Le séminaire — The Seminar

The standard and its varieties

The question Mme Delorme sets is a real and long-running debate in France and across the French-speaking world. France has a strong tradition of a single written standard, associated since the Revolution and the Third Republic with the idea that a shared language makes citizens equal; school has long been its main instrument. Regional languages and accents were for a long time discouraged in school, and many older French people remember being corrected or punished for them. Today the official framework recognizes regional languages as part of France's heritage, and schools may teach some of them as options, while French remains the language of the Republic and of instruction. Linguists generally describe the standard as one variety among others, socially prestigious rather than linguistically superior, and many argue that schools should teach the standard while showing that other varieties are legitimate; others stress, as Théo does, that a common written norm protects pupils whose families cannot teach it to them. Québec, Belgium, Switzerland and African countries each have their own debates and institutions on the question. This course takes no side. The point of the lesson is the form of the exchange: grant what is true in the other side's argument, find its weak point precisely, refine your own claim in response, and leave the room still on speaking terms. Readers who want to go further can compare the positions of French linguists who study variation with those of institutions that defend the standard; the disagreement between them is itself instructive.