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IN ACT 2 of Molière's Le malade imaginaire ( The Imaginary Invalid ), Bèralde asks his brother Argan how he is feeling. “Ah brother, I'm bad, very bad,” Argan responds. “You wouldn't believe how feeble I am. […] I've hardly strength enough to speak” (252). Like Argan, many American French programs seem to be enfeebled. While there has been no lack of effort to reinvigorate the study of Molière's language, the remedies proposed often resemble the purges and injections of Argan's doctor, M. Purgon: they fail to treat the patient's chronic condition.
Later, in act 3, Bèralde inquires of Argan, “I ask you again, brother, is there no curing you of this disease of being doctored? Are you going to be the victim of their remedies all the rest of your life?” (261). These questions echo my concern for ailing French-language studies. In the following pages, I reexamine the patient and set out a diagnostic plan that better treats the fundamental ailment. I then discuss the implications of this prescription for curricular and strategic planning.
The decline in French enrollment is usually discussed within the context of the explosive growth of Spanish. Five surveys, conducted by the MLA over the past thirty-five years, show a net decrease in French registrations, despite periods of growth during two decades. Spanish, on the other hand, has recorded a dramatic increase (see table).
The “defense of French” has often been cast in military terms, 1 historically targeting the hegemony of English in international communication, as well as anglicisms in French. Recently, these attacks have been volleyed against Spanish. A headline in the July-August 1996 issue of Le monde de l'education proclaims, “Il faut résister à la pression de l'espagnol” (“We must resist the pressure of Spanish” 2 ). The French government is urged to provide economic support for the teaching of French in the United States, since we must fight against the domination of Spanish (“Il faut lutter contre la domination de l'espagnol”; Valdman, “Il faut” 20, 21). Colleagues concede that we are not likely to win a one-on-one competition against Spanish (Barker 8).
In a more conciliatory tone, Albert Valdman, past president of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), has made numerous attempts to convince teachers that it is not the Spanish language that represents a direct menace to French studies but rather a confounding of language typologies and functions (“Letter” [1951] 1; “Une politique” 5). He has cautioned against efforts to rehabilitate French by discouraging the choice of Spanish as a foreign language, deploring such a “fratricidal fight” (“Une politique” 5). The AATF's “Report from the Subcommittee on Recruiting College Students” echoes the same theme. Although the first reason survey respondents gave for the decline in French enrollments was “students choosing Spanish instead of French,” respondents also attributed increasing local enrollments in part to “cooperation with colleagues in Spanish” (Barker 7).
Nevertheless, many of the strategies put forth to reverse the drop in French enrollments seek implicitly or explicitly to appropriate the appeal of Spanish: if Spanish is spoken by a diversity of people spread over a wide geographic area, French must tout la francophonie ; if Spanish is perceived as an easier and more open language, French instruction must become more tolerant of error; if Spanish is perceived as more useful, French must develop its business courses and offer testimonials from successful students. In the discussion that follows, I argue that each of these solutions, which have been referred to as manifestations of “Spanish envy” (Siskin, Knowles, and Davis 54), is flawed; their weakness lies in the congruence they attempt to establish between the two languages in the functional, linguistic, and ideological domains.
| Registrations | Percentage Change between Surveys | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 1995 | 1960–70 | 1970–80 | 1980–90 | 1990–95 | |
| French | 228,813 | 359,313 | 248,361 | 272,472 | 205,351 | +57.0 | -30.9 | +9.7 | -24.6 |
| Spanish | 178,689 | 389,150 | 379,379 | 533,944 | 606,286 | +117.8 | -2.5 | +40.7 | +13.5 |
Source: Brod and Huber, table 4.
Two arguments are often put forward to illustrate the utility of French. One emphasizes the numeric and geographic importance of the francophone world: a publicity brochure advertises that “French is a world language, spoken and studied on every continent,” and lists forty-four “countries and regions where French is spoken as a first or second language” (Amer. Assn. of Teachers of French, “French Is”); a dossier pédagogique lists fifty-one francophone countries, including Romania, Lebanon, and Egypt, which participated in the 1993 Mauritian Francophone Summit (Ministère de la Culture et de la Francophone 16); Alain Juppé (74), a former prime minister of France, notes “French is today, the only language, along with English, that is spoken on five continents and taught in the quasi totality of educational systems.”
Clearly, these statements seek to counter the perceived linguistic hegemony of Spanish in the American foreign language community, as well as the notion that the use of French is confined to the Hexagon and, as an afterthought, Quebec. While technically accurate, they nevertheless gloss over the sociolinguistic realities of French throughout the francophone world, allowing readers to conclude incorrectly that as an official language in Quebec, Senegal, and Haiti, French has the same functions as does Spanish in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina or indeed in the vast majority of the Hispanic world.
Given its demographic growth, francophone Africa is often considered to hold the key for the survival of French as a world language: “Avec ses 25 pays sur les 42 Etats et Gouvernements participants à la francophonie, ses 180 millions d'habitants sur les 380 que compte l'espace francophone et son exorbitant taux de croissance démographique, l'Afrique est regardée à la veille du XXI e siècle, avec espoir, comme le dernier rempart et le continent d'avenir pour la langue française et la francophonie” (Kazadi 9; “With its twenty-five countries out of the forty-two states and governments participating in la francophonie , its 180,000,000 inhabitants out of the 380,000,000 that the francophone space counts, and its exhorbitant rate of demographic growth, Africa is looked on hopefully at the threshold of the twenty-first century as the last rampart and the continent of the future for the French language and la francophonie .” Cf. Nguessan 5; Juppé 74).
Indeed, French is the official or co-official language of nineteen sub-Saharan countries (Lafage 215–16). While its relation to the local languages varies from one country to another, Lafage maintains that “there does not appear to be any challenge in the foreseeable future to the role of French in the functions for which it is used: administration, international relations, teaching, the media, trade, transport, tourism, science and technology, literature and so on” (216). Nevertheless, she emphasizes that large percentages of the people in these countries do not speak French: 88.90% of those in Chad, 81.80% in the Central African Republic, 46.86% in the Congo, and 36.88% in Gabon. Furthermore, among French speakers, linguistic competence varies widely. The percentage of “real Francophones” is estimated to be 1.92% in Chad, 3.59% in the Central African Republic, 7.5% in Gabon, and 19.7% in the Congo. The use of French may be correlated with geographic and demographic factors: Francophones are concentrated in (coastal) cities and tend to be young, male, and employed in the civil service or the professions or to do technical or manual work (216–19).
African support for the cultural construct of la francophonie , especially for its translation into political and economic policy, is by no means universal. Nguessan contends that business interests motivate Hexagonal “cooperation” with African states. Three decades of relations privilégiées have left Africans “deceived, betrayed and disappointed” (6). For others, la francophonie evokes colonial memories: “En effet, l'impéralisme et le néo-colonialisme apparaissent, dans la bouche de beaucoup de jeunes africains, comme des notions intrinsèquement liées à la francophonie” (Kazadi 78; “Indeed, imperialism and neocolonialism appear to be notions intrinsically linked to la francophonie , in the opinion of many young Africans.” Cf. Adeniran 29). Many young intellectuals see African languages as the only possible vehicles of growth and national identity:
Only such languages are capable of being languages of African economic, political and cultural development. Only such languages are capable of fostering African regional and continental cooperation and unity. And equally important, only such languages will enable us to retain our African identity in the contemporary international arena, where we are belated and feeble newcomers, and where policies are dictated by the same West which for centuries has been exploiting us and claiming that we are a people without civilization or culture.
(Ruhumbika 73–74; cf. Nguessan 8–9)
Where official in other parts of the francophone world, French may likewise be in a diglossic relation with the local language, serving the high functions of government and higher education, as in Haiti, where only 5% of the population is bilingual in French and Creole (Aub-Buscher 203). In Martinique, although French has a wide demographic and social base, “there is no doubt that the majority of Martinicans feet that Creole is their language” (206). French in Quebec is vital, although francophone communities outside the province feel underserved and threatened (Blanc 253). Ager's conclusion, which I believe is overstated, is that French may play a conflictual role in the francophone world:
Outside Europe, excepting Quebec, French in the world is normally the mode of expression of an élite; there are few countries in which French is the native language of the masses, and even in those the language concerned is a creole or other major adaptation. French […] has no “roots” abroad, in the same way that Portuguese has roots among all classes of society in Brazil [and] Spanish has developed its own forms in South America and Mexico […]. Typically therefore, French is a language of power and of a minority, causing resentment rather than support, and conflict rather than cooperation; this reaction has also been strengthened by the cultural hegemony of Paris. (109)
A second area of functional incongruence is the perceived utility of Spanish. It hardly bears repeating that given the significant linguistic and cultural presence of Hispanics in the United States, as well as the importance of trade with Latin America, students view the study of Spanish as a way of enhancing their career opportunities. Indeed, the choice of Spanish reflects this country's longstanding educational code: “American education has traditionally been characterized by a behaviorist orientation to teaching and learning; an orientation that stressed conformity and that is often seen as the servant of the economy rather than of the individual; as the ‘practical application of knowledge,’ rather than as ‘knowledge’ itself” (Freed and Bernhardt 255).
Some members of the profession have proposed emphasizing the utility of French as a way of shoring up enrollments. Petrey describes a marketing effort by the Services Culturels of the French consulate in New York City: “AATF members were to learn how to convince potential students that French is the ‘technological and business language of the future.’ Once students understand that ‘they can get jobs and make money’ if they know French, French teachers will get jobs and make money too” (381). Respondents to a survey conducted by a subcommittee of the AATF's Task Force on the Promotion of French emphasized the necessity of “show[ing] students how a knowledge of French can enhance career opportunities.” More specifically, some respondents stated that if students “do not see a down-to-earth reason to take French, they aren't likely to do so” (Barker 7, 8). In addition, promotional materials explain that knowing French will “increase your job opportunities and salary potential” (Amer. Assn. of Teachers of French, “Why”). A calendar of promotional events suggests, “if possible, [having] ‘testimonials’ of students who continued with their French instruction and found it useful in their careers” (Amer. Assn. of Teachers of French, “Enrich”).
Valdman offers a more critical assessment. He makes a crucial distinction between a second and a foreign language, assigning many Spanish pedagogical and communicative situations to the former category and identifying French with the latter. Thus, in areas with a large Hispanic population, such as southern California, the Southwest, and south Florida, Spanish students have more opportunities to use their language functionally in a second-language setting. He concedes, however, that trying to position French in a similar utilitarian or communicative setting in the United States is a losing proposition: “Pour les enseignants de français langue étrangè […] américains, tenter de concurrencer l'espagnol sur ce plan, c'est partir perdant” (“Une politique” 5; “For American teachers of French as a foreign language, trying to compete with Spanish in this area is a losing proposition”). Valdman asks instead that French be recognized as the primary foreign language in this country and be accorded the intellectual and cultural functions that such a designation entails: “L'enseignement du français langue étrangère devrait viser des objectifs globaux plus conformes avec la mission de formation générale de l'école et du premier cycle universitaire. Un des créneaux traditionnels du français aux États-Unis celui de son identification à la culture et à la civilisation” (“Une politique” 5; “The teaching of French as a foreign language should target global objectives that are more in keeping with the general educational mission of schools or of introductory university studies. One of the traditional roles of French in the United States is its identification with culture and civilization”).
The prescriptive discourse of French also sets it apart from Spanish. Lodge notes that French prescriptivism “tends to be explicit and overt.” He continues that the standard language, usually identified with educated Parisian usage, “exert[s] strong pressures on speakers and deviation from the standard is tolerated less readily” (234). He further describes the passion with which points of grammar and spelling are debated and identifies the school system, “with its emphasis on the primacy of the written language, on the priority of planned over unplanned discourse, on the unacceptability of non-standard linguistic forms,” as the vehicle by which “the ideology of the standard is promoted most vigorously and effectively” (236). Sanders relates the notion of the written norm to a culture of accuracy and prescriptivism:
For several centuries (in particular from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), the emphasis was on the written language, and on a sort of idealised “norm.” Thus the only way in which any variants on this could be conceptualised was in terms of deviation, deficiency and error. It is only relatively recently that it has been recognised that there is a need to study the way people actually use the French language […]. (“Variation” 37)
By contrast, Spanish admits regionalism and neologisms much more easily (see Lipski for a discussion of regional lexical variation). Moreover, it legitimizes a number of accents:
There are no pan-Hispanic norms which unerringly select preferred variants, nor is there any one country or region universally acknowledged as the repository of the linguistic standard, and whose speech is emulated by residents of other countries. Occasionally found in the United States is the anachronistic notion that “Castilian” Spanish is the only worthy contender, but this is a carryover from days when foreign languages were taught only in conjunction with their written literatures, and when Spanish was equated with “the language of Cervantes.”
(Lipski 136)
Thus the influence of Paris on French linguistic and literary production has no correlate in the Hispanic world. 3 Despite the calls for legitimizing regional varieties of French (Corbeil), which would lend additional credibility to the “Francophone strategy” for the promotion of French, nonstandard forms are at best treated as curiosity pieces—but are more often branded as stigmatizing (see Ager 107; Salien) 4 and are therefore usually absent from teaching materials, even when the speech setting is identified as non-Hexagonal France. Moreover, the pragmatics of the speech event that motivated the speakers' choice of French (as opposed to a local language) are rarely made explicit. Cichon's assessment of the role of francophonie in French manuels could easily apply to most American textbooks: “La francophonie occupe encore une place incertaine, aléatoire et le plus souvent marginale” (31; “ La francophonie still occupies an uncertain, random, and, most often, marginal position”).
French prescriptivism has further implications for the foreign language classroom. When teachers of French uncritically represent puristic, native-speaker attitudes towards language in the American classroom, these behaviors can create a discourse of exclusion. Examples include an automatic-correction reflex, a fetishistic banishing of English (and perceived anglicisms) from the classroom, and a visceral intolerance of error.
Autobiographies of American teachers of French document how classroom practices that conflate language methodology with cultural values propagate linguistic prescriptivism. Strikingly, two teachers invoke a culturally constructed persona called Madame. Nelson recounts, “I was a French ambassador in and out of my classroom. I was Madame. In everything I said and did, I created a French aura about me. In all my note writing to students, parents, administration, and colleagues, my signature was Madame.” Madame is further characterized as an upper-class Frenchwoman who uses a frigid and haughty stare to establish her authority (8) and who listens painfully as a student fractures French (60).
The title Madame also transforms Kaplan's classroom presence: When I hear myself called “Madame,” I become the shopkeeper, the governess, the secretary, the school-teacher, trained in body and voice to serve. […] When I hear Madame, I am not an intellectual. I am part mother, part policeman, part dictionary” (125). Kaplan targets teaching practices as vehicles for the transmission of normative bourgeois culture: “What codes and tics and class prejudices we pass on to our students when we encourage them to speak ‘perfect French,’ whatever that is” (177). She is horrified at the thought that “we American teachers of French only want to produce our own French fantasy, a kind of Stepford Wife, dressed as a Polytechnicienne” (180).
Miller describes what it was like to be addicted to French: “I get involved in speaking French, eating French, having French health, using ampoules at meals, saying ‘euh’ when speaking English” and, most significant, “hooked on not making mistakes” (54, 49). She now sees herself as a “recovering francophile. More specifically a recovering francophonie-o-phile” (48), having distanced herself from the field in part because of the anxiety induced by the French mistake. 5
Linguistic prescriptivism forms part of the larger “defense of French” that prompts official pronouncements against the hegemony of English and the banishing of anglicismes from the language. Such language-policy statements, despite their avowed goal of promoting linguistic “cohabitation” and the valorisation of diversity (Juppé 73–75), can be tinged with anti-American sentiment (see Valdman, “Letter” [1997] 2).
An episode of Saturday Night Live from the early nineties confirms that popular culture has embraced these negative images. In this caricature, Alec Baldwin portrays a high school French teacher who insists that even urgent messages must be en français and who is delighted when his students uncomprehendingly mimic his speech and intonation. When the teacher attempts to correct two French natives during a visit to Paris, they beat him up. Although this ending may be read as an adolescent fantasy of revenge on an overly fastidious teacher, it also plays out the script of French anti-Americanism—paradoxically, in this case, against an American who turns French prescriptivism back on the French.
Professional leadership recognizes the implications that linguistic purism and its consequent discourse of exclusion have for enrollments, since it in large part underlies the popular notion that French is hard and reserved for the college-bound. Valdman urges French teachers to let go of purist traditions and inappropriate correction, so that the teaching of French becomes less off-putting ( rébarbatif ; “Letter” [1995] 1). Spanish teachers tend to be more tolerant and realistic, thereby putting students at ease (2).
The notion of exclusion may be recoded at a higher level of ideological discourse. Compagnon maintains that until recently the language, culture, and literature of France had always enjoyed remarkable privilege, signifying distinction in class and intellect. Spanish, on the other hand, was a stigmatized language, associated with a population that was subject to social discrimination. With a change in academic climate, in which distinction is devalorized, the choice of French has become a sign of cultural arrogance and intellectual elitism, whereas Spanish is more closely associated with “politically correct” post-colonial and subaltern thematics. Compagnon also views francophone studies as a recruitment device, but his rationale is tinged with cynicism: placing one's bets on la francophonie (“miser sur la francophonie”) is a way of saving French studies in the American academy, since the tactic allows scholars to realign French with current academic discourses of the subaltern, a move that is not available to metropolitan literary and cultural production (N).
In the preceding discussion, I have argued that attempting to recast French in a Spanish mold is an unwise strategy: although an official language in many countries, the sociolinguistic and political position of French contrasts sharply with Spanish in countries where Spanish is official. Although unquestionably an asset in many careers, French cannot make the same proximal and utilitarian claims as Spanish, a second language in many populous areas of the United States. Unlike Spanish, French has a strong prescriptivist tradition. On the ideological level, these puristic beliefs about culture, language, and language teaching create an impression of inaccessibility and exclusion. Any “treatment plan” for French must be context-sensitive; it should be authentic—that is, consistent with internal linguistic and cultural norms as well as congruent with American educational paradigms. We must be realistic in our expectations as well: the demographic and economic realities that have driven Spanish enrollment are only likely to intensify; perceptions of the French language and of French teaching will be slow to change.
What might such a plan include? In a strategic repositioning, cultural critics and professional leaders are urging that French function as a “vector of cultural exchange” (Monnerie-Goarin 37) and “an intermediary between civilizations” (Zeldin 60). This reconceptualization of French has implications for the language curriculum: it argues for the shift from an emphasis on acquisition of linguistic skills to a critical reflection on culture. Indeed, Freed and Bernhardt lament the historical imbalance between skill and content in the language course: “Increasing numbers of textbooks […] offer often superficial attempts at situational and contextualized language learning exercises. We have not yet arrived at the point where language learning is understood to be more than just acquiring a tool or skills for conveying content but also a means for shaping that content” (257).
Content, specifically the problematization of language use in the francophone world, should be introduced from an early stage. Topics may include simple demographic information that allows the learner to situate French with respect to other linguistic groups, the function of French in education and socialization, lexical variants and their sociolinguistic constraints, the role of French in the larger political discourse of national identity, an author's struggle to write in a language that most adequately captures personal experience, and the use of language to define insider and outsider.
An emphasis on content, as Valdman has pointed out above, conforms more closely with the educational mission of the university, allowing language study to take place in an intellectually challenging framework that emphasizes higher-level and critical-thinking skills. As a consequence, focusing on content strengthens the position of French philosophically and strategically. Freed and Bernhardt have criticized the curricular organization of the university, which separates language teaching from allied disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and anthropology. Clearly, such an organization also divorces language from the content of other academic departments, marginalizing our courses and reinforcing the “service” designation. Among other goals, the foreign-language-across-the-curriculum initiative seeks to counter this widespread perception.
The elitist and xenophobic image perpetuated by puristic linguistic models must be countered through a pedagogy of culture that contextualizes the notions of correctness and error, making explicit their functionality in socialization. Kramsch articulates the traditional French belief that “the acquisition of language is the formation of mental structures, that learning to talk is learning to think, and that social acceptability in French society and abroad is not only a question of using grammatically correct sentences, but employing the patterns of thought of the dominant, i.e., educated discourse of that society” (“Culture” 224). In this belief system, correctness is contextually coded, signifying the importance of models in intellectual development and of education for social insertion. Contextual variants of correctness, including precision and logic, may also be found in such notions as l'esprit critique , organizational hierarchies, and politeness codes, as well as in national, regional, and class norms.
A final reflection: what kind of discursive relation should students establish with the target culture? As Kramsch asks somewhat rhetorically, “[S]hould it really be our goal to develop in our students the same uncritical insider's experience of the target culture as those who are instrumental in forging it in a given society? Should we not give our students the tools for a critical understanding of the target culture and its social conventions?” To behave as both insiders and outsiders in relation to the speech community whose language they are learning, students must acquire metaknowledge that enables them to identify and analyze cultural artifacts and patterns of behavior ( Context 181–82). As part of this process the teacher must examine the cultural behavior modeled in the classroom and the values it transmits, guarding against the fetishizing of French that may be read as a critique of the native culture (see Kaplan 181).
“What is one to do when one's ill?” Argan asks in the last act of Le malade imaginaire . Although French has been enfeebled, it is not dying, and its instruction may be revitalized through a realistic diagnosis of the symptoms of its decline. Proposing a cure based on the Spanish profile would weaken the patient. As Béralde cautions, “Most men die of their remedies not of their diseases” (258; act 3).
The author is Coordinator of the Language Program in the Department of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University. This article is based on his presentation at the 1997 MLA convention, in Toronto, Canada.
I would like to thank the following people for bibliographic and philosophical guidance: Elizabeth Welles, of ADFL; Thalia Dorwick and Gregory P. Trauth, of the McGraw-Hill Higher Education Group; Jane A. Hale, Hollie Harder, and James Mandrell, of Brandeis University; Robert L. Davis, of the University of Oregon; Thomas T. Field, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Cheryl L. Krueger, of the University of Virginia. I would also like to acknowledge the extraordinary effort, professional dedication, and personal commitment of colleagues who have contributed to the promotion of French. My reflections in this article are intended to redirect the discussion to more-fundamental issues of beliefs, perceptions, and the goals of language instruction.
1 Ager, for example, describes the language used in attacks on Franglais: “The military or medical vocabulary of ‘struggle,’ ‘defence,’ ‘declarations of war,’ ‘eliminate the virus,’ ‘cure the disease’ is typical of purist writing in this field, in which opinion and attitude is paramount, usually fierce, and normally associated strongly with firm views on the value of the French identity” (236).
2 Unattributed translations are mine.
3 But see Kazadi (94), Blanc (253), and Valdman (“Une politique”) for discussions of a regional Quebecois standard.
4 In the view of Salien, derision of Quebec French has increased in recent years. He describes professional meetings where Quebec French has been the object of hilarity and censure.
5 Miller (52) and Kaplan (180) relate instances where candidates are denied jobs or promotions because of gender errors or American-accented French.
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© 1998 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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