French Language Policies and the Revitalisation of Regional Languages in the 21st Century

361 Pages·2019·5.193 MB·

by  Michelle A. Harrison, Aurélie Joubert

FRENCH LANGUAGE POLICIES
AND THE REVITALISATION OF
REGIONAL LANGUAGES
IN THE 21ST CENTURY
EDITED BY MICHELLE A. HARRISON AND AURÉLIE JOUBERT
French Language Policies and the Revitalisation
of Regional Languages in the 21st Century
Michelle A. Harrison • Aurélie Joubert
Editors
French Language
Policies and the
Revitalisation of
Regional Languages
in the 21st Century
Editors
Michelle A. Harrison Aurélie Joubert
School of Arts School of Arts, English and Languages
University of Leicester Queen’s University Belfast
Leicester, UK Belfast, Northern Ireland
ISBN 978-3-319-95938-2 ISBN 978-3-319-95939-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95939-9
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Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a
Twenty-First-Century Republic
Among specialists of minority languages, France undoubtedly does not
enjoy the most enviable of reputations. Centuries of policies that have
directly or indirectly undermined the status of the country’s regional lan-
guages have left them in an impoverished state, making current revitalisa-
tion efforts all the more challenging. Yet while criticism of French policies
from outside observers is well meaning, one cannot help but note a fre-
quent lack of understanding of the ideals that underpin the French
nation. Indeed, one might reasonably expect that a concern for maintain-
ing diversity might also be accompanied by an appreciation of different
forms of society, of different ways of imagining communities, including
national ones. As the editors of this volume note in their introduction,
French national identity is inextricably linked to republican values, to the
extent that any weakening of the latter is tantamount to the decline of the
former. This is not to say that there are no moral grounds for promoting
regional languages in France; rather, it is to stress the point that such
efforts need to take the French republican model into account and help
it to evolve in ways that suit the needs of all French citizens today. The
key to successful minority language revitalisation in France lies within,
specifically in the modernisation of, French republicanism, not in mea-
sures that seek to undermine its core ideals. Indeed, most linguists and
activists in France concerned with the plight of regional languages them-
selves subscribe to republican values in some form. As specialists in lan-
v
vi Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a Twenty-First-Century…
guage matters in France, the contributors to this volume are well placed
to help a broader audience understand the unique context in which the
country’s regional languages exist so that one can best address the needs
of their speakers in the twenty-first century.
As discussed in more detail in the editors’ introduction, France’s tradi-
tional refusal to respond positively to the claims of speakers of regional
languages has its origins in two principles that are clearly enshrined in the
constitution. The first is that ‘[t]he language of the Republic is French’
(art. 2). Introduced in 1992, at the time of France’s ratification of the
Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), this principle was designed
to protect French from the rise of English, especially in the EU. However,
like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts that sought mainly to promote
French over Latin nearly five centuries ago, it has become an obstacle to
efforts made to revitalise regional languages. Indeed, it is one of the main
reasons why France ultimately failed to ratify the European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages, the introduction of which would have
resulted in a limited use of regional languages in the public sphere. For an
outsider, it is difficult to understand the perceived threat that regional
languages continue to present to republican ideology as conceived by
some. Even the respected sociologist Dominique Schnapper, a traditional
republican but nonetheless one who is well versed in Anglo-A merican
ethnic studies, can speculate in all seriousness whether the translation of
official texts into multiple regional languages ‘might not result, after a few
decades, in the adoption of English as the common language (as is now
the case on the Indian peninsula)’ (Schnapper 2017: 321). On the con-
trary, there is no reason to suggest that French, with its established history
in France, would not continue to act as the lingua franca, even if official
documents were also made available in regional languages.
The second principle that explains France’s traditional refusal to coun-
tenance minority language rights relates to its rejection of group rights
(see the editors’ introduction for a discussion of the origins of this prin-
ciple). This is the reason why, when signing international covenants, the
country opts out of any clause that refers to minorities. It explains why
the Constitutional Council famously rejected in 1991 the government’s
proposal to recognise a ‘Corsican people, component of the French peo-
ple’. Together with the first principle noted earlier, it also lies behind
hostility towards the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,
Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a Twenty-First-Century… vviiii
described by one commentator as ‘a war machine, which has France and
its non-ethnic conception of identity as its main target’ (Bollmann 2001:
64). Even many of those in favour of ratifying the Charter reject the idea
of granting special status to certain ethnic groups within France, or even
to certain territories. On this view, regional languages should be pro-
moted purely on the grounds that they belong to the ‘undivided cultural
heritage of France’ (Carcassonne 1998: 128). Despite its stated aim to
preserve and promote Europe’s linguistic heritage rather than grant lin-
guistic rights, the Charter was also rejected by the Constitutional Council,
who felt that it did indeed ‘confer specific rights on “groups” of speakers
of regional or minority languages within “territories” in which these lan-
guages are used’ (Decision 99-412 DC of 15 June 1999).
It is this second principle that sets French republicanism apart from
multicultural models of managing cultural diversity, such as those that
dominate in the English-speaking world. The Canadian philosopher Will
Kymlicka is perhaps the figure who has contributed most to the theoris-
ing of such models. In his seminal work, Multicultural Citizenship,
Kymlicka presents a liberal view of minority rights heavily influenced by
the experience of his native country. He advocates the granting of ‘group-
differentiated rights’ in the form of self-government rights for national
minorities such as the Quebecers and indigenous peoples, so that they
can maintain their own ‘societal cultures’. ‘[T]erritorially concentrated,
and based on a shared language’, such cultures offer their members
‘meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, includ-
ing social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encom-
passing both public and private spheres’ (Kymlicka 1995: 76). While
France’s regional linguistic minorities do not exist in French law, socio-
logically speaking, they fall into the category of national minorities as
envisaged by Kymlicka. However, owing to a history of assimilation, by
no means can they be said to enjoy today their own societal cultures, in
which their languages are used in a full range of public and private
domains. Nor do France’s regional councils have the same powers to help
promote such societal cultures as the provincial government in Quebec,
for example (see the editors’ introduction on the limited powers of
France’s sub-state government in these matters).
If Kymlicka’s notion of ‘societal culture’ seems to offer little by way of
support for France’s regional language communities, or indeed for speak-
viii Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a Twenty-First-Century…
ers of most other smaller regional languages around the world, his ‘cultural
liberalism’ can nonetheless make important contributions to the regional
languages debate in France. Indeed, it is worth remembering that liberal-
ism and republicanism share a commitment to a universalist conception
of political justice. Kymlicka’s ‘group-differentiated rights’ are not the
same as group or collective rights; rather, their moral justification still lies
in the fact that these are designed to meet the universal needs of individu-
als. In the same way that liberalism was able to find a compromise between
cultural claims and abstract universalism without abandoning its core
principles, so too can French republicanism find innovative ways to adapt
to the linguistic claims of speakers of regional languages today. That such
modernisation has not occurred previously can be explained by the fact
that French republicanism is best conceived not as a political philosophy
per se, but rather as ‘a “public philosophy” or national ideology, mostly
articulated and diffused by public intellectuals, politicians, and the media,
and operating on lower levels of abstraction and philosophical sophistica-
tion than Anglo-American analytical liberalism’ (Laborde 2008: 25).
As with all ideologies, French republicanism is prone to excesses, leading
some to speak of a ‘republican fundamentalism’ or even a ‘republican eth-
nicity’. While traditional republicans reject the more widespread use of
regional languages as part of a more general renunciation of ‘the
“ethnicisation” of public life’ (Schnapper 1994: 98), others argue conversely
that it is the enshrinement of French as the language of the Republic that
amounts to an ‘ethnicisation of our conception of the nation’ (Woehrling
1999: 21). By granting constitutional status to a cultural characteristic, this
principle paradoxically ‘undermines the universalist characteristics of the
French republican model’ (Giordan and Lafont 1999). A similar observa-
tion is made by a new wave of French republican thinkers, who agree with
Kymlicka that the state is rarely ethnoculturally neutral, despite frequent
claims to the contrary. Far from surrendering to Kymlicka’s cultural liberal-
ism, these thinkers seek to draw on its findings to rehabilitate French repub-
licanism, by theorising a new ‘critical republicanism’ (Laborde 2008) or
‘republican multiculturalism’ (Guérard de Latour 2009) which is both less
sociologically naïve and more theoretically coherent. The title of the French-
language summary of the critical republican thesis—Français, encore un
effort pour être républicains! (Laborde 2010)—clearly expresses the belief
that French republicanism needs to be truer to its philosophical ideals.
Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a Twenty-First-Century… iixx
Critical republicanism thus maintains that ‘it is institutions, instead of
citizens, that should be “republicanized” as a matter of priority’ (Laborde
2008: 14). It seeks to disentangle the political and cultural dimensions of
integration, so that universalism is not conflated with French cultural
practices. Drawing on the neo-republican principle of ‘non-domination’
(Pettit 1997), it advocates a radical strategy of de-ethnicisation of the
public space, which both de-institutionalises the majority culture and
‘mainstreams’ minority identities so as to facilitate the fair incorporation
of all citizens. Unlike Kymlicka’s cultural liberalism, it does not have the
recognition of minority cultures in the public sphere as a goal per se;
rather, their recognition is only advocated if required to offset the domi-
nation suffered by individual minority group members.
While there is much potential for critical republicanism to outmanoeuvre
traditional French republicanism, or what in effect has become an ideology,
it is unfortunately not yet a comprehensive theory for the management of
cultural diversity. It aims to address the particular needs of immigrants and
their descendants, whose claims are sometimes deemed to relate less to the
recognition of alternative cultures and languages and more to the desire to be
recognised as fully fledged citizens, with the same opportunities as others
with regard to education, social mobility, and political participation (Laborde
2013: 234–235). Neglected by the recent advances in republican thought,
the needs of France’s regional language speakers are clearly different. While
one may be tempted to speak of some ‘mainstreaming’ of regional cultures
and languages—following the constitutional amendment of 2008, ‘[r]egional
languages belong to the heritage of France’ (art. 75-1)—the reality is that this
remains largely symbolic and does not adequately address calls to make real
use of languages other than French in a range of areas of public life. With
their insight into language attitudes and linguistic practices, sociolinguists are
well placed to understand the needs and claims of speakers of France’s regional
languages, old and new alike. In this way, it is hoped that this volume, which
provides an up-to-date portrait of regional languages in France today, will
draw increased attention to their speakers so they might assume their rightful
place in the on-going debates that seek to modernise and adapt French
republicanism to the realities and challenges of the twenty-first century.
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film Leigh Oakes
Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
x Foreword: Regional Language Policy for a Twenty-First-Century…
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