The recent CNRS decision to distinguish an elite among its laboratories – thus implicitly discrediting its other scientists considered to be less deserving – was manifested by a strange appellation: the Key Labs. Striking with uncertainty the French speaker reluctant to take the English accent, sowing doubt in the English speaker who does not know if it is a reference to Florida Keys or lime (Key Lime)the name has undoubtedly been designed to make modern. He especially illustrates the tendency to believe that scientific modernity must be declined as ancestor-English, commercial manner of the managerial research consisting in parasitizing his discourse of words invented by communicators who do not only display their shocking mastery of the language they use to impose their caste superiority.
Thus, in its communication, the CNRS likes to mention the “Top Stories”, baptize its programs for start-ups “Open” and “Rise”, talk about “One Health” or develop an imperious center called “Ai for Science-Science for Ai (Aissai)”. This managerial jargon with tics of language between ethics, trade and ostension of virtue, speaking of “committed” science, where we “co-constructed” according to “i-lab” and “i-nov” and policies of “LIGSING “is constantly claiming to be “open science” while creating the linguistic conditions of a amazement of the brave French -speaking citizen, speaker of a language which he no longer recognizes …
The CNRS sets the tone, but it is the whole field of research, influenced by European denominations (and the funding that goes with …), which has convinced that science should speak English. To “revamp” the research, we invented flash meetings with the scientific staff by naming it “Speed Searching”, which does not mean anything in English: the layer on speed dating Fast fall because, in English, Search does not refer to science in no way but simply to “seek” in its most banal and non -scientific sense.
The word “laboratory” is systematically reduced not to French “lab” but to English “Lab”that we decorate with apostrophes thrown at random (in Aix-Marseille: “Lab’Citoyenéne”, “Lab’-engagement” …) or that we can focus on acronyms like “Civis Open Labs”, necessarily “anchored in the heart of their territory”, because “these workspaces make it possible to explore and jointly develop solutions to respond to local and regional challenges”.
Youth, labeling, ideology
In Nanterre, we speak of “Sciences in Cité” because the University is “involved in the development of a work package dedicated to societal awareness (WP4: Societal Outreach Agenda)” and “Pilot in particular the task 4.2 Youth integration Lab” to “apply the knowledge co-produced in the young Hub, in a’learning by Doin
In Aix-Marseille, when it comes to youth, it goes without saying that you have to adopt a language of influencers with “Street” accents: the “Venères & Solidaires” project is “carried by Citizens Campus“To set up” collective intelligence workshops via an expression platform created for and by young people on Discord “. We wonder even if it is not an incentive to rebellion when we see a young veiled woman illustrating” the staggered action “aimed at” bringing out the causes that mobilize, too often commented by others “. and illegible word play that can designate the drunkenness or the effects of the drug as well as the Literacymanifested by “Soft Skills” (understand knowing how to put a video on the networks). Another association is called “Smart & Civic Port” and intends to implement “innovative solutions in a think/do tank to transform the great sea port of Marseille”. European denominations, obviously, are in English – LABELS HRS4R: HR Excellence in Research; Alliance European Digital Univecity, Educ, Ris4civis (Research & Innovation Strategy for Civis) – forming a abundant coppice of dark denominations.
A good part of the field of research in human and social sciences has also imported the vocabulary of militancy and its sometimes barely adapted neologisms, as “useful” (use “empowerment),, queer“agentity” (agency), and the whole field of studies (of the Porn Studies to Video Game Studies)). In Aix-Marseille, we are talking about the “We4lead” (Women’s Empowerment for Leadership and Equity in Higher Education Institutions) and we are interested in “strengthening of unbalanced evaluation and recruitment mechanisms” within universities, thus posing as a priori that university recruitments would be discriminatory.
This adoption of vocabulary and American ideological display practices is used to exhibit the “values” of the establishment. The wobbly Englishman seeks at all costs to fit words like “inclusive”, “Civic”, “Young”claiming to be in Paris 3 of “The strategy of Yufe (Young Universities for the Future of Europe) in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI)”.
To read these enigmatic speeches, university work seems to be summed up in acronyms valuing the slightest activity, even if it is a simple page leading, around these labyrinthine sites, to a “bad gateway” or to the email address of an ethical official …
Bureaucratic opacity
The trend at the brotherly joins another dimension of the administrative jargon of research: its propensity to the language of wood. Anyone who ventures on an institutional site will be knocked out, in addition to anglicisms, by acronyms and tics of bureaucratic claim. In French research, a fountain on “impact innovation”, it is necessary to “boost a shared site policy” with “operational cells”, develop the “mapping financed projects “, “Graduate Schools” and “POC” (Proof of concept, that’s to say a feasibility study of a project).
When we are not speaking frankish, it is to indulge in an omnipresent societal jargon: “issues of tomorrow”, “put ecology at the heart of the formations”, “gender stereotypes”, “the emergence of an ecosystem of transitional actors” … everything stowed to the hope of seeing some picallions fall into the local bag while counting on European subsidies (for example, linked to the promotion of gender equality-new criterion on gender taking into account).
The production of bureaucratic texts is impressive: the projects declined on pages filled with tables where we define axes and positions of responsibility, missions and “implementation phases in a structuring process leading to a labeling” are more complex than the scientific content themselves!
The production of promotional speeches becomes a full -fledged activity of research and manifests itself as a factory for bureaucratic stereotypes, grandiloquent proclamations (no theme that is “a challenge for our company”), lists of compulsory formulas (“synergies”, “excellence”, “impactor”). The university then becomes not a place of knowledge but a factory with clichés in line with the political orientations of the moment. The quest for administrative recognition, the production of a mille-feuille of impenetrable entities, the obscure of objectives and results seem to have become the reasons for “labs'”.
The words of exclusion
Managerial ideology, intersectional ideology, bureaucratic ideology: vocabulary betrays allegiances but also caste coherences. Language sciences use the term “sociolect” to designate the language habits of social groups: these verbal practices contribute to the cohesion of a social group, but also to establish its borders. Thus, those who have not adopted the language codes in use remain outside the group. The convergence of virtuous well-thought, gossip in frankish, the stack of acronyms justifying administrative prowess and a dummy internationalism is contained in the opaque, hollow and arrogant style of Franco-European science. This is how, paradoxically, the vocabulary of the famous “open science” is the one who works to the exclusion of uninitiated …
*Jean Szlamowicz is a university professor, linguist and translator. He notably published The sheep of thought (Deer, 2022), The attacked humanities. Militant and human sciences speech (PUF, 2024, with Pierre-André Taguieff) and Sex and language (Intervals, 2023).
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