Date of Award

4-8-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

It is not hard to find English spoken in France. Amid the blue and white signs announcing different RER lines in the Paris metro, one announces: “RER A: Destination Dreams,” pointing the way to EuroDisney. Behind the lines of waiting passengers, billboards hang against the white-tiled walls. An advertising campaign for a French car maker announces a “Baby Boom chez Renault,” two well-known French soccer players pose in Nike track jackets next to the words “V is for Victory. By Claude Makele and Hatem Ben Arfa,” and a fruit juice company promises “Happy Fruit Moments,” recommending “Remixez votre After Work.” On the dividing walls between train cars, posters for the Wall Street Institute ask “Do You Speak English?” and show a smiling French businessman who gives a thumbs-up and declares, “Yes! I speak Wall Street English.” Just beyond the exit is a nearly full-sized image of soccer star Patrice Evra sporting Nike trainers behind the text “There’s no finish line.” It is not just the widespread use of English that is of note, however; the advertisements not only share English text but also carry small asterisks linked to fine print providing translations of these catchphrases into French, a gesture required by law since 1975. It is not, therefore, simply finding instances of English in France that is of interest, but understanding how these juxtaposed texts play out a relationship between languages, between the production and regulation of speech, and between language use and identity. These written uses of English and their accompanying French translations are no less instances of speech for being printed on posters rather than spoken out loud and do much more than just promote a brand or sell a product. They are not simply verifiable or falsifiable statements of information. Rather, they are speech acts, meaning that their enunciation encompasses not just the act of saying something—what J. L. Austin calls a locution—but that saying something also performs an action, either by the force of the statement itself—an illocutionary act—or by eliciting a response to the statement—a perlocutionary act. The interaction between English utterances on the walls of the Parisian subway system and their legally-mandated translations demonstrate both aspects of a speech act. The former, by their very quality of being in English, shape the linguistic environment in France and educe a variety of responses from all who encounter with them. The latter exemplify one such reaction and illustrate how the responses interact with the original texts, as the size and position of French translations both pronounces on the value associated with utterances in different languages in advertising and announces the government’s engagement in language planning. The English language utterances seen in advertising might seem rather benign were it not for the regulatory policies formulated by the French government in response to the proliferation of such uses of English. The introduction of such policies clearly indicates that the original presence of untranslated text is seen as problematic, as an issue that must be addressed. In this way, advertising exemplifies how apparently insignificant shifts in a specific domain can be indicative of or even directly motivate changes on a larger scale, and as such English phrases in French advertising represent just one aspect of what might be called the cultural phenomenon of English in France. This “cultural phenomenon” encompasses all of the areas in which English utterances are produced, and the sum of these utterances across all spheres of French society indicates the weight of this phenomenon and the extent of its presence. The aim of this study is to analyze how these utterances operate as perlocutionary speech acts—what reactions they evoke and how they are perceived and represented at different discursive levels in French society. This first chapter examines, in an integrated manner, the context in which English as a cultural phenomenon is generated, perceived, and represented, and seeks to identify the stakes brought into play in these representations. Specifically, the rise of a supraterritorial space associated with globalization and shifts in the global language system are explored as two important contextual elements in which a sociohistorical construct linking the French language, nation, and culture to an overall sense of French identity has been developed. The second and third chapters analyze the responses evoked at different levels of French society by the collective perlocutionary speech acts constituting the cultural phenomenon of English. Chapter Two concerns official, governmental discourse, embodied by the major pieces of French language legislation of the 5th Republic and the concurrent evolution of language education policies and realities. Chapter Three considers perspectives from other spheres of French society, finding alternatives that often exhibit a creative adoption, appropriation, or co-option of English.

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