Whose French? Authority and public discourse in language policy debates

Drackley, Patrick James

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124354 Copy

Description

Title

Whose French? Authority and public discourse in language policy debates

Author(s)

Drackley, Patrick James

Issue Date

2024-04-22

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Bhatt, Rakesh M

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Bhatt, Rakesh M

Committee Member(s)

• Smalls, Krystal A
• Kibbee, Douglas A
• Sadler, Randall W

Department of Study

Linguistics

Discipline

Linguistics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• French
• sociolinguistics
• language planning/policy
• authority

Abstract

In February 2016 a news report in France described the impending adoption – by a series of textbook publishers – of the revised orthography approved in 1990 by Académie française and which had already formed part of the national curriculum. In the ensuing weeks, the discussion of the #RéformeOrthographe was widespread in both news media and on social media, with Twitter users only too happy to participate in a debate concerning the maintenance of the circumflex, among a few other minor orthographic changes. These debates – their goals, participants, and general tone – belie the scope of the rectifications d’orthographe, Twitter users throughout France weighed in along with numerous news and current affairs programs. This dissertation seeks to examine the debates with the goal of better understanding the relationships between public discourse and authority in the context of language planning debates. This study is organized around a few related questions: 1. How do speakers of French claim authority over the language – what are the (socio)linguistic correlates of authority, and how are these enacted? 2. How do French speakers enact and interact with the history and myths of France and a particular French? In so doing, what do these speakers say about the identity of this particular, idealized French speaker? 3. What effects might these attempts to claim authority over language have on real-world language policy? 4. What can we learn about the relationship of language and public discourse through such debates? Data are taken from Twitter over a four-month period following the initial televised report, along with televised news reports, debates, and other panels concerning the rectifications d’orthographe. These sources are supplemented by some of the official documents provided by the Académie française and the French Ministry of Education. Analysis of these data generally follows the methods of discourse analysis synthesized and outlined by Wortham and Reyes (2015). The data reveal a wide range of discursive strategies both in opposition to and support for the rectifications in general; moreover, many of the actual details concerning the rectifications were mistaken by many of these users, demonstrating a high level of misinformation, particularly among those who opposed the changes. What many of these Twitter users do demonstrate, however, is a type of grassroots prescriptivist activity (following Heyd, 2014; Drackley, 2019). I argue that these Twitter users instead represent speakers who have so successfully internalized the standard language ideologies produced from the top down that, instead of embracing change, they continue to support these ideologies from the bottom-up in face of proposed changes from the top. These behaviors ultimately have much to say about authority. While authority has often been treated as essentially a corollary to institutional power, the data here demonstrate that authority is a far more complex concept, and it is one that arises in a particular interaction. Instead of assuming that authority lies with one party or another, speakers instead constantly claim, reject, and otherwise negotiate authority by various means throughout an interaction. The means by which speakers may claim authority vary widely; in many cases, the methods used depend on the speaker’s social position at the start of the interaction, with those who are assumed to carry more sociopolitical power typically also able to assume more authority. However, this does not prevent interlocutors from disputing those claims to authority and answering with their own; these counterclaims may be based on the idea of strength in numbers (that language belongs to the many), on an alternate claim to institutional power, or by making direct reference to another figure who is widely perceived to be authoritative. Speakers also underscore their own positions concerning authority by invoking particular chronotopes (Bakhtin, 1981; Agha, 2007), situating their arguments within a broader time-space context and allowing them to draw on existing discourses tied to those time-spaces. This study also considers the ways in which some kind of French-speaker identity is constructed and maintained through these discourses surrounding language reform and language “ownership”. These, too, are varied, but many of them echo the same methods by which authority is claimed: situating the current discussion within a broader sociohistorical milieu, for example, or by claiming as an authority a figure who was believed to have a privileged place in French historical memory (authors of the established literary canon, for example, and members of the French Resistance during the Second World War). One final factor that cannot be discounted in discussions of French speaker identity is the complex ways in which “the other” fits in – that is, who is French and who is not, which language practices make them less French, and how do we account for implicit (or explicit) racist discourses in a society which officially does not recognize race as a salient category? These data, in demonstrating that authority cannot be assumed to lie solely with powerful institutions, also suggest that language reform efforts in the future may be more complex than those previously, as online activity such as social media use makes all the more apparent the ability of the so-called “average speaker” to reach those in power. While grassroots prescriptivist behaviors are undoubtedly not new, for example, social media is able to amplify these voices to the point where it is more difficult for policymakers to ignore them. While I make no concrete suggestions for policymakers to follow – as every situation has its own complexities – the data offered here demonstrate that past efforts to reform aspects of language, particularly in places like France with such a strong attachment to their standard language, cannot be reliably assumed to work without problem in the future.

Graduation Semester

2024-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Patrick J. Drackley

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