Critics of language often share a blind spot: that of register. Comparisons between Quebec French and French French sometimes give rise to generalizations, as if the French all expressed themselves like a newsreader and Quebecers, like the Bougon. We lament the quality of the language on social networks, forgetting that this type of writing reproduces familiar oral speech.
Our love of language and our desire to protect it lead us to want to be irreproachable at all times: we want a language without spelling mistakes, without anglicisms, pronounced clearly, with a rich and varied vocabulary.
This is commendable, but it overlooks an important aspect: the majority of our language interactions take place with those closest to us, where the familiar register is more appropriate.
This register is more tolerant of anglicisms, loose style and spelling mistakes. And, like all the others, it is important, as is the freedom it offers.
If a language does not allow its speakers to talk to their loved ones, to talk about their day in a relaxed manner, to make jokes, to play with it, it could be replaced by another which will fulfill these functions, particularly in a context where several languages coexist.
Hierarchy
While all registers are important, we still tend to hierarchize them. This is where they meet social classes. The customs of the dominant class are perceived as having more value than those of the working classes. In the words of Marty Laforest, linguist and full professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières: “It is not because we speak well that we have a good position, but because we have a good position that we speak well.”
Linguistic uses are not more beautiful or better because of intrinsic qualities, but rather according to the social position of those who use them. This is how the endings in “oué” in Quebec French (“moué” and “toué”, for “moi” and “toi”) are today discredited because they are associated with the working classes, while they were once part of court usage, as recalled by the famous phrase of Louis XIV: “Le roué, c’est moué.”
The American linguist William Labov, one of the first to theorize on the subject, demonstrated that linguistic changes (pronunciation features, neologisms, borrowings, etc.) which end up spreading and which are more likely to constitute the norm of tomorrow come not from the upper class, from which the average speaker feels excluded, but from the upper middle class, with which one can identify more and which one can more reasonably imagine integrating.
Classes
Social classes are also at the heart of sociolinguist Chantal Bouchard’s theory to explain the difference in perception of anglicisms between the French and Quebecers. In Quebec, anglicisms made their entrance with peasants, who were poorly educated, who moved to the cities and were put in contact with English in factories, manufacturing plants and on construction sites. From the start, anglicisms were associated “with the ignorance and poverty of the urban proletariat.”
In France, borrowings from English arrived rather through the Parisian bourgeoisie, who had the means to travel to England to observe the progress of industrialization, the modernism of the political systems (British parliamentarianism began while France still lived under the monarchy of divine right) and legal systems (while Great Britain introduced the concept of jury). It became chic to sprinkle one’s conversations with English words, or even words that looked English but were not attested in this language, such as tennis player, record holder and other jogging.
This explains the difference in attitude that still prevails today. In Quebec, generally speaking, anglicisms are more tolerated in colloquial speech than in a formal register. In France, which has never feared seeing its language disappear in favor of English, anglicisms are more accepted — which bothers Quebecers, by the way.
So, while the French do not apply the French recommendation “mot-clé” to replace ” hashtag “, the Quebecers have taken up the proposal of the Quebec Office of the French Language, “mot-clic”, in a neat language.
Insecurity
By criticizing the language in Quebec in situations where the familiar register is nevertheless adequate, we are not helping the cause of French, even if that is our intention: we are rather contributing to linguistic insecurity, a concept to which Acadian sociolinguist Annette Boudreau has devoted much research.
Linguistic insecurity does not concern the future of a linguistic community, but the personal relationship we have with our language. We begin to doubt our way of speaking: is a word too familiar? Am I using an anglicism? Am I making a mistake?
In writing, we have time to reread, consult a dictionary, and rephrase. But when it creeps into our everyday conversations, linguistic insecurity becomes a problem, and can lead us to avoid speaking in public. Wondering if we are making a mistake in a foreign language is normal. For our own mother tongue? It is disabling.
It is also linguistic insecurity that leads us to make questionable decisions regarding standards. Thus, false anglicism tuxedo (the English form is rather smoking jacket), in use in France, is accepted while the Quebec equivalent, tuxedowhich does indeed exist in English, is criticized. Let us condemn the tuxedo Quebec for the benefit of tuxedo French still amazes me today. Should we see in it the whiff of linguistic colonialism?