Organisation Internationale De La Francophonie Research Articles

Pluricentric Languages Policy Features through the Example of French

Introduction.The paper reviews features of the French language policy inFrance,Belguim,Canada, andSwitzerland. The novelty of the study is implied by the fact that features of the language policy are analyzed with previously unknown circumstances taken into account: the circumstances that allow French to be seen as a pluricentric language. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the necessity of observing the sociopolitical space of language functioning, as well as the importance of both analyzing the dynamics of pluricentric languages spreading and identifying mechanisms of using a single language for either uniting disparate nations or countries manipulating.Methodology and sources.The method of the study is a comprehensive approach with a number of linguistic and social variables correlations. The study was conducted using official websites of Organisation international dela Francophonie describing official bodies and institutions responsible for language policy implementation, as well as articles of various publications (Le soir, The Guardian, Ethnologies), devoted to the discussion of French norm regulation problems as the material of the study.Resultsanddiscussion.The main result of the study is a review of the status of French as a pluricentric language worldwide, particularly in countries considered to be centres of French variants development and having French as an official language. Main features of a pluricentric language, as well as the factors that turn a monocentric language into a pluricentric one (through the example of French) are looked at. The actions taken by the Organisation internationale dela Francophonie and aimed at the strengthening of relations between French-speaking countries and the promoting of the French language worldwide are described. The study also illustrates the dependence of peripheral language centres fromFrance. An emphasis is put on the politics of the Académie Française aimed at the French language unification in all the countries having it as an official language. An assumption on the reasons of different deviation extent of French variants inCanada,Belgium, andSwitzerland from Standard French is made.Conclusion.It is impossible to consider language to be an independent and isolated phenomenon as it exists and evolves within society serving its needs. Institutions pursuing a language policy are in position to affect its development directly, yet in the context of pluricentric languages it is insufficient to have a single centre of linguistic regulation. Local institutions may have a policy that runs contrary to the language policy of the centre. Gender reforms can also become a new wave of linguistic changes leading to further distancing of different language variants.

Francophonie et enjeux: États des lieux et perspectives

Abstract The francophone organization is at a turning point in its history in a perspective of a global context that is undergoing changes in geopolitical, socio-economic and climatic conditions. Since the second Intergovernmental Conference of Frenchspeaking Countries in March 1970 in Niamey, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) has never faced so many complex challenges. This concurrent circumstances require the OIF to consider radical restructuring to redefine its long-term objectives and, of course, a reassessment of its mission in order to bring it into synergy with the expectations of more than 220 million individuals in the large francophone family. This article is meant to be considered as a suggestion to the authorities of the Francophonie, to assess the extent of the gaps that need eliminating in order to measure up with the Commonwealth, as an important step forward.

Medición de la presencia de la lengua española en la Internet: métodos y resultados

This paper summarizes recent studies that explore and analyze the situation of the Spanish language on the Internet and infers methodological lessons that could be useful for similar studies for other languages. The method was first used to obtain results for the state of French on the Internet in a study funded by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. By taking into account a selection of web spaces and commonly used applications, Spanish could be ranked between third and fourth place in terms of Internet usage (whereas it is third in terms of Internet users), occupying the top positions for P2P, videos and blogs, but having a minor role in terms of books, webpages and applications. Thus Spanish on the Internet appears to act more dynamically as a vector for communication than for information.

Language policy in the Francophone world and the Forum mondial de la langue française

Abstract The situation of the French language has been a matter of discussion and concern for some time across the Francophone world. Signs of this can be seen in France with the loi Toubon and the loi Fioraso, and in Quebec where the Marois government proposed modifications to the Charte de la langue française. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, for its part, has moved in recent years towards formulating a new language policy. This led to the Premier Forum mondial de la langue française, held in Quebec City in 2012. Despite the success of this event, problems and paradoxes persist regarding the future place of French.

The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.

Francophonie and peace operations: Towards geocultural ownership

This article critically examines the purposes and objectives of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). While analysts debate whether the OIF is a hegemonic or counter-hegemonic instrument of statecraft, we argue that it is an institution founded upon the principle of geopolitical ownership of a distinctive geocultural space. Its prime task, with regard to conflict resolution, is to help transfer responsibilities and capabilities from northern to southern member states. From this perspective, we contend that the OIF has progressively taken charge of a distinct and necessary geocultural role with regard to international security.

Task-Sharing and Peace Operations: The Role of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie

Task-sharing in peace operations raises questions about the relationships between intergovernmental institutions. Since it adopted a new institutional architecture in 1997, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) has been involved in such relationships. Due to new prerogatives in conflict management, this actor has emerged as an institutional ‘third party’ that supports the efforts of peace operations rather than filling the classic task-sharing role of subcontractor. This article focuses on two sides of the OIF in terms of inter-organizational cooperation: a secondary role in the diplomatic sphere, and a major role in the capacity-building of peace operations (from peacekeeping to peacebuilding).

Making Sense of a Francophone Perspective on Peace Operations: The Case of Belgium as a Minofrancophone State

Using a probabilistic method to shed light on the effective use of the French language in the so-called Francophone states, the article argues that Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) membership is not a reliable marker of French-language proficiency for countries contributing to peace operations. It further dismisses the assumption that sending peacekeeping personnel from Francophone countries automatically improves the efficiency of peace missions deployed in Francophone areas. The Belgian participation in the UN peace operation in Lebanon is used as a case study to test the empirical validity of the former arguments.

Africa and the francophonie of tomorrow:an attempt to measure the population of theFrancophonie from now to 2060

Habib Bourgiba, Hamani Diori and Léopold Sédar Senghor are considered the fathers of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), an international community created in the early 1960s that currently unites more than thirty countries where the French language is given a major role in public life, education, the arts, law, the media, etc. Some present the OIF as a neo-colonial organization, while others think of it as protecting the world’s cultural diversity in the face of globalization. Regardless, this assembly of countries around the world has played and should continue to play a significant role in international politics. However, the configurational changes this Francophone community has experienced since its inception in the 1960s are nothing compared with those we predict for the next 50 years. In fact, the most recent demographic trends outlined in the United Nations’ latest population projections are leading to a major reconfiguration of the demographic weight of the countries of the world, particularly in Africa. In this context, we were interested to try a forward-looking exercise based on these most recent projections from the UN that could allow us to define the Francophonie of tomorrow by exploring the evolution of Africa’s demographic weight. In the coming decades, what will be the size and the geographic distribution of the Francophone population? How has Africa’s demographic weight in the espace francophone evolved? And how will it evolve in the future? In this article, we try to better define the demographic outline of tomorrow’s Francophonie by drawing on different definitions of the espace francophone, while highlighting some of the political and social issues of this forward-looking exercise for the Francophone community in general, and for Africa in particular.

‘Une Francophonie à l'offensive’? Recent Developments in Francophonie

This article traces recent developments in Francophonie in the light of the establishment of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and a new institutional framework, examining how these may have changed the Francophone discourse and the nature and focus of its institutions and programmes. It also considers whether what was primarily an ideology has evolved to something more practical. It then analyses shifts in France's approach to Francophonie in the context of the Sarkozy presidency, before briefly summarising some of the strengths and weaknesses that could impinge on its future development.

Common Grounds? Strategic Partnerships for Governance in the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie

At a time when the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) are investigating their long-term relevance and identity in the face of current international challenges, relatively little attention has been paid to the small yet growing number of countries that are now joint members of the two organisations. This group has increased in recent years and 11 countries now have a link with both organisations. As programmes are being implemented in the same polities and as the reflection on global governance progresses, there is a growing need for more comparative studies of Francophonie and Commonwealth commitments that take into account the institutional history of these organisations. In this context, this article investigates the challenges and opportunities created by Commonwealth–OIF programmes in the fields of democracy, human rights and development, in their drive for good governance and new forms of multilateralism.

World Literature, Littérature-Monde: Which Literature? Whose World?

In March 2007, a literary manifesto appeared in Le Monde calling for the end of a political Francophonia and for the recognition of a litterature-monde (world-literature in French).1 Although there have been some notable exceptions, both individual and collective, over the past decade,2 the creatively oppositional role of the manifesto form, in French and more generally in Francophone literary culture, had for some time been in progressive decline, and the forty-four signatories of the 2007 document accordingly attracted considerable attention, in the event largely negative, in the period following its publication. Abdou Diouf, general secretary of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, took particular exception to the celebration of his institution’s decline, responding to the manifesto by accusing those who had signed it of conflating Francocentrism with Francophonie, of confusing ‘cultural exception’ with ‘cultural diversity’.3 The repercussions spread further, however: with the presidential elections just two months away, Nicolas Sarkozy felt obliged to enter the debate, outlining in an article in Le Figaro his frustration over the increasing Americanization of Francophonia:

Empire Lost: France and Its Other Worlds ed. by Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi

et pour l’égalité) was established in 2004 to combat discrimination, it remains hostile to ethno-racial categorization, and complaints of discrimination against Blacks must be based on “national origin” rather than “race,” which does not exist as a category of discrimination for the HALDE. Marie Ndiaye, the author’s sister and the 2009 winner of the Prix Goncourt, provides an added bonus in her preface, “Les Sœurs,” a subtle parable on two mixed-race sisters and their reactions to discrimination in France. Pap Ndiaye will be dismissed by some opponents of action affirmative or of the gathering of statistics on Blacks merely because he is an américaniste. Nevertheless, La Condition noire demonstrates that France needs new and vigorous policies to deal with discrimination against Blacks and argues forcefully for Black Studies as a legitimate field of study in France. Davidson College (NC) Homer B. Sutton MUDIMBE-BOYI, ELISABETH, ed. Empire Lost: France and Its Other Worlds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7391-2135-1. Pp. 236. $70. As the old saying goes, the sun never set on the French empire, which, at its zenith, measured twenty times the size of metropolitan France (roughly the equivalent of the United States) and spanned the globe. A long and painful process of decolonization, involving costly wars of liberation in Indochina and Algeria, left France with just a handful of Départements et Territoires d’outre-mer (DOM-TOM). Relations between Paris and the former colonies have been mixed, to say the least, ranging from cordial to frosty and even downright hostile, and all the former colonies have struggled to find their way as independent states in their own right. Although it is true that France has continued to intervene militarily in several places, most notably in Africa, it is also true that France has tried hard to mend fences with its former colonies through such consortia as the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and thereby maintain a presence in what is sometimes called, nostalgically—according to its detractors—the Francophone world. The problem with such a Francocentric view is precisely that it perpetuates a de facto colonial power dynamic, as though it were still possible for France to continue to dictate Frenchness in plain denial of the indisputable fact that immigration to France has already redefined what it now means to be “French.” Today it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that the French empire became, early on and almost by default (since the French were latecomers to the colonial empire-building game and had to rest content with scarcely inhabited desert areas with few natural resources), a question of national prestige rather than economic gain (with a few exceptions, such as Algeria and CochinChina ). Witness the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. This (post)colonial power dynamic is further reflected in the lexicological dichotomy between “French” and “Francophone.” This collection of essays from a 2006 conference held at Stanford University subverts this orthodox idea of Francophonie to examine it from the point of view of the cultural Other and explore ways in which the two terms “French” and “Francophone” can coexist and even enrich each other. Empire Lost consists of a dozen contributions by authorities in the field, including luminaries such as Assia Djebar and Michel Serres. The first part of the book looks at France today Reviews 183 as a “postempire mise en abyme within the hexagonal center” (xvii), changing its demographic landscape, awakening new sensibilities and cultural presences that are transforming France into a country of diversity and newness. Articles focus on laïcité in the French public school system; the growing visibility of Islam in France; the impetus provided by globalization for immigration to Europe; the growing irrelevance of formerly accepted terms, such as “Francophonie;” the appearance of néobarbarismes such as “Francographie” and “Françafriche,” which must be seen as an effort to somehow name the rise of new “multitudes” struggling to become “communities” (48); the African-Americanization of France, that is to say, the growing relevance of the African-American experience in France. Essays in the second part of the volume explore “new kinds of cross-cultural expressions in the arts, in...

The National Libraries of the Countries of the Francophonie: A Comparative Study

The International Organization of the Francophonie (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, OIF) which developed over the last decades of the twentieth century brings together, as of 2008, 53 State and government full members and 13 observer members, spread out over five continents. The Répertoire des bibliothèques nationales de la Francophonie, which is in its third edition (2008), presents index cards on every national library, or library fulfilling such a role, of each member or observer country. After presenting an overview of the International Organization of the Francophonie, this article looks at the creation of the national library in each country, legal deposit and national bibliography. Then, communication (websites) and international relations (membership of IFLA) are addressed. Of the 63 countries surveyed, only 9 countries do not have a national library, although the majority of these nine countries have another institution – a national documentation centre, public or parliamentary library or national archives – that normally fulfils the functions of a national library. It must be recognized that there is a large disparity between the national libraries of developed countries in Europe and North America and those in developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Antilles. In some sub-Saharan African countries, the national library has only a nominal existence.

The Discursive Constitution of a World-Spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: The Case of Francophonia

The cultural turn in political science, history, and political geography has opened new perspectives on the division of the world into geographic entities. Nation-states, regions, districts, etc., are no longer qualified as quasi-natural objects based upon intrinsic qualities but, rather, as contingent results of social or accordingly discursive processes. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) defines Francophonia as an “geocultural space” (espace géoculturel) and an international community of more than 50 states. In this contribution, the concept of political communities as “imagined communities” and the advancements of discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffe are used in order to conceptualise and analyse the discursive constitution of this world-spanning region. The findings show that Francophonia has been constituted during the process of decolonisation as a community bound together by the idea of a shared language – largely by reproducing patterns of a superiority of French language and culture. Critique against a neo-colonial character of Francophonia and the changing contexts of international relations led to breaks and shifts of the discourse. Thus, since the end of the 1990s, the OIF delimits Francophonia as the space of cultural diversity against the cultural homogenisation of an “Anglo-Saxon dominated globalisation”.

Improving the Integration of Public Reading in Cultural Policies of Francophone Developing Countries

The question of public reading - of access to published works, newspapers, and to information in general - is a major challenge in developing countries. Public reading does not replace education or literacy policies. It is far more important because it fi rmly establishes access to knowledge into day-to-day reality, and gives everyone the possibility of an opening to the world. It meets the expectations of local populations, namely those in remote areas, as is shown by nearly 3 million admissions and more than 1 million books lent each year in the 213 Reading and Cultural Activity Centres set up by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) in 18 countries in Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and the Middle East. In addition to giving access to books and newspapers, the centres allow access to the media (radio, television, video), to computers, sometimes to the Internet. In addition to being public libraries, these centres host cultural activities such as conferences, theatrical and musical events, training sessions (on health, agriculture, etc.). In view of this success, many governments of developing countries want to develop a genuine public reading policy at national level.