Interview with Salikoko S. Mufwene
Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the same university. He conducts research on linguistic evolution from an ecological perspective, focusing on the phylogenetic emergence of language and language speciation.
For 2023-2024, he has been invited to hold the annual Francophone Worlds Chair. This was created in partnership with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.
You explain that languages behave, in a way, like viruses in the way they reproduce, evolve or become extinct. What do you mean by this ?
Salikoko S. Mufwene : Languages do not live independently of their speakers. Like viruses, we pass them on from one person to another, or more importantly, we learn them from the people with whom we interact. If we die, the languages we speak die. We can also " nourish " our languages and keep them alive through our exchanges, be they social or economic. It's our interactions that keep them alive, just like viruses. Languages also have their own dialects, similar to the variants of viruses. And, like viruses, languages adapt to their carriers : each interlocutor appropriates a language through a vocabulary and grammar specific to each of us.
No one actually tells us how to speak, but we deduce how by inference. And we don't always have the same understanding of a word, depending on individual sensitivities - even more so in academic discourse. Even if this virus metaphor isn't perfect, I prefer it to that of animals, because their reproduction depends on the union of two partners, for which biologists speak of diploidy, whereas for viruses it's more a question of polyploidy, because the " inputs ", which are the words and structures perceived in the utterances, come from several speakers. Note also that transmission in animals is vertical and unidirectional : from parents to offspring. But for viruses, as for languages, it is horizontal : language is not only transmitted from parents to offspring, but the latter also influence their parents' speech. Children, like adults, learn a great deal from each other among their peers.
You've studied how local languages in certain parts of the world have been influenced by successive European colonizations from the 15th centuryonwards.What did you learn ?
I became interested in Creole languages, colonial languages whose structures and the words used in their utterances come from several different languages. In the 19th century, Europeans believed that they were more anatomically and mentally evolved than non-European populations. One of the easiest explanations was that Africans had inferior languages to their own, at least those spoken by populations they encountered outside Europe. In particular, Westerners believed that African languages were made up of childish structures, and that this was why they couldn't speak European languages " correctly ". A term used at the time was " broken language ", meaning " broken language ". In reality, there was no such thing ; rather, there were very imperfect approximations in the intermediate stage of language learning, which we hear from new learners who are doing their best to express themselves in the target language they have not yet mastered, like today's migrants who have not learned the language of the host country.
If we look at the archives of the time, we see that languages influenced each other. Interpreters learned European languages to interface between European merchants and the native rulers of the territories they visited. Europeans in turn also learned local languages, probably no more faithfully than non-Europeans learned European languages. This was practical because European merchants depended on the natives for food supplies, and some of them even formed unions with local women, the " signares " in West Africa, with whom they had to communicate regularly and intimately. It was also wise to want to understand what the natives were saying around them.
Creoles, for their part, developed on the slave plantations and in the settlements. New varieties of French also emerged among the colonists. All these new colonial languages became autonomous in the early 19th century, particularly after the abolition of slavery. This shows that in the structures of the former colonies, language norms were shaped by their interlocutors.
In the end, these trajectories are not so different from that of French and Latin. If we read a text by Pierre de Ronsard today, we soon realize that it resembles a Latin text more than a contemporary one. This evolution is explained by contact between different populations of speakers over the centuries. Ultimately, creoles give us an idea of language evolution in general. They show that modern languages are the result of language contact. The language that prevails in this process ultimately wins only a Pyrrhic victory, because it is transformed by the influences of the languages it has replaced.
In your work, you challenge certain myths about the historical evolution of languages. You explain, for example, that the vitality of a language depends more on the population structure of its speakers than on its prestige. What do you mean by this ?
Prestige is not enough to ensure a language's vitality. Germany is a major economic power, but German is still little spoken around the world. This is because Germany lost its colonies at the end of the Second World War, and its language has been less easily disseminated around the world, in part because of this peculiarity, even though its nation is endowed with a great deal of international prestige. Until the middle of the 20th century, German was a language that eminent intellectuals had every interest in learning. Many important scientific publications were in German.
In the case of French, it's a little different. When French began to colonize the world, it was perceived as highly prestigious. However, in English-speaking North America, it soon came into competition with English. From the beginning of the 19th century, when France sold Louisiana to the United States(1803), English rapidly lost its influence. French may well have been a prestigious language at the time, associated as it was with the flourishing philosophical literature of the 18th century and with diplomatic exchanges, but in Louisiana and almost everywhere else on the North American continent, it lost ground in everyday life and economic exchanges. Conversely, in Quebec, French was revitalized because French-speaking Quebecers demanded that French also function as a working language in the governance of Canada and in economic activities in the province. This ideology, backed by a commitment to the economy, enabled Francophones to maintain their language, unlike Louisianans, who embraced the ideology of the French language without allowing it to " nourish its man ". French in Louisiana then suffered the same fate as other continental European languages in English-speaking North America, such as German, Italian, Norwegian and Dutch.
The case of French in Africa is also interesting : the colonists set up social structures that enabled them to exploit the colonies to fuel the industrial revolution in the metropolises. They instituted segregated social structures where only colonial auxiliaries could speak directly to the colonizers. French gradually established itself as the colonial language used for official texts and by white collar workers in the new activities introduced by colonization ; but it was not learned by the majority of the indigenous population. Workers received work instructions from foremen, who spoke a little French. The colonial language became widespread in the country's governance, business and diplomatic circles, as well as in public administration, the judicial courts and academic institutions. This is still the case today in African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Cameroon and Djibouti. But it remains a minority language for the elites, who speak it fluently as a lingua franca, and for a smaller minority who use it as a vernacular. In the DRC, popular culture today is developed in Lingala and, to a certain extent, Swahili. French is competing with the demographic expansion of Lingala in urban areas, as is Wolof in Senegal.
In the same way as colonization,do you thinkglobalization in the 20th century has had an influence on dialects and " French " ?
Globalization is not a recent phenomenon. The phenomenon of globalization dates back a few millennia and is only becoming more widespread and complex. From the moment when individuals began to trade between different regions of the world, this phenomenon took shape. However, trade took on a new dimension in the 15th and 16th centuries. It accelerated further in the following centuries.
Even today, there are places in the world where globalization has not taken root, even if they have become a minority. All the languages whose speakers have contributed to this phenomenon have been influenced by those of the populations with which they came into contact, particularly in their vocabularies. English, the most important global language, has words and expressions from French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Asian, African and Amerindian languages ! Language is adapted to the times and places of its users, both new and traditional. The things we talk about are not a static, finite whole. Language adapts accordingly. A language is always permeable to foreign elements. It is this flexibility that enables a language to survive. The more the " owners " of an imperial language accept or tolerate this linguistic and cultural diversity, the more the new users, who don't have it as their cultural heritage language, feel at ease in its use, and the more the language spreads among the native population. It spreads even further if it gives them economic advantages, especially where the formal economy is growing in this language. Remember that " language must feed its man ". The opposite discourages individuals who see it as an unhelpful burden in their daily lives. All these considerations affect the vitality of French outside French-speaking Europe. Note, for example, the difference between Quebec, where French is one of the languages of economic activity, and Louisiana, where it has lost its usefulness in this area. The language of the formal economy, where it is well developed, is making its way into family life in a multilingual country.
English has become the most widely spoken language in the world, far ahead of Molière. How do you explain this success ?
It's a series of historical milestones which, one after the other, have contributed to the spread of English and made it the dominant language. When Napoleon Bonaparte sold the colony of Louisiana to the United States in 1803, French began to lose ground in North America. This phenomenon was further accentuated by the " Grand Dérangement " in Canada, with the confiscation of the Maritime provinces by the English. Added to this was British success in the colonial competition with the British Commonwealth. French gradually became a dying or endangered language in English-speaking North America, as the American and Canadian economies functioned largely in English. French was then reduced to the status of other minority European languages in North America, like Italian and German.
Then, in the 20th century, the United States emerged as an economic, scientific and technological superpower. This also made English more attractive to the world, while French, which had enjoyed equivalent prestige in the 19th century, began to lose its economic influence. Ultimately, in the competition between imperial powers, French had to be content with second place even in diplomacy. Like French, Italian and German, a language like Portuguese, even though used by hundreds of millions of speakers worldwide, no longer benefits from the dissemination power of a lingua franca like English, quite simply because it no longer enjoys the economic power of Portugal since the end of the 18th century. So it's not enough for a language to be widely spoken for it to be dominant in a multilingual country or on a global scale; it also has to prove inescapable or highly useful in economic terms and in the global marketplace.
French has now lost much of its international prestige. Against this backdrop, do you think there's still a future for the French-speaking world ?
In France, Belgium and Switzerland, French retains its vernacular functions. In their non-professional social activities, especially with family and friends, it's more natural for French, Belgian and Swiss speakers to speak the language that's part of their cultural heritage and in which they feel closer to each other. The use of vernacular languages is a bit like the use of more than one tradition of dress. They don't have to be in competition with each other, and can have very distinct functions and areas of use.
English, on the other hand, functions as a lingua franca for alloglots, i.e. those who speak a language other than that of the country in question. But the economies of France, Belgium and Switzerland and their governments continue to function in the heritage language of French. So there's no reason to abandon it, unlike the situation of French speakers in North America, where Quebec remains an island in the middle of the English-speaking world.
In Africa, Africans in so-called French-speaking countries learn English just as the French do, to satisfy certain interests : to study and find work in an English-speaking country. For Africans, learning English after or at the same time as learning French doesn't mean that French is any less useful. Learning another language doesn't mean you have to give up your first. Sometimes it's not so bad to play the linguistic chameleon.
Finally, if you ask me about the future of the French-speaking world, I'll tell you that English already uses words from French, and vice versa. For French, the Académie française would like to see a language " pure " without foreign influences. But borrowing from other languages is a sign of adaptation and vitality, rather than a threat to the vitality of the borrowing language. The same purists have no resistance to forming words based on Latin or Greek for scholarly inventions. Yet these languages are as foreign as English and Chinese. The future of French as an imperial or world language depends on a number of political and economic issues, not least France's responses to them, as they influence native attitudes to its language.
Interview by Emmanuelle Picaud
