This inquiry explores how language choice in epitaphs in Alsatian cemeteries reflects language shifts in Alsace, an Eastern France region that altered nationalities between France and Germany four times between 1870 and 1945. Language choice on gravestones was awaited to be made according to the language of the ruling power, but the results display that it could also be made in protest to the dictated norm, thus becoming both legally and ideologically transgressive.