The Roman Empire was not monolingual, but bilingual, because the Roman elites discovered the full value of the Greek culture and language from which they drew their inspiration. Everyone knows Gargantua's letter to Pantagruel in Chapter 8 of Rabelais’ Pantagruel in which Gargantua, before even listing the long list of fundamental knowledge to be acquired in the sciences, arts, law, history and...
Views on Africa and the linguistic challenge On returning from the first World Congress of Francophone Researchers and Experts organized by ACAREF (Académie africaine de recherches et études francophones) at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, from 11 to 14 June 2019, it is natural to take a benevolent look at Africa. First of all, this congress, which attracted nearly 250 participants,...
March 20 is the International Day of Francophonie, an opportunity to take stock of this rather unknown reality. Some see it as a pure extension of the French language of France, whose future would be bleak. Others see it as a colonial legacy to be liquidated as a matter of urgency Or others imagine it as a literary empire, a major part of a world literary republic. We can extend for a long time...
If plurilingualism were simply to defend languages (in fact its language) as a kind of sacred object, a wonder of nature to be safeguarded at all costs, we would actually not have much to say. The reality is that languages are infinitely more than just a museum object. In Halte à la mort des langues (2,000), Claude Hagège simply points out that it is languages that make history possible....
By establishing a web of links between languages and development, we are entering an area where language issues are rarely present, while many of the works on languages actually concern development issues. By choosing "sustainable development" as the theme for the 5th Congress, we questioned ourselves as linguists on the validity of the expression "sustainable development". As if "sustainable...
La Médiatrice européenne organise une grande consultation publique sur le fonctionnement linguistique de l’Union européenne. Si elle le fait c’est clairement parce qu’elle constate des dysfonctionnements réguliers et graves, ce qui légitime le combat que l’OEP mène depuis plus de douze ans, et c’est aussi parce qu’elle pense qu’il est possible de l’améliorer, ce qui est...
La Commission européenne a publié le 22 mai une proposition de recommandation du Conseil relative à une approche globale de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage des langues. Elle ne répond que partiellement à l’invitation du Conseil européen du 14 décembre 2017 à faire des propositions « en vue de renforcer l’apprentissage des langues et de faire en sorte que...
On 22 May the European Commission published a proposal for a Council Recommendation on a comprehensive approach to language teaching and learning. It responds only partially to the European Council's invitation of 14 December 2017 to make proposals "to strengthen language learning and to ensure that more young people speak at least two European languages in addition to their mother tongue", thus...
An Armenian saying goes “As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being.” Charles the Great is attributed a similar idea: “A man who speaks four languages is worth four men.” Such a wise saying could complement the European motto: “United in diversity.” Kant, in a famous chapter of his Critique of Judgment, argued that “to think into the place of others” was a...
Culture First! In his new album “Bug”, drawing artist and script writer Enki Bilal imagined a world frozen by a gigantic computer bug. Beyond the imagined catastrophe, he explained on 28th November in an interview for French newspaper Le Monde that “digital technologies constitute the new addiction which has us all in its grip. I have read that a kid coming to life today would, when...
Recovering the power of speech ! As the writer Laurent Binet reminds the readers in his humourous and talented thriller The Seventh Function of Speech, speech is a power, a function long unknown to the linguists. In this respect, Europe, or rather the European communities which have become the European Union, has always kept silent, desperately silent, on the matters of the world and on...
In his latest book, Regis Debray notes that the passage from domination to hegemony occurs when “there is no place left for public debate”. We would also say that it happens when the most obvious manifestations of domination no longer attract attention, when our ability for analysis is corrupted, when the world becomes uncontrollable, when what exists bears the mark of Providence or Fate,...