The Defence of French ─ A Language in Crisis?

There is general agreement that the question of language defense is taken with greater seriousness in France than in most countries. Drawing on a lifelong passion for the French language, applied linguist Adamson (French, U. of Western Australia) explores the attitude the French take toward their language. Following an overview of the history of the defense of French, coverage includes the main contemporary trends; the role of the government and other political aspects of language defense; comparisons of France to other European countries, including Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK; language and identity; an assessment of the current multiplicity of defensive actions, their chances of success and their effectiveness; and suggestions for how the future of French might be assured by policies that also encourage linguistic diversity. For linguists, language policy specialists, students of French, and Francophiles. Distributed in the U.S. by UTP Distribution. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robin Adamson is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, working on contemporary French language. For many years she was Director of the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Dundee, where she worked mainly in the fields of second language acquisition, communicative language teaching and discourse analysis, and also contributed extensively to the new generation of university textbooks such as Le francais en faculte. She became an officier in the Ordre des palmes academiques in 1989. Her interest in the defence of French springs from a lifelong passion for the language and the discovery that among her Scottish ancestors are several who died defending France.