What is well conceived is clearly stated, and the words to say it come easily. ” No. Not all the time. French is not an easy language. This language may well be simpler than Latin, where it comes from, it requires us to be agile.
How to determine whether to write “it”, “is” or “knows”? Why not “know”, “his”, “these” or quite simply “c”? Many people left embarrassed by such difficulties all their lives, however, do not hesitate to proclaim themselves experts in epidemiology, at least if we judge by the laborious use of French which prevails in the community of conspirators. If you stay on the surface of their words, it is easy to denigrate these people without having to wonder what, in society, pushes them to hold such positions.
Linguistic uses say a lot about us, as long as we question them. They talk about our social position, our relationship to the world, the forces that weigh on our lives, those that we exert on others. Language is the expression of relative power. Look at this president of Air Canada, quite uninhibited, able to say that he does not wish to speak French. He recalls that time, sixty years ago, when the president of the Canadian National, Donald Gordon, proclaimed without embarrassment that none of his seventeen vice-presidents was French-speaking. He said that francophones did not have the skills required to fill these positions. But this Mr. Gordon himself had only very meager studies …
At that time, that of the golden age of hockey, everyone happily repeated that René Lecavalier spoke well, that he was an example to follow. This mastery of the language, which Lecavalier symbolized, reminded us that French is a language of rank, that it expresses a social status. Meanwhile, at the neighborhood ice rink, at my place, down the hill, we continued without batting an eyelid, in the rest of our winters, to spend the night. puck and to replace a quantity of verbs by declensions borrowed from the Catholic liturgy. The real language of the ice rink was never that, all smoothed out, of René Lecavalier’s television screen. This fascination for its opposite, for the language of literary salons, stemmed from a form of inability to accept raw reality other than with a certain contempt.
Quebecers, in French as in English, have always been held to be silent, in the name of this contempt. They listened to others talk about them. Quebecers would undoubtedly have lost their memory with speaking if it had been in their power to both forget and be silent. In other words, this people of woollens, weaves and soft things made beautiful door rugs at best.
The imposition of a dominant language continues today to be part of the same old strategies dedicated to purging such a society of its will to assert its existence. Among the characteristic features of our time, the effects produced by the use of words intended to disguise reality in favor of financial injunctions should be considered in this regard more closely.
Consider the constant use of the term “middle class”. The Trudeau and Legault governments, like most of their Western counterparts, are making a big deal out of it. To hear them repeat this term which they apply to all, one comes to believe that the company is a vast surface without roughness, smoothed by a big economic Zamboni. In this fable of an average society, we all start, in principle, on an equal footing. Everyone knows this is not true, but this fable allows some to continue to allow themselves to walk on each other’s feet.
Among the words of this globalized language is still that of “merit”. This overused term allows the better-off to justify their height by virtue alone, while periodically indignant at the complaints heard at the gates of their castle. The powerful are happy to celebrate the myth of “equal opportunities” insofar as their successes appear to them to be explained by their own personal efforts, by their “busy agenda”. Merit, especially when you earn $ 400,000 or 10 million a year, is one of the most pleasant scents of the good conscience of winners.
How many times have you heard the word “resilience” spoken during the pandemic? We are told over and over again: you have to learn to take care of yourself, while carrying on your back what breaks your back. Are you sick or tired? Follow the tutorials that your employer has generously concocted for you to treat you. Are you fired? No need to point the finger at labor disputes, derisory wages or relations of domination: this is an opportunity for you to explore “new challenges”, to become stronger, to find a new spring in yourself. Unsurprisingly, resilience is now part of the dominant discourse of companies.
Even the fate of the planet is entirely up to you. Learn how to save rather than claiming more. Pay a little more to eat organic. You can always read about “voluntary simplicity” or “fair trade”, which will explain to you either that you don’t need anything or that “all the little things count”.
The decades go by. Yet we are still astonished to learn that, behind the renewed contempt for French, it is in fact another language, that of a particular world, which continues to recite the old monologue of the virtues of alienation. . And this language, spoken today just as well by a CEO of an airline as a candidate for mayor, is imposed everywhere in the name of the sacrosanct economic power of a few.