Bernard Cerquiglini

Bernard Cerquiglini (born 8 April 1947 in Lyon, France), is a French linguist. A Graduate of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, having received an agrégé and a doctorate in letters, he was a teacher of linguistics in University of Paris VII, former director of the National Institute for the French language, former vice-president of the Conseil supérieur de la langue française and president of the French National Reading Observatory. In 1995 Bernard Cerquiglini joined the Oulipo. He was in charge of a governmental studies on a French orthography reform and about national languages in France. He received the title Doctor Honoris Causa at ULIM. Bernard Cerquiglini is, through his paternal lineage, of Italian heritage from the region of Perugia in Umbria. He notably served as the director of schooling (in other words, primary education) at the French Ministry of Education (1985–1987), as director of the Institut national de la langue française, as vice president of Conseil supérieur de la langue française, as a member of General Delegation for the French language and the languages of France (for two terms), as president of Observatoire national de la lecture. He was tasked with reforms of French orthography, then to report on the languages of France by different French Prime Ministers, as well as the feminization of trade names. Bernard Cequiglini joined Oulipo in 1995 He authored an "utobiographie de l'accent circonflexe" (Autobiography of the Circumflexa), under the title "L'Accent du souvenir" (the accent of memory), in it he played the role of "gardien de la langue" (guardian of the language) to defend its evolution and on certain occasions its simplification. Cerquiglini's Eloge de la variante (Paris:Seuil, 1989; trans. in 1999 into English, In Praise of the Variant, 1999), marks the beginning of the scholarly paradigm referred to as "the New Medievalism" (also: the New Philology), which was critical of modernist positivist editorial practices for medieval texts.