Article published in the Ottawa Citizen, December 20, 2000, p. A-17
A Québec family business is being sued by the our beloved and collective language cops for selling maple syrup in English on the Web (Ottawa Citizen, December 19, 2000). Just recently, we learned that OOglies are apparently illegal in Québec because these toys speak only English. Actually, if you go on the Web (www.shopheaven.com/toys/ooglies.htm [visited December 12, 2000]), you will find that their language is actually “OOglish.” And read this: “As each OOglie lands, it begins to evolve into the first thing it sees that makes it giggle. Some evolved into such silly things as Cow OOglies…” What about Politician OOglies, Bureaucrat OOglies, Language Cop OOglies?
Now, let’s get serious. If one thinks that state intervention is required to regulate financial markets or to protect an individual against himself, or if one believes in the CRTC, one should also favor language laws. Actually, there is more justification for state intervention in language than in many other fields since the linguistic market gives rise to what economists call network externalities: the more people speak your language, the more useful it is for you.
One problem with state intervention is that it often has unintended consequences. Indeed, dirigisme and language protectionism have probably worked against French in both France and Québec. The strength of a language depends mostly on the wealth and influence of the individuals who speak it. Now, wealth and influence are a direct function of civil and economic liberty. Hence, starting in the 17th and 18th century, French dirigisme and the growing disparity between France and England (and, later, America) did much to reduce the world influence of the French language.
Beware of clichés. Today’s France is probably freer than Canadians think: for example, the equivalent of the “social insurance number” has just been created in France. And Canada has become much more bureaucratic than the French imagine. Yet, one can sensibly read the actual arguments for the “French exception” against globalization as an attempt to defend the very statist model which is responsible for decline of France (see my recent, “Économie de l’exception française,” Le Figaro-Économie, Sept. 15, 2000).
Governments are especially inept at forecasting technological developments. After all, it’s not their money! In the early 1980s, the state telephone company created the “Minitel,” a closed-network interactive terminal whose main long-term effect was to retard the development of the Internet in France. In two major policy statements of the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of which was on the “turn towards technology,” the Québec government barely mentioned the new information technologies, and ignored the newborn Internet. In the mid-1990s, the same government was painfully slow in using e-mail and setting up a Web site. (And they now want to dictate how maple syrup should be marketed on the Web!) How could the dirigist model, in Québec or in France, protect complicated institutions like language and culture?
Now, consider the consequences of specific policies in the fields of language and culture. The historical problems of French in Québec owe as much to the detrimental influence of public policy as to the economic influence of English speakers. During the two centuries following 1760, Québec’s isolation from France contributed to the development of a French Canadian popular language that was often difficult to understand for an international French speaker. Provincially funded and regulated public schools exist in Québec since the middle of the 19th century, and the state has had a near monopoly on education for the last 40 years. All this Québécois state power did surprisingly little to teach real French. Ironically, Radio-Canada achieved much more.
The creation of the Québec Department of Cultural Affairs in 1961, language legislation, the later rechristened “Ministère de la Culture” on the French model, an annual Department budget that went from $19 million to $433 million in four decades all this was pretty much useless. Worse still, many policies were positively harmful, like conscious attempts at valorizing the differences between Québec French and real French and, in a sense, at creating a stand-alone French Canadian language. This phenomenon has contributed much to the continuing alienation of French Canadians from their native tongue.
The Québec bureaucracy has tried to make Québec French as PC as American English: for example, the French “Rights of Man” are called “Rights of Persons.” Bureaucrats have created words that have a meaning only in Québec: “éditique” instead of PAO, “courriel” instead of “mail” (or “mèl”), “bidouilleur” instead of “hacker,” etc. Under the influence of the Office de la langue française, software producers often design specific “French” versions for Québec, with a distinct “French Canadian” spellchecker.
The Québec government does not want us to use the term “language police.” Ironically, we should use instead a literal French translation of “law enforcement agency” (see http://www.cplf.gouv.qc.ca/faq.html [visited December 12, 2000). This is an astute way to blur the fact that a law is not a friendly exhortation: if you don’t obey, the bureaucrat will ultimately come back with armed men.
The strength of a language depends on individual preferences, and on individuals’ willingness to speak it. French, real French, is a nice, sexy language, less politically correct than present-day English, and less centralized than what many non-French think, but this is not a reason to call the cops.