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Gaël Nofri: "We must defend the language to defend the nation"

2021-07-30T10:45:25.625Z


FIGAROVOX / GRAND ENTRETIEN - At the time of inclusive writing and the proliferation of anglicisms, the historian and president of the Association for the Defense of the Nation underlines the importance of preserving the French language and literature, major legacies of our civilization.


Gaël Nofri is a historian and municipal councilor of the City of Nice.

He notably wrote

A History of Revolutions in France

(ed. Du Cerf, June 2018).

He created and chairs

the Association for the Defense of the Nation (ADN), which intends to confront the ideologies which make France feel guilty and which publishes a letter entitled “The French language facing its challenges”.

FIGAROVOX. - Your Association for the Defense of the Nation publishes a letter entitled "The French language facing its challenges", is our language threatened today?



Gaël NOFRI. -

By choosing this theme as the common thread of our second letter from the Association for the Defense of the Nation (ADN), the idea was obviously to make the link between the defense of the Nation and that of language. It was also, in our mind, to make a current inventory of the dangers, but also of the opportunities of our language.



Let us say it straight away, the French language is threatened. Not in its survival, quite the contrary even: the French-speaking space is immense and demographic projections open up striking perspectives. With 300 million speakers today and 800 million by 2050, French is not at risk of becoming a dead language. But paradoxically, it can become a lifeless language. A language that no longer thinks of the world for itself, that is no longer that of international exchanges, that of innovation, research, creation, art. There would be nothing worse than a French language which thinks of itself in Anglo-Saxon, which gives in to globalization, which gives up its own genius.



Therein lies the polymorphous danger that the French language runs today.

It is as much the hold that English has over the entire economic, cultural and scientific world as it is the systematic incorporation of Anglicism into French vocabulary in order to express concepts, ideas, technologies, new objects.

It is again the appearance of so-called inclusive writing, which testifies to an importation into our very language of theories and struggles from across the Channel.

Faced with the modern world, the Francophonie must, according to a famous word from Boutros-Boutros Ghali, be "subversive".

Gael Nofri

Désiré Nisard estimated that "

the most exact image of the French spirit is the French language itself

", a French language which would no longer bear witness to a French spirit. It makes no sense, it is for what in the face of the modern world the Francophonie owes, according to a famous word of Boutros-Boutros Ghali, to be "

subversive

".



“My homeland is the French language!” Said Camus. How do you understand this exclamation?

This sentence is obviously luminous with truth.

Not only because it emphasizes the link between the homeland and the language we have just spoken of, or because it establishes a bond of belonging between the individual and the universe in which his language anchors.

The language is the homeland in us, it is the homeland which is expressed with us, it is the homeland which is expressed through us… the language we speak, it is the homeland that lives.

But beyond that, language is literature, it is a means of expression vis-à-vis its contemporaries, these are words that allow us to imagine the future.

We find here an idea which brings language closer to the definition of the Nation developed by Ernest Renan in his famous communication “What is a Nation?”.

I believe that the link which unites, in France at least, the language to the fatherland is at least of this order.

Maybe more.

You know the famous Ludwig Wittgenstein phrase “

the limits of my language are the limits of my world

”.

There is undoubtedly a French world, inherited from a history, from a certain conception of freedom, of life and of Man… a civilization in short.

La Francophonie is growing - well I mean by that that it is gaining overweight, unfortunately not muscle.

Gael Nofri

Do you think that the French language, the Francophonie and the place of France in the world are today endangered?



It all depends on what is meant by that. The French language is threatened as we have said in its originality, of non-aligned in a globalized world. La Francophonie is growing - well I mean by that that it is gaining overweight, unfortunately not muscle.



As for France in the world, it's like Balzac's skin of grief, our place in the world is diminished each time our leaders invoke it in a purely incantatory way, without giving ourselves the means, the tools, the height of view, the independence that such a place in the world demands.

In our review we give the floor to two journalists. One is an undisputed expert on the Arab world, the other is an Armenian journalist. Two worlds in which the image of France was particularly strong, and the expectations vis-à-vis it too. For the Arab world, I am not sure that since the war in Libya and the Arab Spring our position has remained unchanged and we are seeing our influence receding everywhere. As for Armenia, I happened to visit the country during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The love for France, the hope in France that I saw there over there, I have never felt elsewhere. In the square in front of the Town Hall of Goris, where the refugees and displaced persons of the conflict gathered,enthroned a small Eiffel Tower which was undoubtedly the most extraordinary symbol of this faith in France in the midst of this People battered by history. Alas, in this conflict as often, if we spoke a lot, we actually acted very little, which gave way to the Russians… and the Turks.

We are victims of schizophrenia: on the one hand we explain that the voice of France in the world must count, on the other we spend our time denigrating this same France by denying it any relevance to independence.

Inclusive writing is a fractured, divided, communal, belligerent vision of society that we claim to transpose to writing and literature.

Gael Nofri

What is inclusive writing the name?

Does it represent a real danger for our culture, according to you?

There is a lot to say about inclusive writing and the dangers it poses. But I believe that the heart of the drama is that it is, if I dare to paraphrase the title of a famous novel by Michel Houellebecq, the expression of an "

extension of the field of wrestling."

". It is a fractured, divided, communal, bellicose vision of society that we claim to transpose to writing and literature. It is also proof of our porosity to the concepts and ideas that plague Anglo-Saxon society and that some are trying to impose on us. In the end, it is a phenomenon, I believe in the minority, which can boast of being the expression of a "modernity", of belonging to the "camp of good" and of inventing new "struggles" that are easy for others. societies lacking in ideals and lacking in courage. Problems that do not exist are invented, which always has the merit of avoiding gauging the effectiveness of the solutions proposed. But anyway I believe that our literature, thought as it was thought, constructed as it was constructed,having worn over the centuries what it has worn, has no lesson in relevance, freedom, or human rights to receive… it could, on the other hand, give some to some.

There was no need for so-called inclusive writing so that women, at all times, feel concerned, challenged, moved, questioned by the great authors of French literature.

Let's avoid parting with Rabelais, Montaigne, Molière, La Fontaine, Corneille, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Zola, Hugo, Péguy, Simone Weil, Camus - that you cited earlier - and so many others!

Inclusive writing terribly complicates learning by creating a distance between written language and spoken language, it is an obstacle to assimilation.

Gael Nofri

MP François Jolivet warns against the obstacles that inclusive writing poses to learning the French language. What are they ?



Indeed, the deputy François Jolivet, who was particularly at the forefront in the fight against so-called inclusive writing, agreed to answer our questions in order to develop his positions. He explains how so-called inclusive writing harms learning the French language and increases inequalities. He insists in particular on the fact that it weakens those who are already victims of a handicap in the face of learning. This position has been the subject of several communications from speech therapists, pedagogues and associations, in particular people with dyslexia. The so-called inclusive writing excludes,and this is a certainty.

As such, I see another danger of so-called inclusive writing, which is particularly worrying in terms of current affairs. Because it terribly complicates learning by creating a distance between written language and spoken language, it is an obstacle to assimilation. However, I believe that among the urgent matters of the moment there is the question of assimilation. Even the most drastic policy of reducing migratory flows cannot avoid reinvesting in the issue of assimilation. This republican requirement has been completely abandoned and the software is now broken. There is an urgent need to build a real policy of assimilation, which means working to the maximum in favor of learning French and mastering the national language. Joseph Kessel, Eugène Ionesco,Henri Troyat, François Cheng, all academicians from various backgrounds, all assimilated by the love of the language and therefore of French civilization. In this, inclusive writing takes the wrong fight, takes us away from the essential and takes us on dangerous paths.

What is at stake, what Napoleon symbolizes in our memory, is a certain idea of ​​greatness.

Gael Nofri

You devote a large part of the review to the figure of Napoleon.

Are history and its great characters ambassadors of our culture?



Our association was first born in order to fight against the memory attacks which today threaten the Nation and its identity. It is therefore natural that on the occasion of the commemorations relating to the bicentenary of Napoleon's death, we have taken a stand in favor of ceremonies that are worthy and up to the challenge. The indigenous collectives and the professionals of repentance would like to force us to see in Napoleon a bloodthirsty tyrant, a relentless slave owner, when he was not Hitler's precursor. Beyond the obvious errors and excesses, it would be wrong to believe that these pressure groups place their fight on a personal level and that their vindictiveness has no other object than the first Emperor of the French.

Critical gaze is always a right of the historian and a possibility of the citizen. There is no man, much less a public man who is free from all reproach or immaculate from all fault. Napoleon was no exception in this area.



But that is not what is at issue; what is at stake, what Napoleon symbolizes in our memory, is a certain idea of ​​greatness. We are at a time when our past greatness is constantly contested, called into question, relativized, accused. No longer knowing how to be great, many would have us believe that greatness never existed, that it is suspect, not to say dangerous. The existence of Napoleon is a provocation for the party of national renunciation still at work in our history.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-07-30

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