Purism in Language Conflict: How Language Use Builds Frontiers

The present article deals with a little-known episode of Swiss history, namely the language conflict that led in 1978 to the creation of the 26th Swiss canton: the Jura. Particularly, it focuses on the linguistic purism pervading the Jura Libre (the main publication of the autonomists) in the 1960s and 1970s. ln its content, this purist discourse is not particular to French or to the Jura. In the context of the Question jurassienne, however, it takes on a very interesting political role which can be best explained by taking into account the ideological framework of the Jura autonomist movement regarding languages (the threat of Germanisation, linguistic relativism, ethnie française , the mythical clarity of French). Thus, this article argues that, in the Jura, the linguistic purism of the autonomist movement is part of a political strategy aiming to promote the rationality of mind necessary to any national emancipation, and the cultural coherence essential to the construction of a symbolic and political frontier