Revisiting authenticity in the Breton lexicon: an empirical approach.

This paper examines the perceived authenticity of the varieties of Breton spoken by both traditional native speakers and "new speakers," who acquire the language through courses and immersion schools. Specifically, it takes the case of lexical items; while French borrowings used in Breton are considered "impurities" by some Breton speakers, the neologisms coined to replace them using Celtic morphemes have been criticized for their inauthenticity. This contrast between French borrowings (associated with the "authentic" speech of native speakers) and Celtic neologisms (purportedly "inauthentic" and used primarily by new speakers) has been the subject of numerous academic studies. However, in contrast to previous work, this paper uses empirical data to investigate participants' ideologies surrounding both types of lexical items. It uses survey data from an online Breton community to examine speakers' preferences for neologisms and borrowings, the perceived authenticity of both types of terms, and speakers' own definitions of "authentic" Breton. Results are paradoxical: while participants believe that older native speakers have the most authentic Breton, they also describe more recently coined neologisms as the most authentic type of lexical item. New speakers also overwhelmingly produce neologisms over French borrowings in the survey tasks, a fact which gives us a better sense of the future shape of the Breton lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]