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.

[2] 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.

[2] 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.

[3] However, his claim that "[p]hilology is a bourgeois, paternalist, and hygienist system of thought about the family; it cherishes filiation, tracks down adulterers, and is afraid of contamination.

[5] After his tenure as director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge,[6] he became rector of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie from 2007 to 2015.