If Céline’s appearance at the opening of the Olympic Games gave me a very chauvinistic shiver, the speech by Tony Estanguet, the president of the Games’ organizing committee, aroused in me a deep and lively emotion.
All along in French, with only a few sentences in English, a confident, warm, communicative speech. The French language naturally welcomed the world in an artistic and technological deployment of an indisputable modernity.
Since economic issues are closely linked to cultural dynamics, the main challenge of the French language is to remain the bearer and creator of possible futures, whether technical, cultural, scientific, political or economic.
In fact, the Games offered him a unique opportunity to get back on track, to momentarily rediscover that conquering something that had somewhat shrunk in recent decades in the face of the tsunami of Anglo-American cultural products propelled by the spectacular development of information technologies.
This does not mean revoking English. On the contrary, remaining open to it, just as to a multilingualism that does not belittle one’s own language!
Coolness
The latest development on the linguistic front in Quebec, last spring, a wave of reports informed us that young French-speaking secondary school students, even primary school students, are talking to each other in English in the corridors of our schools. And even in the classroom!
If we continue to promote learning English with the arguments – now heavy – of the irrefutable advantages for the career, it would be high time to probe the deep motivations of our new English speakers to have a finer understanding of the phenomenon. It is a safe bet that the professional advantages and other universalizing reasons generally invoked would not alone occupy the top of the reasons which stimulate it.
The simple motives of pleasure, self-esteem, the prestige of being trendy, the feeling of freedom that percolates from Anglo-American brands and products, the great pantheon of celebrities, whose aura exudes success, prestige and absolute coolness, all these so-called contributions to the ego, fruits of a refined marketing architecture, are only rarely considered in the analysis of linguistic questions. Marketing communication of which the great French luxury brands nevertheless remain the most fantastic muses.
Are we really thinking about our future when we mumble English in the school corridors? What is really going on in the workings of the developing adolescent brain?
Identify
In addition to perceived benefits and usefulness, there are certainly questions of belonging and social conformity. Code-switching cannot explain everything, just as the use of a language is not neutral and without effect over time. Even when poor, it contributes to structuring thought and, particularly in the first years of life, to developing, or at least sketching, the contours of the person’s identity.
Adolescence is also an intense time of exploration. What are we presented with from other French-speaking countries beyond the Francos in June? What buzz from France, Belgium, Africa and elsewhere are our teens exposed to in the other months of the year? The time when French stars held the bill at Place des Arts for a few days is long gone.
It seems to me that for a millennium, we have been dealing with the question of the French language in Quebec from the abrupt side of statistics. From numbers, we invariably slide towards the normative.
The question of French takes on the density of theological debates, always serious, opening onto absolute, absolutist perspectives. By renewing the questions, perhaps we would obtain surprising answers?
May the enthusiasm of the French Games in Paris, like a springboard, or the starting blocksto bring about an updated, refreshed, invigorated return of French as a language of international use. Here. And elsewhere.