Douglas Kibbee
Office Number: 4072B FLB
Phone: 244-3252
Email: dkibbee@illinois.edu
My work has focused on the history of the French language and the history of linguistic theories. In recent years, these have been combined with an interest in how humanistic research informs and is informed by public policy. This has led to a detailed study of the history of language legislation in France, from the period when Latin was competing with Gaulish through the latest battles against anglicisms. I have published books on the history of the teaching of French in England and on language legislation and linguistic human rights.
My current research focuses on the nature of prescriptivism in linguistic behavior. In collaboration with scholars in France and the UK, we are creating databases of prescriptive materials, from the 17th into the 21st century in order to study what is prescribed or proscribed, how these attitudes are justified and disseminated, and their effectiveness.
Recent students have completed theses on language debates during the French Revolution, the history of the baccalauréat exam and its relationship to language policy and linguistic theory in the 19th and 20th centuries, borrowings from French, English and Arabic in the Senegalese language Wolof, and issues of translatability of concepts between English and French.
Course taught include:
- Histoire de la langue française
- History of Linguistics
- Language and the Law
- Language and Public Policy
- Les langues de France
- La lexicologie
Publications include:
Books
1998 Language Legislation and Linguistic Rights. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Editor)
1991 New Analysis of Romance Languages: Proceedings of the 18th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Edited, with Dieter Wanner)
1991 For to Speke French Trewely The French Language in England, 1000-1600: Its Status, Description and Instruction. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. iv + 268 pp.
2007 Selected Papers from the Tenth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences. Amsterdam/ Philadephia: John Benjamins. (Editor)
2006 French: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (with Zsuzsanna Fagyal and Frederick Jenkins)
2005 Voices of the Elders: An Evening of Stories with the Baoulé (Wortkunst und Dokumentartexte in Afrikanischen Sprache, 22). Hamburg: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag (Translation of Baoulé folktales -Côte d'Ivoire)
Forthcoming: Critical edition of Scipion Dupleix's Liberté de la langue française dans sa pureté (1651). Librairie Honoré Champion. (in collaboration with Marcus Keller)
Articles
2008 "Minority Language Rights: Historical and Comparative Perspectives". Intercultural Human Rights Law Review 3.79-136.
2004 "The boundaries of nature in the discipline of linguistics". Language Sciences 26.301-311
2003 "Language policy and linguistic theory" in Languages in a Globalising World edited by Jacques Maurais, and Michael A. Morris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 47-57.
2003 "Growing pains: Territorial expansion and language policy in France from Villers-Cotterêts to the Revolution" Interpreting the history of French. A Festschrift for Peter Rickard on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, Wendy Ayres-Bennett & Rodney Sampson, eds., Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi Press, pp. 313-328.
2003 "Les textes autoritaires, sources des normes linguistiques" Histoire Épistémologie Langage 24.5-27.
2003 "When Children’s Literature Transcends its Genre: Translating Alice in Wonderland" Meta 48.307-321.
2003 "Le développement d’une pédagogie du français langue étrangère: les pronoms relatifs en qu-" Langue française.139.59-72.
2003 "La Romania submersa dans les îles britanniques: après 1066" (Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Histoire linguistique de la Romania, Gerhard Ernst, Martin-Dietrich Gleßgen, Christian Schmitt, Wolfgang Schweickard, eds., Tubingen: Niemeyer, pp. 717-726)
2003 "Louis Meigret, le parler lyonnais et les politiques de la langue française à la Renaissance" In Lyon et la défense et illustration de la langue française, Gérard Dufaux, ed., Lyon: ENS Éditions, pp. 63-75.