A celebration of the “Scène Young Adult” at the Salon du Livre in Paris next month has drawn the condemnation of dozens of French authors and intellectuals, who have described the adoption of English terminology as an “unbearable act of cultural delinquency”.
The proliferation of English words on display at the book fair, where the “scène YA” was set to feature “Le Live”, a “Bookroom”, a “photobooth” and a “bookquizz”, spurred around 100 French writers into action, among them three winners of the country’s Goncourt prize – Lullaby author Leïla Slimani, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Marie NDiaye – and the bestselling writers Muriel Barbery and Catherine Millet. Together they have issued a scalding rebuke to organisers over their use of that “sub-English known as globish”.
“In the streets, on the web … everywhere, in fact, English tends to replace French, little by little, at the speed of a word a day … But even at a book fair in France? In Paris, in a space dedicated to the book and to literature, is it not possible to speak French?” they ask in a letter published last week in Le Monde and La République des Livres. “For us, intellectuals, writers, teachers, journalists and lovers of this language from all walks of life, ‘young adult’ represents the straw that broke the camel’s back … This use of ‘young adult’, because it is referring to French literature, because it is deliberately addressing young French people looking for readings, is too much. It has become an aggression, an insult, an unbearable act of cultural delinquency.”
The French have long defended their language against outside influence, establishing the Académie Française in the 17th century as an official custodian. In 2014, then-president François Hollande said that to “defend French is to promote linguistic pluralism, because naming things wrongly means further adding to disorder in the world”.
In their letter, the writers called on fair organisers to exclude English language when it is not essential, appealing to the minister of culture not to subsidise cultural events where “a single French word is replaced unnecessarily with an English word”.
Similarly, the minister of education was urged not to let a “single unnecessary English word” appear in school curricula: “French lessons must include the rediscovery and the reinvention of our language by students, who are today victims of a stupifying globish,” they wrote.
The writers said that the “growing attack” on the French language is “all the more pernicious because it is happening slowly”.
“We say to those who knowingly collaborate in this replacement that they are committing, either unknowingly or deliberately, a serious attack on a culture and a thought which spans millennia, and which is shared by nearly 300 million French speakers.”
Following publication of the letter, the Salon du Livre website has been updated, according to Le Monde. Although it still refers to the young adult scene, there are no longer any references to a photobooth, a bookquizz or a bookroom.