Abstract
France truly embarked on its colonial adventure in the 17th century, following the establishment of trading posts in North America and along the coast of Senegal. This commitment marked the beginning of the spread of French throughout the world and also signaled the start of its divergent evolution. It was then that new colonial dialects (e.g., Quebec French or Louisiana French) and French Creole languages (e.g., Ayisyen or Morissien) emerged. Since the 20th century, we have also spoken of African French. These linguistic distinctions are the result of different types of colonization and the population contacts they generated: in the case of dialects, settlement colonization leading to a predominantly European population; in the case of Creoles, settlement colonization producing a non-European demographic majority isolated from European settlers; and for African French, exploitative colonization, which did not begin until the late 19th century. Consequently, French coexists in the colonies with indigenous and non-indigenous languages. While the latter two are disappearing in settler colonies with a non-European majority, they are threatened with extinction in those with a European majority. As for the former resource-based colonies in Africa, indigenous languages are resilient; it is therefore French that might be threatened in some cases.
The differential evolution of French is also influenced by the mode of its transmission, depending on whether it is school-based (as in the case of African French) or naturalistic and through immersion (as in the case of Creoles and dialects of the New World). We will reexamine the very emergence of the French language in Europe from the perspective of colonization (particularly the Roman Empire) and language contact. Do terms such as “Old French” and “Middle French” not prevent us from better understanding the speciation of Latin in Romance Europe under the influence of indigenous substrate languages? And is the marginalization of regional languages not the consequence of the same dynamics of competition and selection that we observe today among languages in the (former) European colonies?
The formation of the Francophonie during the waves of independence in Africa and Asia raises questions about the coexistence of languages, particularly in the era of global economic globalization. Can languages be “partners” against a common competitor? Or is it not rather the member states that should be partners in their fight against the global hegemony of English? Does this coalition of nations imply that we must grant French a privileged—if not hegemonic—status? Does such a system not contribute to disadvantaging citizens who lack (sufficient) proficiency in French? Ultimately, how does “globalization” influence language practices in the “Francophone Worlds”?
