Geneviève Massignon (

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, 27 April 1921 – 6 June 1966) was a French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

ethnologist Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

who studied

Acadia Acadia (; ) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the The Maritimes, Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. The population of Acadia included the various ...

n speech, as well as dialects and linguistic communities in

Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

, in the west of

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and in

Corsica Corsica ( , , ; ; ) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the Regions of France, 18 regions of France. It is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the Metro ...

. She published several important works based on this research.

Biography

Massignon received her License-ès-lettres degree in 1941. In 1945 (after the Second World War), she took over from Jacques Pignon (who died prematurely) the task of preparing, for the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

, a linguistic atlas of the center-west of France, focussing on the departments of

Vendée Vendée () is a department in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France, on the Atlantic coast. In 2019, it had a population of 685,442.Deux-Sèvres Deux-Sèvres (, Poitevin-Saintongese: ''Deùs Saevres'') is a French department. ''Deux-Sèvres'' literally means "two Sèvres": the Sèvre Nantaise and the Sèvre Niortaise are two rivers which have their sources in the department. It had a ...

, Vienne,

Charente Charente (; Saintongese: ''Chérente''; ) is a department in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. It is named after the river Charente, the most important and longest river in the department, and also the r ...

and

Charente-Maritime Charente-Maritime (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Chérente-Marine''; ) is a Departments of France, department in the French Regions of France, region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, on the country's west coast. Named after the river Charente (river), Charen ...

: the Poitevin-Saintongeais dialect area. At the time of her death, she had practically finished the surveys, which would be published by Brigitte Horiot under the title, ''Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas: Poitou, Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois.'' This atlas formed the basis of a dialectometric analysis of the dialect area performed by Liliane Jagueneau. Her interest in researching the Acadian French community developed in response to the research of her older brother Yves Massignon, a human geographer who lived in Madawaska,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, where he studied the local

French-Canadian French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French colonists first arriving in France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of French Canadians live in the prov ...

community before his death at the age of 20. His research was published in a work entitled, In ''Canada, the Upper Valley of Saint-Jean (Madawaska) and the future of Franco-American.'' In 1946, Massignon obtained a scholarship from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Cultural Relations department which enabled her to travel to the Canadian

maritime provinces The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...

and to the

Mississippi delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazo ...

region to collect traditional Acadian folklore and stories and survey the local dialects. This investigation formed the basis for her PhD thesis, ''Les parlers français d'Acadie'', which she defended in 1962. In 1966, she was expected to attend the Franco-Acadian festivities at Belle-Île-en-Mer to commemorate the bicentennial of the Acadian settlements on the island. She died suddenly of a heart attack just before the event took place. Besides her linguistic work, Massignon collected traditional stories and music from communities in Acadia, Brittany, Corsica and the west of France. A bibliography of her work has been published by the BNF. Her father was the French Islamologist

Louis Massignon Louis Massignon (25 July 1883 – 31 October 1962) was a French Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding. He was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic Church's relatio ...

. She had two brothers, Yves and Daniel Massignon.

Geneviève Massignon Collection

Her papers were donated by the Geneviève Massignon family to the BNF in 1985.

Honors

* Medal of the Academy of Letters of Quebec (1963); she is the first foreigner to receive the medal.

Selected works

* Geneviève Massignon. ''Les parlers français d'Acadie : enquête linguistique'' / Paris : C. Klincksieck, 962 2 v. (975 p.) * Geneviève Massignon, Brigitte Horiot, ''Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of the West: Poitou, Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois'' , 3 volumes, 1971–1983. dited by CNRS.* Geneviève Massignon. ''De bouche à oreilles - Le conte populaire français'' , Berger-Levrault, coll. Territories, 1983 ( ) * Geneviève Massignon. ''Contes de l'Ouest, Brière, Vendée, Angoumois'' , éditions Érasme, Paris, 1954. * Geneviève Massignon. ''Corsetes'' , Corsica Studies Center for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Aix-en-Provence. Ophrys Edition, Gap 1963. * Geneviève Massignon. ''Traditional stories of the producers of linen from Trégor (Lower Brittany).'' A. and J. Picard and Cie, Paris 1965.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Massignon, Genevieve 1921 births 1966 deaths Acadia Collectors of fairy tales Dialectologists French women linguists Writers from Paris Writers from Quebec French women science fiction and fantasy writers 20th-century Canadian women writers 20th-century Canadian writers French women historians French women folklorists Canadian folklorists Canadian women folklorists French ethnomusicologists Canadian ethnomusicologists Women ethnomusicologists 20th-century French linguists 20th-century French women writers