French Language (In)Hospitalities
How have encounters with “the foreign,” or foreign elements of language, challenged, transformed and redefined the French language? From the 1539 Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts, which established French (instead of Latin) as the official language of François Premier’s government, to the erasure of dialects at the end of the 18th century as effected by the Rapport Grégoire, from the creolization of French in colonial and postcolonial contexts to the resistance against the Americanization of French in recent times, the identity of the French language has historically preoccupied French and Francophone institutions, societies, writers and speakers. How do we measure and articulate the effects of French language (in)hospitalities? What structures of inclusion and exclusion, national and otherwise, do they put into place? What responses to French (in)hospitalities arise from those who have been “othered” or excluded from the French language? For example, how can we understand postcolonial writing that appropriates French (as a minor, “othered” language?) in another language, such as Arabic, as a form of linguistic decolonization and a decentering of the post/colonial relation to France? When are “bad” or “broken” versions of French unacceptable, and when are they considered instances of innovation?
This seminar welcomes abstracts ranging from the medieval period to the present, encompassing encounters of the French language and its “others” in the Hexagon and throughout the Francophone world. We also welcome presentations that draw on music, film and other media, as well as papers that draw on disciplines not immediately associated with literature, including law, medicine, anthropology etc.