The French Academy denounces anglicisms in a book

Two years ago, the Académie française sounded the alarm about the massive presence of Franglais in institutional communication. In 2020, it had set up a commission, chaired by Gabriel de Broglie and composed of Amin Maalouf, Florence Delay, Danièle Sallenave, Dominique Bona and Michael Edwards, which was responsible for studying institutional communication in progress for fifteen years. The report, published in 2022, contained the conclusions of the commission on this subject. It is now available in the form of a small book of around a hundred pages, easy to read, published this Thursday by Plon editions under the title Let’s not be afraid to speak French, Académie française: the report that alerts. Although published more than two years ago, it remains extremely relevant.

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Because since the publication of the report in 2022, it is clear that anglicisms are still proliferating the public space. Despite the efforts of the Toubon law of 1994 and the warnings of the Sages of the French Academy, Franglais is still popular in advertising and institutional communication. La Poste still offers a «pickup station»THE «French days» Fnac still exists, the Sarthe department has not deigned to change its famous slogan «Sarthe me up»… The examples run to about fifty pages and are proof of an obvious «anglicisation» from French.

This has the effect of worsening the social and generational divide already present within the French population. Because this “The abuse of anglicisms is essentially and unfairly aimed at an elite” denounces academic Dominique Bona in the book’s preface. Far from rejecting the contribution of foreign words that can enrich the French language, the Immortals especially point out this kind of language that takes the place of English but which, in reality, mostly resembles a kind of discount English. “While the contribution of foreign words to fill the obvious gaps in the French lexicon is welcome – and sometimes necessary – we can clearly see that their massive, unstable, uncontrolled influx undermines the identity and possibly the future of our language, as of most other languages.”they write. Disrupted syntax, juxtaposition of words, impact on French writing… The majority of anglicisms present in institutional speeches have neither regularity nor orthographic coherence.

However, as Dominique Bona points out, this situation further complicates the learning of our language, while “more than two and a half million French people are illiterate, and too many young people have reading difficulties”The excuse of the presence of foreign tourists no longer works in the face of this drift towards the presence of a sort of English in public speeches. Moreover, the latter laugh at our strange anglicisms. “In a period where accessibility is being established as a golden rule, the linguistic dimension deserves attention and consideration in this respect that is just as important and systematic as the technical aspects of readability, for example, the Immortals lash out. “Taking into account the social reality of the country is imperative.”

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What do the French think? In a survey carried out in 2020 by the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions (Crédoc), 47% of French people declared themselves “annoyed or hostile to advertising messages containing English words”This book is therefore a reminder to companies and institutions who are encouraged by the Sages to seize the opportunity “to identify habitual and neutral turns of phrase, designed and formulated by drawing on the vast existing resources of French”. “It is the responsibility, but also in the interest, of those who have the information and dissemination channels to ensure that institutional communication is given the quality and effectiveness that all audiences have a right to expect.”conclude the Immortals.