Louis-Jean Calvet

Then, as a student at the Sorbonne with André Martinet, he pursued a doctoral thesis titled Le système des sigles en français contemporain ("The System of Acronyms in Contemporary France"),[4] and then another doctorate on "Langue, corps, société" ("Language, Body, Society").

From his first publication (Linguistique et colonialisme, in which he first introduced his concept of glottophagy), he has analyzed the relationships between linguistic discourse and colonial discourse on languages, as well as the links between language and power (La Guerre des langues, 1987) and the linguistic role of cities (Les Voix de la ville, 1994).

Having been the director of the Languages and Societies collection at the publishing house Payot for several years, he has published the works of authors such as Sylvain Auroux, André Martinet, André Chervel, Christian Cuxac, Tullio De Mauro, Ivan Fonagy, Pierre Guiraud, Nancy Huston, Morris Swadesh, Jean-Didier Urbain, Marina Yaguello, etc.

In addition to his academic activities, Calvet is also a journalist, contributing to the weekly publication Politique hebdo, in which he takes on cultural phenomena, in particular music, from a sociological and political standpoint, as well as writing about ethnic and linguistic minorities.

He was awarded the Sociolinguists Worldwide Award in 2012, the Ptolemy prize from the International Forum of Geography in 2016,[6] and the George Dumézil prize from the Académie Française in 2017 for his word La Méditerranée, mer de nos langues ("The Mediterranean, sea of our languages").