Language policy in France
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Besides French, there exist many other vernacular minority
History
The
Académie française
The
French Revolution
Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, French kings did not take a strong position on the language spoken by their subjects. However, in sweeping away the old provinces, parlements and laws, the Revolution strengthened the unified system of administration across the state. At first, the revolutionaries declared liberty of language for all citizens of the Republic; this policy was subsequently abandoned in favour of the imposition of a common language which was to do away with the other languages of France. Other languages were seen as keeping the peasant masses in obscurantism.[citation needed]
The new idea was expounded in the 1794 Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the
The report resulted the same year in two laws which stated that the only language tolerated in France in public life and in schools would be French. Within two years, the French language had become the symbol of the national unity of the French State. However, the revolutionaries lacked both time and money to implement a language policy.
Third Republic
In the 1880s, the Third Republic sought to modernize France, and in particular to increase literacy and general knowledge in the population, especially the rural population, and established free compulsory primary education.
The only language allowed in primary school was French. All other languages were forbidden, even in the schoolyard, and transgressions were severely punished.
Fourth Republic
The 1950s were also the first time the French state recognised the right of the regional languages to exist. A law allowed for the teaching of regional languages in secondary schools, and the policy of repression in the primary schools came to an end. The Breton language began to appear in the media during this time.[citation needed]
Fifth Republic
The French government allowed in 1964 for the first time one and a half minutes of Breton on regional television. But even in 1972, president Georges Pompidou declared that "there is no place for minority languages in a France destined to make its mark on Europe."[6]
In 1992 the constitution was amended to state explicitly that "the language of the Republic is French."[7][8]
The Toubon Law (full name: law 94-665 of 4 August 1994 relating to usage of the French language) mandated the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools, and some other contexts.[9]
The law does not concern private, non-commercial communications, such as non-commercial web publications by private bodies. It does not concern books, films, public speeches, and other forms of communications not constituting commercial activity. However, the law mandates the use of the French language in all broadcast audiovisual programs, with exceptions for musical works and "original version" films.[10]
Broadcast musical works are subject to
In 2006, under this law, a French subsidiary of a US company was fined €500,000 plus an ongoing fine of €20,000 per day for providing software and related technical documentation to its employees in English only.[13]
In 2008, a revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles.[1]
In 2021, a law on regional languages was adopted by the parliament. However, its articles on immersion education in public schools and on use of regional languages' diacritics in civil records were vetoed by the Constitutional Council.[14]
The debate about the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
In 1999 the Socialist government of
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European convention (ETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe, ratified and implemented by 25 States, but not by France, as of 2014[update]. The charter contains 98 articles of which signatories must adopt a minimum of 35 (France signed 39).[citation needed] The signing, and the failure to have it ratified, provoked a public debate in French society over the charter.
More recently, in a letter to several deputies dated 4 June 2015,
Minority and endangered languages
Excluding the languages spoken in the
Celtic languages
Breton (Gwenedeg/Vannetais, Gwennraneg, Kerneveg, Leoneg, and Tregerieg)
Francosign languages
Germanic languages
Isolate languages
Basque/Euskara and Lyons Sign Language
Romance languages
- Ligurian
- Gallo-Romance languages
- Langues d'oïl: Angevin, Berrichon, Burgundian, Champenois, Frainc-Comtou, Gallo, Lorrain, Manceau, Mayennais, Normaund, Picard, Poetevin, Saintonjhais, and Walloon
- Occitano-Romance languages: Auvergnat, Catalan, Gascon (Béarnese and Landese), Langadocian, Limousin, Niçard, Occitan, Provençal, and Vivaroalpenc
- )
- Italo-Dalmatian languages: Corsican and Italian
Romani languages
Auvergnat Romani, Caló, and Sintikès
The non-French
In the 1940s, more than one million people spoke Breton as their main language. The countryside in western Brittany was still overwhelmingly Breton-speaking. Today, about 170,000 people are able to speak Breton (around 8% of the population in the traditionally Breton speaking area), most of whom are elderly. Other regional languages have generally followed the same pattern; Alsatian and Corsican have resisted better, while Occitan has followed an even worse trend.[more detail needed]
Accurate information on the state of language use is complicated by the inability (due to constitutional provisions) of the state to ask language use questions in the census.
Since the rejection of ratification of the European Charter, French governments have offered token support to regional languages within the limits of the law. The Délégation générale à la langue française (General delegation of the French tongue) has acquired the additional function of observing and studying the languages of France and has had "et aux langues de France" (...and languages of France) added to its title.
The French government hosted the first Assises nationales des langues de France in 2003,[20] but this national round table on the languages of France served to highlight the contrast between cultural organisations and language activists on the one hand and the state on the other.
The decentralization has not extended to giving power in language policy to the regions.
In April 2021, France approved the "Molac" law (8 April 2021) which aims to protect and promote regional languages across the country.[21] The law allows for schools to offer teaching in the medium of a regional minority language for the majority of the school day. However, the French Minister of Education, opposed to the teaching in minority languages, asked the Conseil Constitutionnel to declare it unconstitutional. This led to certain provisions of the law being constitutionally struck down on 21 May 2021.[22]
Opposition to language policy
According to French republican ideology (see also
This policy of cultural homogeneity has been challenged from both the right wing and the left wing. In the 1970s, nationalist or regionalist movements emerged in regions such as Brittany, Corsica and Occitania. Even though they remain a minority, networks of schools teaching France's regional languages have arisen, such as the Diwan in Brittany, the Ikastola in the Basque Country, the Calandreta in Occitania, and the La Bressola schools in Northern Catalonia.[23]
Despite popular demand for official recognition, regional language teaching is not supported by the state.
A long campaign of defacing road signs led to the first bilingual road signs in the 1980s. These are now increasingly common in Brittany, because of the help given by the
As far as the media are concerned, there is still little Breton to be found on the airwaves, although since 1982 a few Breton-speaking radio stations have been created on an associative basis. The launching of the Breton TV Breizh in 2000 was intended to offer wider coverage of Breton. However, Breton-language programme schedules gradually decreased in favour of French-language broadcasting, until in 2010 they totally disappeared.
In Corsica, the 1991 "Joxe Statute", in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the
There is some opposition to the
See also
References
- ^ a b Article 75-1: (a new article): "Les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France" ("Regional languages belong to the patrimony of France"). See Loi constitutionnelle du 23 juillet 2008.
- ^ Cerquiglini, Bernard (April 1999). Les langues de France: Rapport au ministre de l'éducation nationale, de la recherche et de la technologie et à la ministre de la culture et de la communication (Report) (in French).
- ^ "Le français aujourd'hui". Académie française (in French). Retrieved 18 June 2022.
- ^ Grégoire, Henri (1794). Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d'anéantir les patois et d'universaliser l'usage de la langue française (Report) (in French). Paris: Convention nationale. pp. 1–19. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
- ^ Lodge 2001: 218
- ISBN 9780191584077.
- ISBN 9780521794657.
- ^ Loi constitutionnelle n° 92-554 du 25 juin 1992 (in French) – via Légifrance.
- ^ See the text of the Toubon Law in English at La Délégation Générale à la Langue Française.
- ^ Open Society Institute.
- ^ "French radio goes to war with language quotas in fight for musical freedom". France 24. 28 September 2015. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
- ^ "French rebel over music language quotas". BBC News. 3 October 2015. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
- ^ Desprès, Philippe (April 2006). "Foreign Firms' In-House Communications and Technical Documents Must be in French". American Bar Association. Archived from the original on 6 August 2009. Retrieved 26 November 2007.
- ^ "The French Constitutional partially vetoes the law that allowed linguistic immersion in France". The News 24. 21 May 2021. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
- ^ Décision n° 99-412 DC du 15 juin 1999 (in French) – via Conseil constitutionnel.
- ^ "Vers un projet de loi constitutionnelle pour ratifier la Charte des langues régionales". Le Monde (in French). 4 June 2015. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ de Montvalon, Jean-Baptiste (1 August 2015). "Nouvel obstacle à la ratification de la Charte des langues régionales". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "Le Sénat dit non à la Charte européenne des langues régionales". France Info (in French). 27 October 2015. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "France". Ethnologue. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
- ^ Verny, Marie-Jeanne (25 October 2003). "01-11-03 – À propos des Assises nationales des langues de France, 4 octobre 2003 | FELCO" (in French). Retrieved 17 April 2021.
- ^ "France adopts historic law to protect its regional languages". The Connexion. 9 April 2021. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
- ^ "Langues régionales: Le Conseil constitutionnel censure partiellement la proposition de loi". Le Figaro (in French). 21 May 2021.
- ^ Brant, Colin (2020). "Communication and Culture: The Role of Language Policy on Regional Minority Languages in the Reduction of Political Conflict". Honors Program Theses (Honors Degree Program Senior Honors Project). Rollins College.
- ^ "Meet the French, strong supporters of regional languages". Eurolang. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 13 July 2008.
- ^ Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg - L'enseignment
- ^ (French) Dispositif académique d’enseignement de la langue corse dans le premier degré, année scolaire 2010-2011, Academy of Corsica
Further reading
- GEMIE, S. (2002), The politics of language : debates and identities in contemporary Brittany, French Cultural Studies n°13, p. 145-164.
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2010b), "Enjeux des politiques linguistiques: pratiques et comportements langagiers mutilingues dans un pays monolingue". In: M.Iliescu, H. Siller-Runggaldier, P. Danler (éds.) Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Innsbruck 2007, Tome I. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 163-172. Available at
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2010a)Place des langues natives et d'accueil chez trois familles migrantes indiennes en Europe. In Andrea Rocci, Alexandre Duchêne, Aleksandra Gnach & Daniel Stotz (Eds.) Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée, printemps 2010: Sociétés en mutations: les défis méthodologiques de la linguistique appliquée. Numéro Spécial, 2010/1, 225-236.
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2008), "Différences de politiques linguisitiques entre nation et famille: Etude de cas de trois familles indiennes migrantes dans trois pays d'Europe". In: Suvremena Lingvistika Vol. 34 (65), 57-72. Available at https://hrcak.srce.hr/25188
- KYMLICKA (Will), Les droits des minorités et le multiculturalisme: l’évolution du débat anglo-américain , in KYMLICKA (Will) et MESURE (Sylvie) dir., Comprendre les identités culturelles, Paris, PUF, Revue de Philosophie et de sciences sociales n°1, 2000, p. 141-171.
- SZULMAJSTER-CELNIKER (Anne), La politique de la langue en France, La Linguistique, vol 32, n°2, 1996, p. 35-63.
- WRIGHT (Sue), 2000, Jacobins, Regionalists and the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, Journal of Multilingual and Multicural Development, vol. 21, n°5, p. 414-424.
- REUTNER, Ursula (2017), Manuel des francophonies. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.