As a student at the
University of Nice, where he was a student of linguist Pierre Guiraud, Calvet was elected in 1964 to the national bureau of the
Union Nationale des Étudiants de France. There, he was in charge of information and held the position of chief editor for the monthly publication
21.27. 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"), and then another doctorate on "Langue, corps, société" ("Language, Body, Society"). Calvet was first professor at
Paris Descartes University, and then at
Aix-Marseille University, a position that he held until 2012. 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). He thus participated in the creation of a French field of sociolinguistics, of which he is one of the most well known representatives. His works have been translated in over twenty languages, and he has been invited to speak at numerous universities all over the world. 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. == Publications ==