Guest of the morning of Europe 1, Monday, the linguist Alain Bentolila described the existing link, according to him, between "linguistic precariousness", installed from school, and the rise of fundamentalism.

"A weak mind, carried by a weak tongue, makes you vulnerable and gullible," he said. 

INTERVIEW

"I am strict with the school, because we did not give him the right ambitions and the means to keep them."

While the students are back on the way to class, Monday, after three weeks at home due to the third epidemic wave of Covid-19, the linguist Alain Bentolila, author of

We are not bonobos

(Ed. Odile Jacob) shoots the alarm bells about the shortcomings accumulated by the small French, at the microphone of Europe 1. 

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"If you don't have the words, you don't learn"

"The language in itself is nothing", poses Alain Bentolila. "It's how you tap into the linguistic treasure that is important." However, according to the specialist, "20% of the children who enter the preparatory course have nine times fewer words than the others. This means that they are excluded from all communication and above all that they are excluded from learning to read. . (…) Because if you don't have the words, you don't learn. "

If these words and this access to books are so crucial for the linguist, it is because they quite simply differentiate man from animals.

"The characteristic of man is to be a creator and not a creature, to imagine what his eyes have never seen and will never see", he explains, citing two examples.

"The scientific speech of Galileo before his judges, who says, as the sun moves above his head, that it is the earth which revolves around the sun. And then the poetry: 'The earth is blue like an orange' [poem by Paul Eluard,

 editor's note

]. How to say it without the force of language? "

"A weak language makes you vulnerable and gullible"

A force all the more important at a time when "we are bathed in terror", according to Alain Bentolila.

"We are asking for more and more police resources, gates for schools ... And for all that, we know very well that we will not come to the end of it like that. Our only chance is to train students who are resistant to speeches. dangerous and manipulated ", estimates the specialist, establishing a link between" linguistic insecurity "and the rise of fundamentalism.

"A weak mind, carried by a weak tongue, makes one vulnerable and gullible."

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The linguist therefore recommends "not to be afraid of rare words", which "please children", according to him. "" It is not a question of drowning them under a vocabulary that is too complicated and difficult ", he smiles. banality in matters of language and is terrible, because it does not allow all children to say precisely what they think and to convince the other effectively. "