Staging language on Corsica: Stance, improvisation, play, and heteroglossia ALEXANDRA JAFFE Department of Linguistics, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. California State University, Long Beach Long Beach, CA 90840, USA ajaffe@csulb.edu ABSTRACT This article uses the concept of stance to examine a series of activities and plurilingual heteroglossic performances and improvisations in a Corsican language-planning event. It focuses on how stances taken by performers at- tribute stances to the audience, as well as how stance objects (language, com- munity, heritage) are construed in performance. This analysis is used to examine how these language-planning events mediate ideological tensions in Corsican language planning, specifically between traditional monolin- gual/purist ideologies and plurilingual, polynomic ones. (Stance, Corsica, performance, ideology, heteroglossia)* INTRODUCTION This article addresses the role of stancetaking in performance in a minority lan- guage-planning event. In contexts of minority language revitalization, where the symbolic value of the language outstrips its everyday use, many public, promotion- al events have a performative character, portraying idealized forms of practice. Often, the models for the kinds of minority language use put on display are mono- lingual ones that contrast with the complex, plurilingual realities of the sociolin- guistic context. Here, I focus on a sequence of stagings of Corsican language and culture during a three-day event in 2011 that included plurilingual, heteroglossic performances. The event in question was the public launch of the first Casa di a Lingua ‘Lan- guage House’ on the island. Conceived of as part of a four-year language-planning program approved by the Corsican Regional Assembly in 2007, these ‘language houses’ are federations of local cultural associations charged with organizing activ- ities and events featuring the Corsican language. The events of the language- themed weekend to be analyzed below included cooking demonstrations by local residents, a photo memory event narrated and emceed by a professional actor, and an amateur improvisational performance. Given the current sociolinguistic context, where French is the dominant, un- marked code of both the public sphere and everyday communication, these © Cambridge University Press, 2015 0047-4045/15 $15.00 161 Language in Society 44, 161–186. doi:10.1017/S0047404515000032