The Frenchman enters the castle. Emmanuel Macron inaugurates on Monday at the Villers-Cotterêts estate (Aisne) the International City of the French Language, a vast cultural project that the President of the Republic had mentioned during his first presidential campaign. The place is highly symbolic since it was here that in 1539, Francis I made French the official language of the kingdom (instead of Latin). A few centuries later, the language of Molière (and Rimbaud!) has made its way but remains at the heart of political concerns.
Those responsible indeed like to defend this “national heritage” through controversy, but do they really take care of it? They themselves are accused of handling the language with less ease than their illustrious predecessors. Is it true ? 20 minutes carried out his investigation…
Yes, because the political class has changed…
“My remorse was the reasonable victim in the eyes of a lost child. The one who resembles the dead, who died to be loved.” In 1969, Georges Pompidou cited – from memory – Paul Eluard to evade a question about a news item. A press conference from another time. “There is an impoverishment of discourse and political speech, we no longer have the lyricism of yesteryear or the classical references. Several factors can explain it, and in particular the evolution of the training of our political leaders,” assures Jean Garrigues, historian specializing in political history. “Pompidou, de Gaulle, Malraux or Mitterrand and others had completed their ‘classic humanities’, which is no longer really the case today. The economic world now has more importance. The Republic of lawyers, who proliferated until the 1980s and 1990s, was replaced by that of sales representatives,” he adds.
“The place taken by business schools is now beyond measure,” adds the rebellious deputy Aurélien Saintoul, associate professor of Classical Letters. “This debate raises the question of the place given to Letters in our society. We considered that we were in a world where technology was taking up more and more space. And that to prepare for it, we needed instructions more than novels. Politicians are only witnesses to these developments,” adds the elected official, who campaigns for a strengthening of literary teaching.
Yes, and it’s the fault of political communication
In the dock, we find first and foremost political communication. “Many managers lower their language level to make themselves popular, to appear less disconnected, by using 300 vocabulary words and simple sentences: subject-verb-complement,” notes Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, founder of the MCBG Conseil agency. “Political discourse is shaped and formatted by communicators so as not to take any risks. This is a bad strategy because the politicians then appear insincere, it shows and it is often missed. Political language has become a dead language,” regrets the professor at Sciences Po.
No, “it wasn’t better before”
But wondering about the decline in the language level of politicians would be far from being a new thing, assures Chloé Gaboriaux, associate professor of Modern Letters and lecturer at Sciences Po Lyon. “This question has always been asked, which tends to suggest that the language has been in continuous degradation for centuries. We can rather estimate that its evolution recurrently arouses the reaction of people convinced that “it was better before”,” she answers us. The researcher adds: “In the same way as Léon Gambetta [président du Conseil sous la IIIe République] gave a cold sweat to the conservatives, who decried his “gibberish” and regretted Chateaubriand, the tribunes are rarely recognized as such by the defenders of the “beautiful language”, generally turned towards the past,” she adds.
No, and there are still pretty language handlers
When we delve into history books, it is easy to extract the most famous examples. But tomorrow’s books will probably unearth today’s tribunes. “We can cite Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Christiane Taubira for the left, who liked to declaim poems in the National Assembly. On the right, senator LR Claude Malhuret and Eric Zemmour are also excellent language handlers. Bruno Le Maire is also keen on literature and François-Xavier Bellamy (LR), for example, is an associate professor of philosophy…” lists Jean Garrigues.
MP Aurélien Saintoul prefers to welcome the diversification of profiles. “Our words reflect our personal journeys, our personalities. We have a diversity of languages and accents. Some speak fluently, others not, but still express themselves. It’s also their dignity.”
Without forgetting that the media are no longer the same…
Who imagines General de Gaulle giving a solemn speech… during a duplex on a 24-hour news channel? If eloquence is no longer the same, it is also due to the evolution of media supports. “The tempo of television and the 280 characters of Twitter have impoverished language. Little by little, the weight of small sentences and shocking formulas took precedence over great lyrical flights,” says Jean Garrigues.
“Society has become accustomed to an impoverished, shortened form of expression. Because we often only have a few seconds to express our idea,” says Aurélien Saintoul. The rebel adds: “If we speak like the great ancients, we will quickly pass for Martians! »