ABSTRACT
In France there is a 'question méridionale', a southern issue, which structures language, ideology, the production of texts, in a word 'representations'. The 'Midi', the term in current use to describe the south of France, is a term that has meaning only in relation to a north; it is purely demarcational, and external to the identity of the populations concerned. 'Midi' and méridional have been vigorously rejected on occasion by the supporters of regionalism, who see them as pretexts to avoid putting a name to the cultural — and perhaps ethnic? — identity of the land, the country in question. Calling it the Midi in fact means not having to say 'Occitania', 'Catalonia', 'Corsica' (Lafont 1971; Pelen 1985).
