Constitutional Grammar

Abstract

These days, the Academie francaise is increasingly worried about hot dogs. More correctly, it is worried about "le hot dog," an example of the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of "Franglais." The Academie, the official arbiter of the French language, has grown increasingly concerned over the use of American words and expressions by French speakers. Indeed, it is not only the denizens of the Academie who are expressing alarm. In an article suitably entitled "A Bas Anglais! From Now On, It's the Law!," the New York Times reported that not only had the French Parliament felt it necessary to add to the French Constitution the sentence "The language of the Republic is French," but that 300 leading intellectuals, including the playwright Eugene Ionesco and radical critic Regis Debray, had issued a statement decrying the infusion of alien words into pure French as a "process of collective self- destruction."