French Language Overview

French is the third largest of what is known as the Romance languages in terms of first or native language speakers and is “an official (or co- official) language in 53 states (of which there are 22 in Africa), most of which form, what is called in French la Francophonie, the community of French- speaking people” (Igboanusi and Pütz 2008 p.235). The French language is also one of the official and working languages of the United Nations alongside English, Spanish, Dutch and many others (Van Els 2001). In Europe, the French language is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. France accounts for nearly half of the world’s total of native French speakers (Battye, Hintze and Rowlett 2003 p.2). According to Marley (2004 p. 30), “in France, linguistic unity has long been seen as synonymous with wider national unity, with the result that the other languages of France have been under- mined to the point of near extinction, and are now seen by many as irrelevant anachronisms, despite flourishing movements to promote several of them”. This has changed considerably and in France now, it looks like the French language is losing its symbolic function and is going through a changing phase as more and more people tend to communicate in English. According to Shelly (1999 p. 310), “there is a sense that French is menaced both from within and from without by English, which is gradually corrupting the vocabulary and syntax of the language while at the same time usurping its international role in political, economic and cultural affairs”. This indicates the pressure on the French language as English becomes increasingly dominant in France.

Following the decades after World War II and the economic and technical advancements that took place, the French language policy was seen as an initiative to defend the country’s national identity shaken by the country’s loss of its overseas colonies, reduced

role in the geopolitics of the post war world and the fragility of the economy (Shelly 1999). The French government, in order to promote the use of the French language, set up legislations in 1972, 1975 (the Loi Bas-Lauriol), 1986, and 1994 (the Loi Toubon) focused on enriching and purifying the language, defending the rights of French speakers by requiring the use of the language in the public domain (Shelly 1999). The government also set up several committees and agencies in the bid to keep the French language ‘alive’ and this includes the initiation of about 200 non-governmental agencies and associations which are devoted to the protection and promotion of the mother tongue (Shelly 1999). In relation to the use of the French language in companies in France, the government instituted a law known as the Loi Toubon which mandates companies to use French – that is, prevents them from using any other language, and most especially English, in a number of contexts including “official government publications, advertisements, public broadcasting, workplaces, commercial contracts and all sorts of government-financed bodies” (Saulière 2014 p.224). This indirectly means that companies in France would be mandated to produce their documents including websites in French.

Switzerland has been hailed as a successful example where several languages have equal official language status, after “the Swiss constitution of 1848 declared German, French, and Italian as the ‘national’ and presumably co-equal languages of the Confederation” (Pap 1990 p. 114). In 2000, German, French and Italian were declared official languages with Romantsch as an additional official language which can be used only for the purpose of communicating between the government and Romantsch speaking citizens (Grin and Korth 2005). Although German is the predominant language of communication in this country, a study by Murray et al 2000 (quoted in Grin and Korth 2005) identified that the preferred language of communication by most Swiss nationals was English, closely followed by French before German.

Belgium also has a significant number of French speakers with the three main official languages being Dutch, French and German (Buyl and Housen 2014). In the country “the Dutch-language area corresponds to almost 60 per cent of the Belgian population (approximately 6 million speakers) and the French-language area corresponds to 40 per cent (approximately 4 million speakers) whereas the German-language area only counts some 75,000 speakers” (Jacobs and Tobback 2013 p.408). The Dutch language area is commonly called the Flanders, the Belgian variety of Dutch is often referred to as Flemish and the French language area is commonly known as Wallonia (Jacobs and Tobback 2013). In each community, the language of instruction in schools is the language of that particular region; therefore, based on education, the Germans would have the lowest

number of speakers in the country (Buyl and Housen 2014). This puts the French language in a good position within the country’s language policy.

Luxembourg is “a founding member of the European Union (EU) and one of the most multilingual countries of the union” (Kingsley 2013 p. 533). The country is located between Belgium, France and Germany and is often referred to as ‘triglossic’ because of the three languages which have official status - French, German and Luxembourgish (Horner and Weber 2008, Kingsley 2013). According to (Battye, Hintze and Rowlett 2003 p.1), the French language “also enjoys a privileged position by virtue of its status as official language, that is, a language used in government, administration and education, at national, regional or local level”. However, recently, there has been a lot of political tension between the Dutch speakers and the French speakers (Jacobs and Tobback 2013). Also, in Luxembourg, spoken functions are carried out in Luxembourgish while written functions are carried out mainly in French and German which partly explains why French was chosen as the EU working language (Horner and Weber 2008).

In 2011, over 11 million people in Canada reported the French language as their mother tongue. According to Gorter, Zenotz and Cenoz (2014 p.86), “Canada has traditionally been home to many different ethnolinguistic groups that predate the arrival of European explorers and settlers by many thousands of years”. As a result of this, there are quite a number of languages used by the residents in Canada. However, due to this colonial history, the English and French languages have been positioned as being superior to the other indigenous languages (Haque and Patrick 2014). In Canada, French and English are the official languages adopted in the country and both languages have equal status in most federal establishments although English is more recognisable on the national level and French in some regions in Canada (Holmqvist 2011). However, French has been declared as the official language of Quebec (Martin 2011), the area which has the largest number of French speakers in Canada. In the Province of Québec, French-speakers and English-speakers have seen themselves endlessly competing for services in their own language (Gorter, Zenotz and Cenoz 2014). This is also despite the fact that the language protection laws only require businesses with an address in Quebec to display their web content in French (Statistics Canada 2012) and the protection of the French language by legislation since the late 1960s through the provincial Charter of the French Language enacted in 1977 (Gorter, Zenotz and Cenoz 2014). According to Gentil and Séror (2014 p.19), “the Official Languages Act (OLA, 1985), along with the Constitution Act, 1982, provides an overarching legal framework for language policies in Canada”. This language policy is concerned with language use in federal institutions and between federal citizens.

In Africa, French is also widely spoken in quite a few countries and has been identified by some researchers as one of the products of colonisation (Anchimbe 2014, Daoud 2010). Other researchers see the choice of the French language as the first or second official language in any African country as “not only promoted by the government as a symbol of power and prestige, but also meant as a token of anti-Anglophone attitudes and ideologies” (Igboanusi and Pütz 2008 p.240). In North Africa, French is the official language in Congo, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In Tunisia, the French language is predominant and is also used as a second language despite the fact that an estimated 99% speak Tunisian Arabic (Al-Khatib 2008). However, in this country, “French is so rooted in the socioeconomic fabric of Tunisia that it is considered necessary for having the simplest office job or running a neighbourhood grocery store” (Daoud 2010 p.9). In Morocco, following independence “opted for a policy of Arabization, by which they meant replacing French, the language of the colonizer, with Arabic, the language of tradition and ‘authenticity’” (Marley 2004 p.29). This was in order to demonstrate an independence from the Western influences following independence however; this has changed in recent times. In actual fact, various researchers have identified that the French language has an ‘elite’ status in Africa and is widely “used by intellectuals or educated elites for academic or cultural purposes (Battye, Hintze and Rowlett 2003 p.1- 2) as well as being necessary for “social and professional success” (Marley 2004 p.29). French has automatically become the country’s official language due to the lack of a concrete language policy and dominates vital sectors such as administration, education, business and the media (Ennaji 2005).

In Congo, French remains an official language since independence and is used for Government business and education (Woods 1994). In Zaire, the elite status of French is also identifiable in that the language is seen as “mythical, mystical, even mystifying function: since it is a sign of being knowledgeable, it is a magic key to social prestige and power” (Rubagumya 1990 quoted by Igboanusi and Pütz 2008 p.237). It is also considered as an official language in African Francophone countries such as Madagascar, Gabon and Ivory Coast where it plays an official role. In Cameroun, English and French are the recognised official languages (Anchimbe 2014). In Asia, there are small communities of French speakers in India and in the Middle East (Battye, Hintze and Rowlett 2003 p.6).

This large percentage of people speaking the language indicates that the language is still a major language, and thus an analysis of Francophone websites would provide a good indication of corporations’ attitude to world languages other than English and give a

clearer picture of the worldwide translation practices in these companies. Taking into consideration that the French language is spoken in every continent of the world and the added fact of it being the second language of the researcher, it was identified that this would be the best language to focus on for an in depth semiotic analysis of the websites. Having established the variety of French language speakers across the world in the previous section, the following section focused on all the websites that are in French regardless of location around the world.