FRANGLAIS

views updated Jun 08 2018

FRANGLAIS. An often pejorative term for FRENCH (français) that contains many loans from English (anglais); it covers both the use of VOGUE words in the media and commerce and CODE-MIXING AND CODE-SWITCHING among bilinguals, especially in CANADA. It was popularized by the French writer René Etiemble in Parlez-vous franglais? (1964), in which he condemned the spread of ANGLO-SAXON culture and language since the Second World War. AmE rather than BrE was the target of Etiemble's criticism; imported US terms like call-girl, coke, drugstore, and striptease were seen as marks of Americanization. Etiemble's critique combines linguistic purism with a distaste for anything yanqui and hostility to Europe's becoming un protectorat yanqui. His views have been widely discussed, and among the solutions offered are the Gallicization of Anglicisms and the more extensive use of native resources, including those of French outside France. Orthographic adaptation could turn the patently English meeting, ticket, rocket into a Gallicized métingue, tiquet, roquette, and loan translation could turn surfing, flashback, script-girl into rase-rouleaux, retour en arrière, and secrétaire de plateau. See SPANGLISH.