in the war against English, we won't be undersold

[Dennis Baron]

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In the war against English, we won’t be undersold

There’s a war against English, and it’s being led by our former  
allies, the French.  ... Georges Hage, the communist Dean of the  
French National Assembly, has joined with other militants to call for  
a “social, political, and linguistic action” defending French against  
Anglo-American domination.... .  The first shot in the latest war  
against English is a Manifesto for the Defense of the French Language  
urging enemies of colonialism and lovers of diversity to choose  
French, the vehicle of liberté and the first line of defense against  
the cultural homogenization produced by English.... They see the  
greatest external threat to French as not the capitalist aggression  
of McDonald’s and WalMart, but “le Hollywood,” the American music and  
film industry hot to impose a uniform monolingual culture on the  
world – and then cash in on it. ...  And the greatest internal threat  
to French?  The French themselves, who have betrayed the revolutions  
of 1789 and 1968 by replacing French whenever they can with  
“globish,” a stripped-down Basic English....Albert Salon and his  
International Francophone Forum (FFI) have called on candidates in  
the French presidential election to “solemnly affirm the right of  
francophones in all five continents to express themselves in their  
language.”...  Closer to home, Congressman Steve King (R-IA) has  
introduced the English Language Unity Act of 2007 (H. R. 997) which  
affirms the rights of all Americans to do business with their  
government exclusively in English.  ...  As for the paranoia of  
affirming the right of the French or American citizens to be  
addressed, respectively, in French or English, there have been no  
documented cases of American officials ever refusing to speak English  
(most can’t speak another language anyway).  And French civil  
servants, usually known for denying any and all requests, have never  
refused to speak French....


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Dennis


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

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