Alternative French, Alternative Identities: Situating Language in la Banlieue
2007; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17409290701661934
ISSN1740-9306
Autores Tópico(s)French Language Learning Methods
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. The term Verlan originally referred to a kind of French language game involving the reversal of syllables in words (féca for café, or zarbi for bizarre); Verlan itself is the reversal of l’envers (“backwards”). Since “verlanized” words are common in the banlieue youth lexicon, Verlan is sometimes used as a shorthand term for this youth sociolect in general. 2. Dawn Marley notes that identity issues for minorities are in many ways still tied to post-colonial struggles: “[…] France and the French-speaking world are still coming to terms with the legacy of the colonial era, which means that a significant number of French citizens are unsure of their cultural identity, being French by nationality and socialization, but ‘other’ by origin and family upbringing” (9). 3. Bhabha defines third spaces as liminal, intersticial “discursive sites or conditions that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, and rehistoricized anew” (37). 4. While banlieue youth language is clearly no longer limited to les cités, this paper nevertheless focuses on language and identity within these areas specifically, due to the particularly pointed identity struggles in these communities that have arguably served as a force motrice for the emergence of this youth sociolect. 5. This portrait misérabiliste of la banlieue is evident in a range of journalistic and scholarly titles: see Jean-Pierre Garnier's Des barbares dans la cité (Paris: Flammarion, 1996); Caroline Mangez's La cité qui fait peur (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999); and François Dubet and Didier Lapeyronie's Les quartiers d’exil (Paris: Seuil, 1992). 6. As Huq points out, “there are no such things as ‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘non-whites,’” as the politics of assimilation require a “suppression of ethnic and cultural differences” (19). 7. The difficulty inherent in managing cultural pluralism in France is well-illustrated by the affaire du foulard islamique; frank recognition of distinct ethnic groups and/or “non-French” cultural practices still rubs against the “logique de l’assimilation et intégration” cited by Lepoutre and others as foundational to the French state. 8. The importance of identity as a theme in the literary works of second-generation North African (beur) writers is admirably explored by Alec Hargreaves in Immigration and Identity in Beur Fiction: Voices from the North African Immigrant Community in France (Oxford: Berg, 1997). 9. For an extremely thoughtful discussion of the problematic ways in which the children of immigrants are labeled and treated in France, see Nacira Guénif Souilamas's Des “beurettes” aux descendantes d’immigrants nord-africains (Paris: Grasset, 2000). 10. Boyer summarizes the cultural identity dilemma facing minority youths in this way: “la ‘deuxième’ genération [d’immigrés] est en quelque sorte sommée de faire un choix et d’abandonner ses héritages culturels si elle veut vraiment être reconnue comme française … Aujourd’hui, beaucoup de jeunes d’origine étrangère oscillent entre l’aspiration à une difficile intégration et la volonté d’affirmer leur différence” (87). 11. The effects of negative stereotypes on banlieue youth are also tangible, taking the form of job discrimination, increased surveillance in department stores, and random checks of identity papers by police, inter alia. 12. For comprehensive linguistic descriptions of youth language, see Natalie Lefkowitz's Talking Backwards, Looking Forwards: The Language Game Verlan (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1991); Vivienne Méla's “Parler Verlan: règles et usages”; and Goudaillier. 13. Verlan is attested as early as the twelfth century (Azra and Cheneau 149); its use as a criminal slang in particular is thought to date from the nineteenth century (Calvet 41). 14. Certainly, foreign borrowings are nothing new for French, as Henriette Walter's L’aventure des mots francais venus d’ailleurs (Paris: Laffont, 1997) amply attests. As Françoise Gadet (“Des fortifs” 18) points out, it is the sources of the borrowings, and their functions and semantic domains, that differentiate current youth language from earlier argots, language games, and sociolects like le français populaire. 15. In fact, “Wesh wesh qu’est-ce qui se passe?” is the title of a 2001 film set in la banlieue. 16. Clearly, there is now a flourishing French language hip-hop and rap scene, but this was first inspired by English-language music, which still remains popular. 17. It is clear in recent films set in la banlieue, such as L’Esquive (2003) that glottal fricativization is an increasingly prominent linguistic feature of youth language, and one not tied to speakers’ knowledge of Arabic as a mother tongue. 18. As Vivienne Méla notes: “arabe désigne une origine ethnique et culturelle tandis que beur et rebeu font référence à une identité arabe-français” (“Verlan 2000” 30). However, given that beur is now part of everyday French, many youths reject the term in favor of alternatives such as rebeu, seconde g (génération), rabzouille, etc. 19. For a detailed account of the project, including its research questions and methodology, see Meredith Doran, “A Sociolinguistic Study of Youth Language in the Parisian Suburbs: Verlan and Minority Identity in Contemporary France” (Diss. Cornell U, 2002). 20. Lepoutre supports the view that racialized teasing among youths does not reflect racism, but instead “constitue une manière de créer un lien social entre individus stigmatisés et par là même d’annuler ou de neutraliser le stigmate” (79). 21. Téci is the inverted form of cité, and is the local name for individual neighborhoods en banlieue; the term connotes a positive emotional attachment to one's community, signifying “hometown” in a way that cité does not.
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