Fort-de-France — Fort-de-France

Two situations that are not alike

Alex's closing line is honest and the lesson exists to earn it. Four blocks in, the learner has met five arrangements, and the temptation is to collapse them into one story about French and local languages. They do not collapse, and the differences are the interesting part. **What makes Martinique unlike the Maghreb.** Martinique is France. Not a former colony with a French-derived administration, as Senegal is, and not a protectorate that regained independence, as Morocco is — a department of the French Republic since 1946, with French citizenship, French law and the euro. French is therefore not a foreign or inherited administrative language but the national language of the state these islands belong to. Créole, meanwhile, is the first language of a large share of the population, is a language in its own right rather than a dialect, has a written literature, and has no official status — though it is recognised as a 'langue régionale' and can be studied, including to baccalauréat level, and there is a CAPES in it. **Why departmentalisation is still argued about.** This is the part visitors usually do not know. The 1946 law was proposed by Martinican deputies including Aimé Césaire — the poet of Négritude — on the argument that equal status within France would deliver equal rights and resources after a century of colonial neglect. Critics then and since have argued that it entrenched economic dependence on the mainland, suppressed créole and local self-government, and substituted administrative equality for genuine autonomy. Césaire himself later expressed reservations. Movements for greater autonomy or independence exist and have never commanded a majority. The 2009 general strike across the Antilles over the cost of living, and recurring disputes about prices, water supply and the legacy of chlordecone pesticide contamination, are where this argument surfaces now. **On the language specifically.** The créole movement of the 1970s and 1980s — the 'créolité' writers, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant among them — argued for créole as a literature and an identity rather than a deficiency, which is why Alex can say 'il a des écrivains'. Against that, some Martinican parents have wanted school firmly in French for the same reason Senegalese parents did in lesson 84: French is what examinations and jobs are in. The arguments rhyme across the francophone world without being the same argument. **This course takes no position** on status, autonomy or language policy in the Antilles. What it will say is the thing worth carrying into Block D's last lessons: 'la diglossie' is a real and ordinary condition, most French speakers live in some version of it, and the particular shape it takes in each place is the product of a specific history rather than of a general law. If this year has done its job, the next time somebody tells you what French is, you will ask where.