are increasingly linked up to such diversified areas as psychology, data-processing, biology or the cognitive sciences (which study the structure of knowledge in man). Claude Hagege is no doubt quite familiar with this development.
Claude Hagege is fascinated by languages from (he most common ones to
the rarest. This linguist, with a classical background, who was born in Tunis in 1936. has carried out research in the field in Cameroon. British Columbia (Canada) and Micronesia, everywhere where there were still languages waiting to be discovered such as Tikar, Comox-Laamen and Palauan.
As a polyglot, he can speak many languages with an oral tradition (abbbt a hundred) and perfectly masters the great international languages in which he can give lectures (from the Germanic languages to the Semitic languages and including Chinese and several Slavonic and-Romance languages).
Claude Hagege. who is a follower of the Russian writer Babel, does not seek to simply accumulate knowledge out of a love of languages. Studying them in depth is also a means of defining a theory making it possible to take into account the notions of diversity and linguistic variation. His research has made it possible to find fault with numerous simplistic theories which were in vogue in the 60s. Claude Hagege re7 fuses the primacy of syntax and severely criticized the supporters of a formal linguistics reduced to pure logic which ignored any historical and social dimension. Languages are not empty goatskins', he is fond of pointing out. They are spoken by human communities and reflect their cultures. They have a history and contribute to defining individual identities and societies.”
According to him. man is an "engineer of languages ". He is often more aware of the facts of language than one might think and he is able to deliberately take part in building vocabulary.
As an example, the linguist cites an informer of a Cameroonian language who called his tape-recorder a "calebasse a paroles" (word-gourd). "The term was so well created and so accurate", he explained. "that it was immediately adopted by the community.”
In spite of their continuous renewal, languages, like all human activities, are bound to disappear in the more or less Icing term. At the end of this century, the phenomenon, which has taken on pro-■portions that are unprecedented in the history of mankind, has become "one of the most serious cultural tragedies of our time". Hundreds of languages are threatened with extinction today, including nearly two hundred for Africa alone. "Out of the 4.500 to 6,000 existing today, there might only be a few hundred left by the year 2150".
The threatened richness of the plurality of languages and means of expression has led Claude Hagege to be interested in language policies, in the last few years. After a book devoted to the French language "Le Francais et les Siecles", the linguist has studied the future and the fate of European languages in both scientific terms and as a humanist. "What makes the originality of Europe", he considers, "is the immense diversity of the languages and cultures that they reflect. The domination of a single language, such as English, does not satisfy this destiny. A permanent openness to diversity can alone satisfy it. Europeans live plurilingualism. They should bring up their sons and daughters in the variety of language and not in the singleness".
— L'actualite en France