in the war against English, we won't be undersold
Dennis Baron
debaron at UIUC.EDU
Fri Feb 16 22:27:54 UTC 2007
There's a new post on the
Web of Language:
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....
Read it all on the Web of Language
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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www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage
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