A student at the University of Nice, where he was a pupil of the linguist Pierre Guiraud, Calvet was elected in 1964 to the national office of the National Union of Students of France. He was in charge of information there and held the position of editor-in-chief of the monthly 21.27. Then, studying at the Sorbonne with André Martinet, he pursued a doctoral thesis entitled “The system of acronyms in contemporary French”, then another doctorate on “Langue, corps, société” (“Language, body, society”). Calvet was first a professor at Paris Descartes University, then at Aix-Marseille University, a position he held until 2012.
From his very first publication (Linguistique et colonialisme, in which he introduced his concept of glottophagy for the first time), he analyzed the relationship between linguistic discourse and colonial discourse on languages, as well as the links between language and power (La Guerre des Langues , 1987) and the linguistic role of cities (Les Voix de la ville, 1994). He thus participated in the creation of a French field of sociolinguistics, of which he is one of the best known representatives. His works have been translated into over twenty languages and he has been invited to speak at many universities around the world. Director of the Languages and Societies collection at Payot editions for several years, he has published the works of authors such as Sylvain Auroux, André Martinet, André Chervel, Christian Cuxac, Tullio De Mauro, Ivan Fonagy, Pierre Guiraud, Nancy Huston, Morris Swadesh, Jean-Didier Urbain, Marina Yaguello, etc. In addition to his academic activities, Calvet is also a journalist, collaborating with the weekly Politique hebdo, in which he discusses cultural phenomena, notably musical, from a sociological and political point of view, as well as writings on ethnic and linguistic minorities. He received the Sociolinguists Worldwide Award in 2012, the Ptolémée Prize from the International Forum of Geography in 2016 and the George Dumézil Prize from the French Academy in 2017 for his word La Méditerranée, mer de nos langues. , sea of our tongues”).
Source : Wikipédia
Journey and research of an atypical linguist | Canal U (canal-u.tv) (2006) Canal U (canal-u.tv) House of Human Sciences Foundation[/caption]
