[lg policy] Language Policy in France

Harold Schiffman hfsclpp at GMAIL.COM
Tue May 10 13:41:37 UTC 2011 

Language policy in France - Definition

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This is an article about language policy in France.

France has one official language, the French language, and many other
regional languages of France (which have no official status), both in
the metropolitan territory of continental Europe and in the overseas
territories. The 1999 report written for the French government by
Bernard Cerquiglini identified 75 languages that would qualify for
recognition under the government's proposed ratification of the
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The French government promotes the use of French in the territory of
the Republic, in the European Union and globally through institutions
like La Francophonie. The perceived threat from anglicisation has
prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language in
France. Critics of this language policy point to the lack of parallel
safeguards for the future of France's regional and minority languages.
Contents [showhide]
1 History

1.1 Académie française
1.2 French Revolution
1.3 Third Republic
1.4 Fourth Republic
1.5 Fifth Republic

1.5.1 The debate about the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages
2 Endangered languages
3 Opposition to the language policy
4 References
5 See also
6 External links
History

The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 made French the
administrative language of the kingdom of France for legal documents
and laws.
Académie française

The Académie française was established in 1635 to act as the official
authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French
language, and to publish an official dictionary of the French
language. Its recommendations however carry no legal power and are
sometimes disregarded even by governmental authorities. In recent
years the Académie has tried to prevent the anglicisation of the
French language.
French Revolution

Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, French monarchs did not take a
strong position on the language spoken by their subjects. However, in
sweeping away the old provinces, parlements and laws, the Revolution
established a unified system of administration across the state. At
first, the revolutionaries declared liberty of language for all
citizens of the Republic, but this policy was subsequently abandoned
in favour of the imposition of a common language which was to do away
with the other languages of France. As a leader of the Revolution
summarised it, the various languages of France were only the refuge of
traitors, scoundrels, bigots, obscurantists and backward people.

The new ideology was expounded in the Report on the necessity and
means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the
French language. Its author, Henri Grégoire, deplores that France, the
most advanced country in the world with regard to politics, had not
progressed beyond the Tower of Babel as far as languages were
concerned, and that only 3 of the 25 million inhabitants of France
spoke French as their native tongue.

The report resulted the same year in two laws which stated that the
only language tolerated in France in public life and in schools would
be French. Within two years, the French language had become the symbol
of the national unity of the French State. However, the
Revolutionaries lacked both time and money to implement a language
policy, and it was only towards the end of the 19th century that the
French Republic began to implement a determined policy to create a
French-speaking France.
Third Republic

In the 1880s, the Third Republic established free compulsory primary
education. The only language allowed in primary school was French. All
other languages were forbidden, even in the schoolyard, and
transgressions were severely punished. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie,
Minister of public education, stated that "for the linguistic unity of
France, the Breton language must disappear." As a result, the speakers
of minority languages began to be ashamed of their own language, and
in the 1950s, many families stopped teaching their language to their
children and tried to speak only French with them.
Fourth Republic

The 1950s were also the first time the French state recognised the
right of the regional languages to exist. A law allowed for the
teaching of regional languages in secondary schools, and the policy of
repression in the primary schools came to an end. The Breton language
began to appear in the media during this time.
Fifth Republic

After the first few minutes in the radio in the 1940s, the French
State allowed in 1964 for the first time one and a half minutes of
Breton on regional television. But even in 1972 president Georges
Pompidou declared that "there is no place for the regional languages
and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply."
The debate about the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages

In 1999 the Jospin socialist government decided to sign the Council of
Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and
tried, without success, to have it ratified. The Constitutional
Council of France declared that the implementation of the Charter
would be unconstitutional since the Constitution states that the
language of the Republic is French.

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European
convention (ETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council
of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority
languages in Europe, ratified and implemented by 17 States, but not by
France (as of 2004)

The charter contains 98 articles of which signatories must adopt a
minimum of 35 (France signed 39).

The signing, and the failure to have it ratified, provoked a debate
between the people in favour and the people against the charter.

The main argument against was the fear of the break-up of France "one
and indivisible" leading to the threat of "babelism", "balkanization"
and then ethnic separatism if Charter were to be implemented, and that
therefore there should be only one language recognised in the French
state: the French language.

As an example of what proponents of ratification considered racist and
scornful, here is a sample quote from an article in Charlie Hebdo, a
well-known satirical journal:

    The aborigines are going to be able to speak their patois, oh
sorry, their language, without being laughed at. And even keep their
accent, that is their beret and their clogs

Likewise, Jacques Chirac, when putting an end to the debate, and
justifying why France could not ratify the Charter, said that it would
threaten "the indivisibility of the Republic," "equality in front of
the Law" and "the unity of the French people," since it may end by
conferring "special rights to organised linguistic communities."

Similarly, France, Andorra and Turkey are the only European countries
that have not yet signed the Framework Convention for the Protection
of National Minorities. This framework entered into force in 1998 and
is now nearly compulsory to implement in order to be accepted in the
European Union .
Endangered languages

Excluding the languages spoken in the régions d'outre-mer and other
overseas territories, and the languages of recent immigrants, the
following languages are spoken by sizeable minorities in France:

    * Romance languages: Catalan, Corsican, Franco-provençal, Oïl
languages, Occitan, Italian
    * Germanic languages: Alsatian, Flemish and Frankish
    * Celtic languages: Breton
    * Isolate languages: Basque.

The non-French Oïl languages and Franco-provençal are highly
endangered. The other languages are still spoken but are all
considered endangered.

In the 1950s, more than one million people spoke Breton as their main
language. The countryside in western Brittany was still overwhelmingly
Breton speaking. Today, about 250,000 people are able to speak Breton
(1 out of 6 people in the Breton speaking area ); but most of them are
old people, over 60 years old. The other languages have followed the
same trend, even though Alsatian and Corsican have resisted better,
and Occitan as followed still a worse trend.

Accurate information on the state of language use is complicated by
the non-recognition of regional languages and the inability of the
state to ask language use questions in the census.

Since the rejection of ratification of the European Charter, French
governments have offered token support to regional languages within
the limits of the law. The Délégation générale à la langue française
has acquired the additional function of observing and studying the
languages of France and has had "et aux langues de France" added to
its title.

The French government hosted the first Assises nationales des langues
de France in 2003, but this national round table on the languages of
France served to highlight the contrast between cultural organisations
and language activists on the one hand and the state on the other.

The decentralisation programme initiated by the Jean-Pierre Raffarin
government has not extended to giving power in language policy to the
regions.
Opposition to the language policy

France presents itself as a small country struggling for cultural
diversity against the predominance of English in international
affairs, and regularly sides with minorities in other countries. On
the other hand, inside its frontiers, France has been struggling for
two hundred years against cultural and linguistic diversity, denying
the very existence of minorities. According to French republican
ideology (see also Laïcité), all citizens are equal and therefore no
groups may exercise extra rights.

This policy has been challenged from both the right wing and the left
wing. In the 1970s, nationalist or regionalist movements emerged
inregions such as Brittany and Occitania claiming that the people
should do what the French State refuses to do. The main result was the
creation of associative schools in the minority languages. That new
web of schools is called Diwan in Brittany, Ikastola in the Basque
country, Calandreta in Occitania, Bressola in Catalunya.

Since then, the popular pressure has legitimised the teaching of
minority languages, obliging the French State to open its own
bilingual schools in the 1980s. But even today, only one quarter of
the young Bretons have access to a course of Breton language during
their time in school. The Constitutional Council also blocked the
assimilation of the Diwan schools by the state.

A long campaign of defacing road-signs led to the first bilingual
road-signs in the 1980s. These are now increasingly common in
Brittany. As far as the media are concerned, there is still hardly any
Breton on the waves. But since 1982, a few Breton speaking radio
stations have been created on an associative basis.

There is some commercial opposition to the policy that restricts the
amount of, for example, English in packaging and advertising.
References

    * WRIGHT (Sue), 2000, Jacobins, Regionalists and the Council of
Europe’s Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, Journal of
Multilingual and Multicural Development, vol. 21, n°5, p. 414-424.
    * KYMLICKA (Will), Les droits des minorités et le
multiculturalisme: l’évolution du débat anglo-américain , in KYMLICKA
(Will) et MESURE (Sylvie) dir., Comprendre les identités culturelles,
Paris, PUF, Revue de Philosophie et de sciences sociales n°1, 2000, p.
141-171.
    * GEMIE, S. (2002), The politics of language : debates and
identities in contemporary Brittany, French Cultural Studies n°13, p.
145-164.
    * SZULMAJSTER-CELNIKER (Anne), La politique de la langue en
France, La Linguistique, vol 32, n°2, 1996, p. 35-63.

See also

    * Language policy
    * Linguicide
    * Cultural imperialism

External links

    * Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de
France (http://www.dglflf.culture.gouv.fr/)
    * French language documents on French language policy

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Language_policy_in_France

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