I attended
many conferences during my career as a linguist. For the last ten years in
particular, I attended conferences where the issue of the valorisation of
linguistic variation was discussed, in particular the legitimisation of non-standard
varieties and the recognition of national varieties of French.
The politically
correct reasoning is always the same: all languages are equal, all linguistic
varieties are equal to each other. From a theoretical point of view, all
languages are equal, of course. But that does not mean that they enjoy equality
of status or that they have the same value on the language market:
The analysis of the world linguistic situations shows that
languages are profoundly unequal. At first they are unequal from a statistical
point of view: some are widely spoken, others not [...]. They are unequal from
a social point of view: some are dominated [...] while others dominate and
perform official, literary, cultural, international, or vehicular functions.
– Louis-Jean Calvet, Le marché aux langues : les effets
linguistiques de la mondialisation, Paris, Plon, 2002, p. 102-103.
This inequality
does not exist only between languages, but also between varieties within the
same language.
I propose
to explain the paradox of equality and inequality of languages and language varieties
through two principles inspired by English science fiction writers.
First principle
All
languages are equal. What one language allows to convey, another allows to convey
it just as well.
The fact is
well known and hardly needs demonstration. The English possessive, e.g. Peter’s book, is not superior to its
Latin equivalent, liber Petri, nor its
Hungarian counterpart, Péternek a könyve
[= Peter-to + the + book + possessive suffix ]. And the same holds
for dialect variation within a language: me
father is equivalent (in terms of denotation) to my father (leaving aside the issue of connotation).
I propose
to call this first principle the principle of Huxley, because it is reminiscent
of equality between human beings as is presented in the novel The Brave New World:
"All men
are physico-chemically equal," said Henry sententiously. "Besides,
even Epsilons perform indispensable services."
– Aldous
Huxley, Brave New World, chap. 5
At the
level of phonemes and morphemes, all languages and all varieties of a language
are of equal value: All
languages are phonetico-morphogically equal. Besides,
even substandard varieties perform indispensable services.
Second principle
But as
everyone knows, some languages are more equal than others. How many parents in
Sept-Îles (on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River) would ask for their
children to be taught the language of their Montagnais (Innu) neighbours? If
further proof were needed, one need only have to have a look at the second and
foreign language education market, where the value of English far overrides that
of other languages. This inequality is based on what I propose to call the
Orwell principle:
All animals
are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
– George
Orwell, Animal Farm
In my
original post in French I exemplifed the working of these two principles from the point of view of the
French linguistic market.
In the media
world interpreters know very well on which side their bread is buttered and
adjust according to the audience they target. Take the example of two very
popular Quebec film actors in recent years: François Arnaud and Marc-André
Grondin.
On the
Quebec language market, François Arnaud uses the Quebec standard variety of French.
On the international language market, he has a brilliant career in English (he
was Cesare in the drama television series The
Borgias).
On the
Quebec language market, Marc-André Grondin uses the Quebec standard variety of French
in a film like C.R.A.Z.Y. But in
order to break into the European French language market, he needed a language
coach (by the way a current practice among opera singers): on this market,
Marc-André Grondin speaks like a Frenchman of his generation.
