Language is not static. English, particularly, is flexible and inconsistent. Perhaps English’s development into a contemporary ‘global language’ or lingua franca is due in part to its lack of a formal regulatory body. Though English Enlightenment writers Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift debated the issue, and Americans John Adams and John Quincy Adams suggested the creation of an institution that would “collect, interchange, and diffuse literary intelligence” to “promote the purity and uniformity of the English language,” today there is still no institution to regulate English. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, adapts itself to the changing nature of the language rather than dictating it.
French, on the other hand, is under the official control of the Académie Française — the French Academy. The Academy was created in 1635 under Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to Louis XIII who fundamentally altered French government and society by consolidating the power of the king, laying the foundation for an absolute monarchy. Though François I’s 1539 Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets made French, rather than Latin, the administrative and judiciary language of the kingdom, until 1635 no serious philosophical text had been written in French. The language was still in great flux, in transition between the vernacular and the official state language. Richelieu saw the institutionalization of the French language as an instrument of political and cultural unity, as France transitioned from a feudal kingdom to a nation-state.
Since 1635, the French Academy’s principal function has been to “work, with all possible care and diligence, to create fixed rules for our language as to make it pure, eloquent, and capable of addressing the arts and sciences.” The Academy’s primary mission, then, is the consolidation and creation of French words into a comprehensive dictionary. A regulatory body and a semi-political institution, perhaps the French Academy could even be called a factory of words.
La Fabrique des Mots
In 2013, Erik Orsenna, one of the Academy’s 36 members — unofficially known as “immortals” — wrote and published a short novel entitled La Fabrique des Mots — The Factory of Words, which my French grandfather gave me for Christmas five years ago. I read it that very night, captivated by the young protagonist, Jeanne. When a narrow-minded dictator named Nécrole restricts all use of language to a ridiculous list of 12 verbs, Jeanne works to protect language with the help of her classmates and teacher. Jeanne learns about the diversity of the French language through its Greek, Latin, and Arabic roots, which appear in modern French words ranging from écureuil to domicile to algèbre.
At the crux of La Fabrique des Mots is the factory of words itself. In the middle of the forest, far from civilization, is an abandoned gold mine where the creators of new words found refuge after Nécrole outlawed language. A man Jeanne refers to as “the Elegant” teaches Jeanne’s class about the process of maintaining the French language: Whenever a new English word arrives, a French equivalent is created from a series of labeled boxes — “prefixes” and “suffixes,” as well as “Greek,” “Latin,” and “other” roots. This process corresponds to the real Academy’s own inventions: For example, ordinateur replaces “computer,” logiciel, “software,” and courriel, “e-mail.” La Fabrique des Mots, therefore, is quite directly the Academy’s defense of the Academy.
Hero or Villain?
Yet would it not be possible to recast the Academy as the villain Nécrole? Having an official dictionary necessarily limits the number of ‘real’ French words. The Elegant praises the young students, saying that it is thanks to them that the French language will be saved, yet the Academy despises slang, the language of young people. And the Factory’s battle against English words, or anglicization, is in many ways a denial of the natural evolution of a language. If society and words are truly inseparable, why must there even be a factory?
Two recent articles in the New York Times denounced the Academy completely. From an American, or even English, standpoint, the institutionalization of language seems like a “deadlocked” practice: archaic, stale, and impossible. Yet as I have reread La Fabrique des Mots — many times — it has taught me that society influences language just as much as it is shaped by it, and that attempts to control and restrict words are both harmful and futile. If this is the message that the “immortals” are sending, perhaps the Academy’s agenda is not as restrictive as it may appear.
The Academy’s main role is the preservation and expansion of French, rather than restriction. Recently, the Academy approved the feminization of professional titles, making it possible, for example, to call a female French president a feminine présidente. The word for “author,” auteur, can now be feminized as autrice, following French word structure, whereas the neologism auteure — though it sounds more natural — is discouraged. In an interview with the HPR, Clémence Pénicaut, a Parisian school teacher, commented on this change:
“I think it is important to feminize words even if I’m not very comfortable with everything … ‘autrice,’ for example, I find a little jarring! ‘Auteure’ seems better, but that’s silly. We’re just not used to it yet,” she explained. When asked how she views the work of the Academy in terms of the development of the French language, she said: “It’s not indispensable, but it’s interesting to see how methodologically they work, even though it is common usage that decides on the ultimate outcome.”
This is why, though its decisions can be controversial, the existence of the Academy is not hotly contested in France. Unlike Nécrole, the Academy does not enforce its rulings on French grammar and vocabulary. There is no punishment for saying the word “deodorant,” though the Academy prefers désodorant, nor are there sanctions for using the anglicism “curry” over the more faithful term cari. In the end, the Academy exists to update and expand the French language, but it cannot enforce its decisions against the people.
And indeed, many young people reject the language of the Academy, preferring to embrace a more dynamic and egalitarian process of language formation. “The French Academy is a controversial institution whose reforms are far from popular,” explained Hortense Gaffinel, a law student in Paris, in an interview with the HPR. She expanded on her reservations, saying: “It’s a great institution which from the time of Richelieu has seen the French language evolve, but one could say that it is inaccessible to a great majority of the population and is reserved for the elite.” Ultimately, she agreed that “French follows trends more than [it follows] the Academy.”
British Invasion
The most influential “trend” in the French language today is undoubtedly anglicism. Most of the new words the Academy creates are direct responses to the spread of English. The global use of English is seen as a threat to the individuality of French, as increasing numbers of French words find English replacements. This influence is due to a variety of factors — French lacks words for certain things and concepts, while English is more concise and permeates younger generations through popular culture. Newspapers and advertisements also play a role: As Catherine Frammery remarked in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, the press is both “the guardian and the modernizer” of language, and for most journals, the brevity of an anglicism such as “remake” is preferred over the French nouvelle adaptation.
The 1994 Toubon Law, which mandates the use of the French language in official publications, workplaces, and advertisements — ensuring that any English phrase will have a French translation — marks an attempt by the French government to minimize the impact of English. However, rather than curtailing the evolution of language, the law merely serves to promote national unity and guarantee the language skills of every French citizen, since passing a spoken French exam is required to become a citizen. Therefore, though French is both preserved and adapted by the government, it may still adopt outside influences through regular people.
The Future of French
David Gva, a student in Geneva, Switzerland, spoke with the HPR about the Academy’s role in French society today. “The Academy’s function is now honorific,” David explained. “The initial mission is to preserve the French language. They’re here to ensure that the French language doesn’t decay, to preserve a patrimony that is backed by the best French writers … [because] French vocabulary should be self-sufficient.”
When asked whether the Academy’s influence is ultimately positive, negative, or neutral, he said: “It’s positive, it’s useful in the sense that the French language should remain unique. Essentially, it worked really well up to a certain point, and now, with the speed at which new information is shared and the fact that the working world and the world of technology are dominated by English, the Academy has taken part in attempting to ensure that French remains independent from English. This goal can be understood.”
The French Academy has always been indivisible from the question of French unity. As the French language questions its own identity, the French people must understand what it means for their language to be closely tied to the state and yet dependent on the will of the people. The Academy may provide guidelines to follow, but French speakers themselves must ultimately determine the direction in which their language evolves. This is a great responsibility.
Perhaps it would be useful to take a page out of La Fabrique des Mots, in which Jeanne, too, comes to understand the inseparability of society and language:
“We must remind ourselves,” explains Jeanne, “of what we owe to the words, we who respect them so little even though they are our oldest and most loyal friends. Yes, we humans created the words. But they, in return, have not ceased to invent us.”