Biography

Born January 1, 1936 in Tunis
Agrégé de lettres classiques (1958)
Degrees in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and Russian
Docteur d'État in Linguistics (1971)
Holder of the Chair of Linguistic Theory at the Collège de France
Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études (section IV "historical and philological sciences")

Career

1959-1961 : Teacher at the Lycée Carnot in Tunis
1963-1966 : Teacher at lycées Victor Duruy and Saint-Louis in Paris
1966-1970 : Research attaché at the CNRS (General Linguistics, African Linguistics)
1970-1988 : Maître de conférences, then Professor of Linguistics at the University of Poitiers
1971-1974 : Lecturer in General Linguistics at the University of Paris XII - Val de Marne
1976-1978 : Lecturer in Phonology at the University of Paris IV
1977-1978 : Lecturer in General Linguistics at the University of Paris III
Depuis 1977 : Director of Studies at the École pratique de hautes études
Depuis 1988 : Chair of Professor of Linguistic Theory at the Collège de France

Books and publications

Author and co-author of a hundred-odd scientific articles - co-director of six volumes of an important work entitled La réforme des langues - author of about fifteen books, in particular: La grammaire générative. Réflexion critique, PUF, 1976 - L'homme de paroles, Fayard, 1985 - La structure des langues, Que sais-je?, 1986 - Le français et les siècles, Odile Jacob, 1987 - Le souffle de la langue. Voies et destins des parlers d'Europe, Odile Jacob, 1992.

Awards

Prix Volney, awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for a book on Chinese grammar (1981) - Grand Prix de l'Essai, awarded by the Société des Gens de Lettres for the book, L'homme de Paroles (1986) - Prix de l'Académie Françaisefor the same book (1986) - Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1989) - Officier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques (1995) - Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1995).

Claude Hagège is a classically trained fieldwork linguist who conducts research in the Cameroons, British Columbia, Micronesia and wherever languages exist that have not yet been studied. From an academic point of view, languages such as tikar, comox-lhamen and palau not being studied at university, it is not surprising that Hagège's itinerary led to the Ecole pratique de hautes études. What is more unusual, however, is that it should have also led to an honor such as the Chair of Theoretical Linguistics at the Collège de France. What explains Hagège's exceptional career?

Theoretician and polygot as well, in addition to speaking several oral-tradition languages, Claude Hagège has perfect command of the main international languages and is known to lecture in a number of Germanic and Semitic languages, Chinese, several Slavic and Romance languages. Both as a researcher and a university professor, he has always made it a rule not to accept any simplifying model: his critical essays on generative grammar explain his refusal of abstract universalism (logicism), the primacy of a single dimension in language (syntax) or any idealized model of linguistic competence minimizing the importance of variations. On this point, he says:

This very innovative criticism, formulated by Claude Hagège in respect to formal grammars and chomskyism - the theories of Chomsky and his disciples, whose generative models date back to the 60s - is one of the contributions that gave a new start to research in typology, linguistic comparison and cognitive gramar, fields currently recognized and reemerging throughout the world. Thus, without too much theoretical pretension, it can certainly be said that this cautious and reserved approach has played a catalyzing, if not pioneering role, deserving of official recognition today.

Sharp and critical minds do often find it necessary to call into question and even negate theories in vogue in order to assert the relevance of their own positions. And if, over the past two decades, Hagège has defended his own theses against those of the prevailing model, their underlying truths become more evident day by day as we confront the difficulties of automatic translation and the ups and down of linguistic policies. For Hagège, the "hard core" of languages may well be grammar, but human communication also involves the conceptualization of reality in a given culture and a given society. That is the fundamental lesson of the ethnolinguistic tradition of fieldwork to which Hagège owes his three-points-of-view theory, focusing on the articulation between forms, meanings and usages.

This theory was introduced to the general public in a book published in 1985, L'homme de paroles, " The Man of Words ". The book created a considerable stir and its huge success with the public was also the result of an appearance on Bernard Pivot's TV program, Apostrophes, in which Hagège demonstrated a marvelous capacity to communicate the essence of his extremely complex and sophisticated research to the layman. This can be considered a talent in itself and one worthy of recognition - for whatever reserve a scientist might have about the use of the media, one of the essential missions of any researcher is to communicate the results of his studies, and in this domain, Claude Hagège has achieved singular eminence. L'homme de paroles is a brilliant synthesis that shows the mastery of his subject that this extraordinarily cultivated linguist, in perfect command of a few dozen languages and with knowledge and experience of hundreds of others, has achieved. On the one hand, it discusses the language of that which is universal, which reflects the human condition and is the domain of general linguistics at a high level; and on the other, the irreducible margin of variation in all language practice that makes fieldwork linguistics a necessity. In that sense, for Hagège, the typology of families of languages is a scientific requirement always open to question.

This way of thinking, in terms of situations, speakers, and the expressive ressources of languages, led Claude Hagège to an interest in linguistic policies. Since 1983, he has co-directed with Istvan Fodor a collective review entitled La Réforme des langues. His book Le français et les siècles , "French and the centuries", constitutes the only scientific approach to an issue which goes under the political name of "francophonie". Hagège's insight into the historical and technological aspects of the issue, in particular, remind us just how much languages owe to their traditions and carriers. More recently, Le souffle de la langue. Voies et destins des parlers d'Europe provides institutional decision-makers with a comprehensive view of the major and minor languages of a whole continent, a unique picture of their history and geography.

Parallel to an increasing interest in the interface between linguistics and the life sciences, Claude Hagège has also undertaken to promote the study of cognitive linguistics, an approach already beginning to take shape in L'homme de paroles. The title of a forthcoming book, Genèse des langues, apprentissage, créoles : au coeur du langage, shows these problematics to be at the core of his ongoing research.

Thus, Claude Hagège plays an original role within the international community of linguists. His experience in the study of "exotic" terrains has enabled him to clarify the possible dangers inherent in linguistic policies on his own national and continental territory. For when Claude Hagège speaks about languages, he is also speaking for them, defending them. In a very astute remark that summarizes the unique character of linguistic research, he says: "linguistics is the only science today whose object coincides with the way we talk about it."

Claude Hagège has always been an apostle of Babel. His works, known and read throughout the world, propound the idea of linguistic diversity and variation and, as a result, have challenged many an over-simplified, reductive theory. His research bears the stamp of a constant attentiveness to difference, to the infinite number of details which must be registered, taken into account, and sought to be explained. Yet, it is above all the emphasis laid on the human aspect of words and languages, on their historical background and their social components, that has made Claude Hagège a student of diversity in the social sciences and the humanities and a scholar who understands both their richness and their complexity.

Claude Hagège may not have the charisma of Noam Chomsky, another great language theoretician. Rather, he is a man of patient and multi-faceted labor ever rediscovering in amazement the linguistic diversity thanks to which the weight of local traditions and our own indomitable humanity assert themselves and persist. Though his research most certainly opens out onto cognitive linguistics, Hagège goes beyond the role of technician to become a great humanist: a scientist at the service of a thinker, and one whose life work which may just be beginning after thirteen books and over a hundred articles. In Hagège, scientist and thinker are one, as they are in his humanistic conception of linguistics: a science of and for man. That is what he seems to say, in words that reflect both his modesty and his caution, in the last pages of L'homme de paroles (p. 296).

Such a statement may be a way of challenging the thesis of Michel Foucault, for whom the humanities and social sciences meant the death of man, much as Nietzche foresaw in philosophy the death of God. It may also simply be a personal credo. In any case, for lack of proof in that domain, it may be wiser the seek an answer in works to come, which the success of previous publications has helped stimulate and encourage.