UNDERSTANDING THE STATUS OF FRENCH IN THE AOSTA VALLEY: A MOTHER TONGUE OR A SECOND LANGUAGE?
French in the Aosta Valley is still an underexplored area of the Francophonie, which prompts a revision of its status in a multilingual region. More than half a image/svg+xml century has passed since French regained its oﬃ cial status on a par with Italian in the Aosta Valley in 1948, which is a signiﬁ cant period to estimate its revitalization. At the turn of the 21st century, ﬁ rst sociolinguistic studies were carried out in the region. The article analyzes the results obtained in two previous sociolinguistic surveys and presents results of recent research into Valdôtain French. The data obtained from oral and written questionnaires in 2015-2020 show that a limited stratum of inhabitants of the Aosta Valley deﬁ ne French as their mother tongue, paired with another language (Italian or Francoprovençal). For the majority of Valdostanians, French is a second language, which, on the one hand, accounts for a high degree of their linguistic insecurity and on the other hand, indicates a language shift, a transit from French as a mother tongue to French as a second language in the Aosta Valley.