essay

Chapter 12: Strong Language  (Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, pp. 161-175)

Study Questions:

· Explain why the French language is the central element of French identity?

· What is a patois and what is the  importance of the patois in France today?

· What is the role of the Académie Française in France today?

· What is argot?  Where does it come from, how is it used, and what forms are popular today?

· Why has the Fifth Republic sought to restore the teaching of regional languages in French schools?

· How have Quebeckers played a role in defending the survival of French in Canada?

Chapter 12 looks at the centerpiece of French identity, which is the French language. Throughout its history, the French territory has been  home to many different  linguistic groups, including the Basque people along the Franco-Spanish border and Atlantic coast.  Despite the fact that this group inhabited France at least 4000 years before the Romans invaded Gaul and that they speak one of the oldest languages in the world, they consider their first language to be French. By way of illustration,  N-B relate a story about a woman named Bénédicte, whose grandmother spoke Basque but did not pass it down to her, although she did teach her own daughter (the girl's mother) to understand it. It turns out that Bénédicte's experience is typical of many French children whose parents insist that learning a heritage language (patois) might interfere with or cause them to lose their French. N-B continue with the historical background, tracing the gradual imposition of French first by King François I in the 16th century with Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts making French the language of the tribunals, then in the 17th century as a classical "norm" of men of value (clerics, aristocrats, artists) who wished to speak a clear and precise language according to correct usage (le bon usage). In 1635, the Académie Française was founded, which refined the language, pruning it of its many "regionalisms." The process continues to this day, with the Academy holding the line on the purity of "correct usage" of the written language with the publication of its dictionary, while the people in different sociopolitical and cultural groups--especially the young--continue to enrich the vernacular by creating their own codes, or slang (argot), just as they have always done. Despite "strong language" instruction, regional  languages and dialects continued to be spoken into the present day everywhere in France, and since the 1950s are being taught in the schools as part of the defense against English. N-B also note that starting in the 1960s, government policies from Quebec helped build an international base to defend French speakers against the encroachment of English via the media. In fact it is the media that the French  targeted in the GATT Trade agreements of the early 1990s in arguing that the arts, as the vehicle of culture, deserved protective measures in the name of fostering national identities. This is the origin of the notion of l'exception culturelle, which is the French way of expressing the strong relationship between culture and identity.

  The Role of the French State in Linguistic Matters: Language and Identity

François I (1515-1547) Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts -- established French as the language of the courts, as opposed to Latin, which was the language of the Church. French became mandatory in all administrative documents, although this law was not widely applied until the Revolution (N-B, p. 163)

· The Ancien Régime established the Académie Française. France's artists and intellectuals earned the language's brilliant reputation and dominance in Europe throughout the Classical era and years leading up to the French Revolution in 1789.

Stopping the invasion of English is linked to the overall defense against the threat of Anglo-American culture.  But interestingly enough, one strategy the French have used in this battle is to invite and accept linguistic diversity through the softening of their attitude towards minority languages and non-standard varieties of French. By encouraging these languages and variations of standard French,  the government recognizes the chance for renewal (Munro, p. 132)

La loi Deixonne (1951) authorized the plan for the teaching of four regional languages (Basque, Breton, Catalan and Occitan) but did not include the dialects (Alsatian, Corsican and Flemish). In 1974, Corsican was added to the list by the Ministry of Education. The French consider all seven of these languages-dialects as their regional languages, shown on the map below.

La loi Bas-Loriol (1975) requires that French be used in place of any foreign expression when there is an expression or term approved (Art. 1)

La Loi Toubon (1994) modifies the Deixonne Law of 1951 on the teaching of regional languages, reiterating the primacy of French as the language of the Republic with the aim of protecting the French consumer from misunderstandings that could become dangerous in reading instructions for the use of machinery or other products written in languages other than French.  Also reinforces the right of Francophones to speak French at conferences or colloquia held in France and stipulates that scientific papers published in France must be accompanied by at least a summary in French. The law also contains provisions that specify quotas for programming: since 1996, 40% of all songs broadcast must be in French. This effort has met with some success.

Commissions de terminologie , in existence since the '70s but reinvented with new vigor after 1994, these groups were set up to monitor vocabulary. The work of these commissions is to coin new words as well as to plug lexical gaps by extending the meaning of existing French words. (Munro, p. 135) The main effect is on the written language, where words on these official lists are upheld by law.

The efforts of the French government to continue the world mission of beating off the invader -- English -- for the sake of enriching the world's linguistic culture is indeed admirable and attractive to those who learn French. Within France, however, other forces are at work that dampen the enthusiasm for linguistic diversity as it was originally defined by the government.  For one, the danger that linguistic groups within France would revert to their traditional languages has not proved to be a threat.  In France today, out of the 61.4 million people who live within the Hexagon, about 8% are bilingual, either speaking or understanding French and one of seven regional languages pictured on the map.

Occitan: 4 million   This is the medieval language of the southern half of France which evolved from Latin at the same time as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian (the five official Romance languages).  It is the Langue d'oc  as opposed to La langue d'oil , or language of the northern region, which was distinguished by the way one said "yes": oc  in the south, oil  in the north. The northern language -- le francien -- was spoken by the royal dynasty in Île-de-France and became dominant.  In he south, Occitan was eventually regarded as a patois that had many provincial variations or dialects, for example, Gascon, Languedocien, Provençal, etc.

Alsatian: 1.5 million   Because of its historical position, Alsace was annexed by Germany in 1870, then returned to France in 1918 after World War I only to be annexed again during World War II. Alsatian is a dialect of German and is spoken on par with French in Strasbourg. Although more than half the Alsatians watch German TV, there is no movement towards autonomy motivated by linguistic identity because of the bitter memories of the Nazi occupation. However, the Alsatians retain a strong cultural identity, which they celebrate through their songs, literature, poems, and theater.

Breton: 500,000   Half of the people in the extreme western part of Brittany near Brest still speak this Celtic language, related to Scottish, Irish, and Gaelic, on a daily basis. Brittany was independent from the rest of France during the entire Middle Ages and developed its own civilization of which the people are proud. They often express their autonomy with respect to Paris.

Corsican: 200,000  This dialect of Italian was the language of the Mediterranean island of Corsica until in was annexed by France in 1768, one year before Napoleon's birth in the capital city of Ajaccio. Like Occitan, Corsican is a direct derivative of Latin, and the Corsicans, like the Bretons, have a strong sense of autonomy, often asserting their independence from Paris.

Catalan: 200,000   Like Occitan and Corsican, Catalan is a derivative of Latin spoken in the Eastern Pyrenees around the city of Perpignan known as " Roussillon" and to Spanish as "Catalunya" (la Catalogne).

Basque: 100,000  One of the world's oldest languages, "Euskara" is spoken by people who have inhabited the Western Pyrenees in the old province of Béarn between France and Spain and along the Atlantic coast around the cities of Bayonne and Biarritz.  The history of "Euzkadi" predates the Roman occupation, going back at least 4000 years to the New Stone Age or Neolithic Era (ca 4000-2000 B.C.), when people began to settle into farming as a way of life. They have a culture and tradition that is uniquely their own, although in France the language of the young people is predominantly French.

Flemish: 100,000  A dialect of Dutch, which is a Germanic language related to German and English, Flemish is spoken around the city of Dunkerque in the extreme north near the Belgian border. Flemish and French are the two official languages of Belgium.

The bilingual speakers of these minority languages total less than 10% of the population. Many of them are of the older generation.  Younger people may learn enough to understand the heritage language, but it is unlikely that new vocabulary that will enrich French will arise from these native sources. Enrichment from the pluralism is more likely, with Quebec and Africa as strong sources of newly minted words  Still, American influence is strong in these countries, so the Anglo-American influence on the French language may find another avenue of entry.

Slang (argot--pronounced ar-go): La langue des cités

The strongest influence on the vocabulary of French today outside of scientific, academic, and official circles is what Americans would call "street French."  In France, this is the French spoken in the housing projects or cités  that draws not only from Anglo-American but also from Arabic, African dialects, gypsy language as well as traditional French argot and local dialects. It is linguistically playful, inventive, and constantly renews itself, which is the way languages develop naturally. The most popular code today is verlan, which is created by reversing the syllables of a word. 

In The Story of French, N-B discuss some of the changes taking place in the French vernacular and what practices are bringing on the evolution.  For one, there is the popular text-messaging on cell phone users or SMS (short message service). There is also an accent shift taking place on words from the last or ultimate syllable to the penultimate or second-to-last, making French intonation more like Spanish or Italian, since it leads to the pronunciation of final silent E's that are silent in standard French. Some E's are even disappearing and the different sounds of long and short vowels are becoming homogenized (pp. 170-171).  Grammatical nuances are likewise disappearing, particularly with respect to verb tenses like the simple past and past participle agreement with preceding direct objects (pp. 172-174).

Le côté Jeanne d'Arc reaffirmed

Edmiston and Dumésnil.  La France contemporaine, 5th Edition. Cengage Learning, 2014 Kidd, William and Siân Reynolds, eds.  Contemporary French Cultural Studies. Oxford University Press, 2000 Nadeau, Jean-Benoît and Julie Barlow.  The Story of French.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006