Abstract
The paper offers a historical perspective on the linguistic and cultural imperialism embedded in the struggle to maintain French as a leading international language. France was the nation-state where the ideology of national language was first clearly formulated and directly extended to overseas colonies. This shows the close relationship between linguistic nationalism and imperialism. It was believed that French was the language of universal human reason and had the power to civilize people who spoke it. This myth of the "clarté française" and the "mission civilisatrice" had a strong influence on various kinds of metalinguistic discourses that created the taken-for-granted representation of French as dominant language. It is the essential strategy of language dominance to establish the hierarchy of languages as if it were natural order of things. When French was obliged to yield the status of international language to English, there emerged the ideology of "Francophonie" which tried to defend its privilege against the monopoly of English, but the same ideology is also directed against minorities' claims for their own linguistic human right. It could be said that these discourses form a recursive prototype of language dominance whose variations are to be found in other shapes almost all over the world.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Achard, P. 1988. Un idéal monolingue. In: Vermes, G. et Boutet, J, eds., France, pays multilingue, Tome 1: Les langues en France, un enjeu historique et social. Paris, L'Harmattan, pp. 38–57.
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Auroux, S. 1979. La sémiotique des encyclopédistes. Paris: Payot.
Chaudenson, R. 1992. Les Créoles. Paris: PUF.
Calvet, L.-J. 1999. Pour une écologie des langues du monde. Paris: Plon.
Calvet, L.-J. 2000. Un modèle gravitationnel pour une écologie des langues. Translated in Japanese as Miura, N. and Kasuya, K., Gengoteikokusyugi towa nanika? Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, pp. 27–38.
Crystal, D. 1997. English as a Global Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Certeau, M. de et al. 1975. Une politique de la langue: la Révolution française et les patois. Paris: Gallimard.
Dauzat, A. 1949. Le génie de la langue française. Paris: Payot.
Deniau, X. 1983. La Francophonie. Paris: PUF.
Farandjis, S. 1999. Philosophie de la Francophonie. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Girardet, P. (ed.). 1966. Le nationalisme français 1871–1914, Paris: Armand Colin.
Grégoire, Abbé. 1988. Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs. Paris: Stock.
Hagège, Cl. 1996. Le français, histoire d'un combat. Paris: Editions Michel Hagège.
Higonnet, P. L.-R. 1980. The Politics of Linguistic Terrorism and Grammatical Hegemony during the French Revolution. Social History 5(1), 41–69.
Holborow, M. 1999. The Politics of English. A Marxist View of Language. London: Sage.
Kachru, B. B. 1986. The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of Non-natives Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Lo Piparo, F. 1979. Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci. Bari: Laterza.
Meillet, A. 1925. La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Oslo: H. Aschehoug.
Meillet, A. 1928. Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle. 2e édition, Paris: Payot.
Necheles, R. F. 1971. The Abbé Grégoire 1787–1831. The Odyssey of an Egalitarian. Westpoint: Greenwood Publications.
Pennycook, A. 1994. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman.
Pennycook, A. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge.
Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Renzi, L. 1981. La politica linguistica della rivoluzione francese. Napoli: Liguori.
Ricken, U. 1978. Grammaire et philosophie au siècle des Lumières. Lille: Publications de l'Université de Lille III.
Rivarol, A. 1991. L'universalité de la langue française. Paris: Arléa.
Trabant, J. 1981. Die Sprache der Freiheit und ihre Feinde. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (LiLi) 41, 70–89.
Weber, E. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford U.P.
Williams, G. 1992. Sociolinguistics: A Sociological Critique. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kasuya, K. Discourses of Linguistic dominance: A Historical Consideration of French Language Ideology. International Review of Education 47, 235–251 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017993507936
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017993507936