The letter, signed by the departmental director of Orange in Charente-Maritime, was slipped into the mailbox of the town hall of Marennes in 2019. The historic telecoms operator is then convinced to send good news to its first magistrate: a “Orange trucks” will soon settle in the city in order to prepare for the arrival of fiber! The poor guy doesn’t know how wrong he is. In the oyster town, the mayor, Mickaël Vallet, has for several years been directing a festival dedicated… to the French-speaking world. So he sends the director back to his dear studies by explaining to him in substance this: “As long as you do not address my constituents in French, I will refuse you access to the public domain.” And for good measure, he also sent his letter to the then general director of Orange, Stéphane Richard, denouncing a “lack of respect towards residents and towards the law [Toubon sur la langue française]”. The press was quick to pick up on the affair. and the old public service, contrite, ends up retreating. Finally, it was a “fiber truck” that settled in the locality…
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Without further ado, let us provide this clarification for the benefit of trendy pubescents who, inadvertently, may be reading this article. No, Mickaël Vallet is neither nostalgic for Pétain, nor an old bookworm, nor a purist refusing on principle any borrowing from a foreign language. It is simply galling to see salespeople of all kinds resorting to anglicisms reflexively, including replacing well-established French words. For what “truck” instead of “truck”? What shocks him even more is to see the public authorities multiplying “Choose France”, “French tech”, “Business France” or “clusters”… as he explains in a powerful way in a short speech to the Senate dedicated to consulting firms (see, below, the “to watch” section). He is also convinced that this drift does not simply threaten the language of Molière, but, beyond that, the good functioning of our democracy. “If we don’t understand each other, we can no longer debate calmly,” he warns. And, between you and me, it seems to me that he is not wrong.
“Thought Formatting”
Mickaël Vallet’s ideological path makes his political profile original. Grandson of Spanish Republican And admirer of General de Gaulle, this man of the left found refuge with Jean-Pierre Chevènement, with whom he shared a pronounced taste for national sovereignty, before joining the Socialist Party in 2007. The one who is today a senator is intimately convinced that language is much more than a means of communicating and contains political issues.
“Globish, which is not even English, is in fact an instrument for formatting thought. And the immoderate use of Anglicisms creates a disconnect between the people and their representatives,” he underlines, referring to the British-German sociologist Norbert Elias. By studying court phenomena, he demonstrated that the bourgeoisie had a tendency to ape the habits and customs of the nobles in the hope of gaining recognition from them. The relationship with our subject? He comes. Speaking globish, today’s “moderns” behave like Norbert Elias’s bourgeois yesterday. Except that it is no longer the nobles who are being aped, but the United States, the great commercial, technological, military and cultural power of the day.
“In the Republic, the boss is the people”
That Uncle Sam tries to impose his language to better sell his goods is in the order of things. That French leaders are lending a hand to their main commercial rival is aberrant. It is this attitude that Mickaël Vallet condemns. “Politicians who prefer the language of their American master forget a small detail: in the Republic, the boss is the people!” he snaps. In fact, the regular recourse of some of the “elites” to managerial English – starting with President Macron, accustomed to “start-up nation”, “bottom-up”, “scaled up” Or “invented here”… – helps to persuade workers, employees, peasants, artisans, small traders that the Head of State does not understand them and cannot understand them. Hence the opposition noted by the political scientist Jérôme Fourquet “between, on the one hand, the top of the social pyramid, which, thanks to its studies, reasons with a postnational frame of reference and, on the other, a population whose framework reference remains national, even local.” Two statistics are enough to convince us of this. According to a Credoc survey cited in a report by the Académie française, 47% of those questioned said they were “annoyed” by advertisements containing words in English, while 65% consider it “useful for a law to guarantee the use of French in society”.
There may be something even more serious. The abusive use of Anglicisms sends an implicit message to the French who are “guilty” of not mastering the language of Shakespeare. In essence: “You are failures, incapable of adapting to the contemporary world.” An attitude that sociologist Pierre Bourdieu rightly described as “symbolic violence” and which obviously has political consequences. “By telling the people that they are worthless, we cut ourselves off from them and we fuel the RN vote,” warns Mickaël Vallet.
The National Rally has understood this well, which never makes this type of error. A sign ? During the 2022 presidential campaign, the French Academy published a report to denounce the growing tendency of public institutions to communicate in English. He was greeted with disdainful indifference by all those involved in the race for the Elysée. With one exception: Marine Le Pen.
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Corsican language: Emmanuel Macron refuses co-officiality…
It’s no. As one might expect, Emmanuel Macron refused to accede to the nationalists’ demand to make the Corsican and French languages co-official on the Isle of Beauty. The head of state, however, promised a “public education service, in favor of bilingualism”. “We need to give more space to the Corsican language in education and in the public space,” he added.
…what the writer Patrick Chamoiseau defends for Martinique
While the prefect of Martinique opposes the request of elected officials to make Creole the official language of the island alongside French, the writer Patrick Chamoiseau highlights the need to accept that imaginations are multilingual.
In Quebec, communicating in English can be expensive
A popcorn business had to pay a fine of 2,500 Canadian dollars (the equivalent of 1,700 euros) due to the absence of French content on its website. The charter of the French language provides that publications of a commercial nature must be written in French. An idea to transpose to France?
Michel Sardou: “Anglicisms are boring!”
“Do Anglicisms annoy you?” “Yes, it’s boring. We can live very well in French. » Thus answers Michel Sardou to a question from Quebec Journal on the future of French-speaking music. Before adding: “You listen to the news channels continuously, they quote every other sentence in English to explain a situation. For what ? We have a language, we use it. She is beautiful. »
Don’t say anymore “replay”, but “catch-up”
The French language enrichment commission has just published a series of new terms in Official newspaper dedicated to visual arts, literary and audiovisual culture and social issues. Among his recommendations : “co-writing” instead of “co-authoring” ; “graphic animator” instead of “motion designer” or “catch-up” for “replay”. All these equivalents can be found on the FranceTerme site, which lists around 9,000.
First name Fañch: new prefectural ban in Lorient
In June, the mayor of Lorient, Fabrice Loher, signed the birth certificate of a little Fañch with a tilde on the not. The public prosecutor of Lorient has since asked the parents to withdraw this not, based on a decision of the Constitutional Council of 2021. The not is however attested in French, for example in… the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts. It also appears in contemporary dictionaries, notably in the entries “doña”, “cañon”, “señor” or “señorita”.
A new Indo-European language discovered in Türkiye
A new Indo-European language is said to have been discovered during excavations at Hattousa, the capital of the Hittite kingdom between 1600 and 1200 BC. These people recorded treaties, decrees and prayers on clay tablets. Most of these documents were written in Hittite, but other languages were used, one of which, hidden within a ritual text, was until now completely unknown.
The real history of the at sign
Professor of paleography at the National School of Charters, Marc H. Smith traces the history of the @ sign, now omnipresent in our electronic communications, from the Middle Ages to the present day. An unusual and exemplary case of the evolution of written signs.
The True History of the at sign, by Marc Smith (ed. National School of Charters).
Polynesia: a committee of Mā’ohi names to review the naming of certain places
In Polynesia, a Mā’ohi names committee has just been set up to carry out research and correct “transcription errors” in toponymy, whether they are names of rivers, bays, plots of land or localities. The Tahitian government also wants to launch a reo version of the legal site Lexpol next year.
Closure of the Goethe-Institut in Strasbourg: a blow to Franco-German bilingualism
In search of savings, the Goethe-Institut has decided to close 9 of its 158 sites, including that of Strasbourg. A bad signal for the defenders of French-German bilingualism, politicians are reacting. A shock for the defenders of Franco-German bilingualism.
TO LISTEN
Amin Maalouf, against inclusive writing, for regional languages
Amin Maalouf, brand new permanent secretary of the French Academy, declares himself opposed to inclusive writing. On the other hand, he is relatively open to regional languages. “The challenges facing the French language do not come from these languages. They are sister languages,” he declared on France Inter. He also recalled that he had dedicated an opera libretto to the troubadours.
TO WATCH
Senator Mickaël Vallet criticizes the use of “globish” by consulting firms
Remarkable intervention from the Senate platform by the elected representative of Charente-Maritime Mickaël Vallet. In an intervention as short as it is fair, he attacks the volapük of consulting firms – without appearing to be a purist.
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