This Sunday, March 20 is the International Day of La Francophonie.
Leïla Slimani prefaces a collection of texts celebrating the French language and which will be published on March 31.
"We must strive to show the beauty and the pleasure that we can have in speaking a language" confides Leïla Slimani to
20 Minutes
.
Sunday is International Francophonie Day.
On this occasion, the castle of Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne) hosts this weekend many meetings and cultural events.
Currently being restored, this place is set to become the Cité internationale de la langue française, i.e. 23,000 m² dedicated to the celebration of the Francophonie.
Leïla Slimani takes this project very seriously.
The winner of the 2016 Goncourt Prize is the personal representative to the President of the Republic for the Francophonie.
Ella has written the preface to
Our French Languages
, a collection of texts by twelve French-speaking authors which will be published on March 31.
With a tenderness that looks like a fight, Leïla Slimani introduces her love of a rich, plural and changing French language.
How did the idea for the book come to you?
The idea of Villers-Cotterêts, which wanted to inaugurate a laboratory of the French language, imposed itself when I was appointed in 2017. The people in charge of this project came to me with the editions of Heritage to present me a project : make a book that talks about the diversity of the French language.
This also makes it possible to promote the Villers-Cotterêts project.
The two are inseparable.
In your preface, you talk about the freedom that the French language can carry and bring.
But can we be completely free in its use?
Are there acceptable degrees of freedom and others not?
I think we have a lot of freedom with the language.
Of course, there is, as in any language, a grammar, a correct or incorrect usage.
But the French language is very plastic.
It can be used in a thousand ways.
We can reinvent a way of speaking French.
I remember when the first rappers and slammers arrived, when slang and verlan emerged… And then there are also the ways of speaking French in countries other than France.
This language is transformed.
Words are made to say other meanings.
The inventiveness and the freedom we have vis-à-vis the French language are absolutely immense.
In this collection, several texts evoke colonialism.
The French language can inspire a form of mistrust in countries that have been colonized.
How to reconcile with this language and appropriate it?
I think these texts say that.
Language is stronger than anything.
I live it as a writer, the language is well above the events of daily life.
It always ends up overtaking us and it practically becomes a homeland on its own.
Even when we have a conflictual relationship with language, even when it makes us suffer, even when we feel that it can be an instrument of humiliation and inequality;
language also becomes a space in which one can express oneself.
Paradoxically, one can find there beauty, poetry, humor… There is a transcendence of the language that one feels in all the texts of this collection.
Even though speaking this language is part of a tragic and bloody history, the language is stronger than that.
Appropriating a language also implies mastering it.
And through the project of the Cité Internationale de la langue française, you are precisely committing to fight against illiteracy.
What is the extent of this phenomenon today?
I was very keen that Villers-Cotterêts not only be a museum of the French language which puts it forward and enhances it, but also a place where we can allow those who do not master this language, who feel excluded from it, to be able to master it.
France is one of the Western countries where the phenomenon of illiteracy is most present.
This represents 2.5 million people, or 7% of the French population.
It is enormous !
In addition, in the region where Villers-Cotterêts is located, this phenomenon is more present than elsewhere.
The fight against illiteracy must be one of the main objectives.
Someone who does not master his own language cannot experience himself as a citizen.
He will find it difficult to defend his ideas or to convince.
It will be more fragile in the face of fake news or conspiracy.
In his short story, Alexandre Duval-Stalla talks about this feeling of exclusion due to a lack of language skills.
How can we do, at school or elsewhere, so that everyone knows how to use it and master it as soon as possible?
You don't have to impose.
What is important is to go through desire, pleasure.
And you have to talk to people of all ages.
You don't just learn to read and write when you're in kindergarten.
You also have to be able to reach out to those who have lost track, who have forgotten the French language.
This is the case for people in situations of social marginalization, precariousness.
This is also the case for certain prisoners, as Alexandre Duval-Stalla mentions in his text.
Moreover, he directs an association of which I am the godmother called Reading to get out.
The situation of illiteracy in prisons is terrible.
About 30% of prisoners do not master basic knowledge and 10% are in a situation of total illiteracy.
At the beginning, we offer them easy books.
Mostly,
you don't have to be judgmental.
These are people who suffer a lot of humiliation.
They come to completely reject reading because it sends them back to their situation.
But in prison as elsewhere, we must strive to show the beauty and the pleasure that we can have in speaking a language.
The debate around inclusive writing and the feminization of certain words has erupted in recent years.
What position do you have in relation to this evolution of the language: rather militant, curious, defiant?
Activist?
No not at all.
I think the language is really stronger than us.
It changes by itself.
It is the reflection of who we are, of the state of a society.
Feminizations like other changes will happen by themselves.
Regarding inclusive writing, I have a hard time.
It's not that I'm not in favor of it, but I don't see myself there.
It is a writing that cannot be easily read.
And what I find very beautiful in writing is also reading aloud.
A language, she says to herself.
I love his sound, his eloquence.
And then the French language is already an extremely difficult language to learn and master.
To add difficulties, I don't know if it's very effective, especially for those who today feel excluded from this language.
The Cité internationale de la langue française project also aims to encourage artistic creation.
Do you have any French literary recommendations for us?
I recommend the book of a Moroccan writer called Abdellah Taïa,
Vivre à ta lumière
.
It is written in a magnificent French language, mixed with Arabic and Moroccan sounds.
It is a very beautiful love book about his mother.
It's beautiful and it just came out.
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