Author: admin

Provide a brief description of the four theoretical perspectives/orientations of our course: social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, intersectionality, and queer theory. You should use your own words to describe/define each theoretical perspective and how you understand it. You should be sure to use academic literature to provide evidence for your definition.
After describing each of these theoretical perspectives in your own words, consider the case of Caster Semenya. Review the articles and video materials provided in class to ensure you are familiar with the details and context of the case study. Feel free to review other materials.
Then, choose one of the four theoretical perspectives and use it as a lens to understand the Caster Semenya case. How does your chosen theoretical perspective help you understand the case, the coverage and related discourse(s), and what may be being overlooked by all parties/stakeholders involved (e.g. media, sports officials, athletes)? What additional thoughts or questions emerge for you as you use your chosen theoretical lens to analyze the details of the case? What recommendations do you have for the stakeholders in the case (or how might you have done things differently as an actor) as a result of your chosen theoretical orientation?
Your paper should be: 3-5 typed pages maximum–less is encouraged, be CONCISE. Your paper should be double spaced, typed with Times New Roman 12pt font, and the document should have 1” margins. As a reminder, you should utilize source material to craft your definitions of the theoretical perspectives, meaning you should cite articles to support your claims. So, your paper should have at least four (4) citations. You are welcome to cite the recommended readings in your paper, but they should be supplemental, in addition to the article(s) you look up on your own.
You do not need to provide a title page or an abstract for this paper. You should have a reference page listing all of the sources cited in your paper. . APA (American Psychological Association) styleBoth your in-text and reference page citations should be formatted in

We were surprised when some of our old stock French friends and acquain dances told us their parents or grandparents had never spoken French. A couple of weeks after our arrival, we were invited to dinner at the home of Bénédicte Rozeron, a rhirt ‘ five year-old systems architect for an insur ance company, who was introduced ro us by a French friend in Montreal. Over the course of the supper, she mentioned she was from the 9a;s Basque and we spent much of the evening on the topic.
there are approximately eigb r hundred thousand Basques living on each side of the Franco Spanish border along the Aclancic coast. Nobody knows there the Basques originally came from or exactly how they ended up inhab trim this area. The roots of the Extra (Basque language, in the Basque lan guage) o back at least four thousand years, before Latin was spoken and posrib1 ‘ to the Neolithic age, which would make it one of the oldest lan- guages still
spoken
toda . Although Bénédicte likes playin bul, a traditional Basque game similar to squash, she counts herself among France’s assimilated Basques, much to her regret. Her grandmother spoke the Basque language and her mother understood it, but Bénédicte can’t make out a word of it. She doesn’t know why her grandmother didn’t transmit the language.
As the evening progressed, we saw for ourselves why Bénédicte never learned Euskara. We asked her why she didn’t get her daughter to learn the
Basque language and she replied.
“I wouldn’t want my child to lose her French. It’s too important. She
couldn’t function.”
Throughout our stay, we met many other old stock French of Catalan, Proven5al, Alsatian,
or
Breron origins z•ho had exactly the same attitude about their regional language or dialect. Everyone regrets the loss of regional languages but defends the need to speak good French—as if French was fighting a zero sum game against other local languages.
Whenever we returned to North America from France, people often asked us why the French were so obsessed with protecting their language. Alth.ough something told us it was really North Americans who were obsessed with the question, there’s no denying how vocal and explicit the French are about protecting their language. Language is a national com plex in France. Anglo-Americans consider language a tool, but the French regard it as an accomplishment, even a work of art. They love and cherish their language in ways that are almost incomprehensible to English speak- ers. It’s their national monument.
The obsession goes much deeper than grammar and sentence struc-
strong language 163
’ The process of penetration during that period was very akin to the spread où Enp•1ish today: no one forced French on anyone. The language became important because of the sheer weight of PariS ÎH the French king- dom, and of the French kingdom in Europe. France’s population in the fourteer+th century equaled those of England, GSrmä ly, ltaly, and Spain
combined.France’s neighbors recognized the French language longsbefore
it became the official language of France.
Most
treaties in Europe were writ-
ten in French. The language had no real standards, and French borrowed and absorbed words from other languages much like Shakespeare’s English. Six centur Les dater, Jeari-Benoît is a North American native and French speaker. the French spoken in @uebec is as different from Parisian French ac American English is from British English, but the numbers and the ratios
or
the two groups are very different. Americans outnumber the British five to one, whereas the French outnumber @uebeckers ten to one.
, As a consequence, Americans impose their own standards on the English
language, whereas @uebeckers have to conform to the French norm. Jean- Benoit learned to read and write in French using mostly French dictionar- ies and re(erence books, ^ith French exemples and French definitions. FOr ture. Language was one of the main tools France employed over the cent
!’ instance, if you open a French d1ctfOT1àT
of norns
proves
(people’s and turies to solidify a common identity—thereby reinforcing France’s territorial, political, and administrative unity. Efforts to impose a common language go back as far as the time of Charlemagne (742—814 A.D.), French
place’s names), che enrry for the town of Besan§on is followed with the number 45000. This is not the population, but the postal code. And natu- rally, only the bigges r cities of @uebec are listed in the same dictionary— emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who tried ro make the whole empire
speak Larin. Later French kings used aggressive, even violent methods to
without their postal code.
The reference point of the French language has
always been, and will
has tO do with impose the French language—and apparently, they never quite won.
Although scholars have long believed that modem French evolved from a Medieval Paris dialect known as “Francien”, many now doubt this dialect ever existed. The people who lived in the King’s Duchy more likely spoke the tongues of surrounding regions. These dialects—Picard, Normand, Orléanais and Champenois—had enough similarities to make them mutually understandable arrd modem French grew out of this line guistic pot-pourri. Over che next centuries, Paris’ intellectual, cultural, commercial and political influence grew and as the city became the center of power, the Parisian medley became the language of France.
remain, Paris, and Paris still dictates the standard today. This demography as well as the history of the language after the Renaissance.
The first language ruling of the modem French State took place in
1539. At the time, the French crown was still busy vying for power with
. members of the aristocracy and the Catholic Cht3£ch. booking for ways to chip away at che Uhurch’s influence, King FrançOÎS l (}5l5@7) passed the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which stated that French would be the lane
‘ guage of France’s tribunàlS—rtOt Latin, the language of the Church. The
same ordinance made French mandatory in all administrative documents,
alrhough that rule wasn’t widely applied until the French ReVOltItÎO£1• I G¢ Sixty millio u frenchmeri can’t be wrong
The French poet Francois de Malherbe 1555—1628) had a decisive inlJuence on the French language because he managed to impose the idea of a “norm.” Malherbe convinced a group of followers that France’s class of forrest” men—meaning people of “value” like arisrocrats, clerics, and artists—should employ language that was clear, precise, uncorrupred, and followed rules of hon
usage
(correct use). In 1634, Cardinal Richelieu (1585—1642) gave his protection to some of Malherbe’s followers. The next year, Richelieu created the Acodé+ie Fr0npoise, whose founding goal Was to give “undebatable rules to our language, to make it pure, eloquent, and capable of addressing the arts and sciences.
The Acodémie published its first dictionary by 1694. ItS work consisted ‘
mostly of pruning the language of synonyms and rigidly defining each term
So that no two terms had the same meaning. But even before the publica-
stro ng language i6 5
did not speak or understand French. This was clearly a problem for a regime that proposed making the people sovereign. Henri Grégoire (1750—1831), a priest and Républicain cleric of the extreme Left, who openly decried regional dialects and the influence of foreign languages, demanded that French be taught to the whole nation.
A couple of generations passed before the Abbé Grégoire’s demands were met. But French continued to make great progress in the countryside during this period thanks to two seemingly unrelated factors: a road system centered on Paris, and mandatory military service. Because of the road sys- tem, most tradesmen had to pass through Paris, and they had to be able to speak and understand the language. Like all branches of the State, the mit itary spoke French. Millions of men in France’s mass armies were forced to
speak and understand it. After the Revolution, the Villers-Cotterêts ordi- tion of a
French dictionary, hon usage Was rapidly eliminating French
nance, which made French the legal language for all written documents, words. Fran5ois Rabelais (1483—1555) used forty thousand words in the Gargantua and Pantagruel cycles. A century later, a playwright like jean Racine (1639—99) wrote the entire body of his tragedies using about three thousand words. The French are always surprised to hear that there are from five to ten times
more
accepted words in the English language than in French (they will typically talk about how much “richer” the French lan- guage is than English and assume by deduction that French has more words). In French, the boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not are clearly defined and enforced by the Acodémie and the government. In English, there is no body that rules out words.
S tarting in the seventeenth century, two French languages actually
developed side by side. the language of the court and literature, and the COrnmon language, of which we know practically nothing nou. F-rench grammarians and language purists became very influential duting this period. But they never really succeeded in imposing their standards on the general population. People just refused purism, even people of relatively high standing, like the playwright Moliere (1622—73), an intimate of Kin Louis XIV, who mocked the precious language of the court in his work.
The French Revolution fueled the efforts of the language purists. A
1790 survey of spoken languages showed rhat half of the French population
was finally applied. The new State also required educated civil servants who could speak French. More and more people entered the school system in the 1830s. Spelling became state business, and the French govemment started ro rule on what was acceptable and what was not.
The Acndémie and the promoters
of bon usage
never succeeded in forc ing the French to speak the pure literary form of the language that was their model. The S tate vilified regional languages and dialects, but artistic schools like the romantics and the naturalists extolled them as “natural” languages. Accelerating economic and social changes also called for a con- stant redefinition of the norm. New technologies and new ideas called for new words. The process of erasing regional languages was slow. At the end of the nineteenth century, the only people who spoke French in many coma munes were the mayor, the notary, the priest, and the teacher. By 1910, 90 percent of the French understood French, but 50 percent of the population still understood a dialect.
While the idea of language norms is very strong in France, the French have always nurtured a counterculture of dialects that subvert these norms.
In the nineteenth century, French criminals developed a language called “ Argot so they could communicate without being understood. Honoré de
Balzac and Victor Hugo were militant defenders 0(A78ot—popular charac- *+ ters in their novels spoke in dialects and used colloquialisms rather than
the language of bon ange. Many
Aigot
tertns crept into taFidard French
strong language 162
:inyway, including the press. Even relatively conservative publications now
i speak of female ministers or judges as moderne In mtnistre and mndome In joge. This is the kind of language quarrel you get in the République: common and are still used, like mee (man) , bidule
Ë tR äJ£lj1Q$ , Er
vic
(money).
usage always wins, but the purists never give in without a light. Slang exi ts in All cultures, but the French are famous for building theirs into systems. One interesting case WGA Loucherbem, a slang developed by butchers in Paris markets in the nineteenth century. In Loucfirhem, the
first letter of a word is taken off, replaced with the letter “1,” tacked on the ‘/
end, and fOllowed by
ern,
oclie,
orogv.
Loucheibem
ithe
ppp$
e
p
q
“ Anglo-American commentators accuse the French of being insular and ( xenophobic whenever the Ftench govemment attempts to outlaw the use ‘i of English terms in France. Yet when one considers the effort the French government has put into getting rid of its own regional languages, there’s
nothing remarkable about the tact that it regulates English. Language for
bOuch‹i
(butcher). Some
loufoque,
from
for
(crazy).
terms from the slang are still used, like
’ purism is part of the fabric of France. The old idea of bon usnge remains very The liveliest form of
AT ot
now used is Verhn, which
French Arab ie ghettos of the suburbs. Ve(hn
16 COmmOn in the
” strong, and linguistic innovations of any type are carefully considered before
being accepted. Normal French people speak in a way that is far more word—the term U ä£1/
just reverses the syllables of a erlon is itself a reversal of the term f’eneers (reverse).
refined and formal than anything one would hear in North America— either in English or French. The French have fewer words to choose from, The
Ü@hn words are commonly used, even in the media and publicity.
second generarion of krab immigrants call themselves les Beurt, a
‘ but they use mote of the ones they have. The hierarchy between oral and
* written standards is opposite of that of English. Typically, good English writ- 8* CÜiLlC6èiOn Of the Arabic term for Arab.
In Term, Beur is reversed
ing tends to conform to the spoken word. But the French try to adjust the and becomes Rebel. Another common Verhn term is ri9o«, which means
Despite the proliferation of Argot, language purists have not given up. ”’
way they speak to reflect the way they write—or should write.
‘” We found the French remarkably we[coming when it came to hous- the idea of
FflTälMS SEfOn in France. In 1997, after the Socialist
ing us, feeding us, helping us out, and becoming our friends, but intoler- Party wou the legislative elections, a group of high-profile female ministers demanded they be called mndnme
LX
ruimste—a very bord break in tradi- tion. Unlike 1Q1i£h End German, there is no neutral gender in French, and titles were customarily masculine. Traditionally, h
ministre
is the ming ister’s wife. And to mni Ptse is the wife of the mayor,
le
mnire. A female mayor has always been modnmr h
nie
The battle over these titles was a showdown between France’s purists
ar+dnon-purists. The purists argued that amasculinetirle
reÏers
totheinsri-
ant when it came to language. As French-speaking
MoreianeTs
with 8, “exotic” @uebec accents, we got to observe their fastidiousness close up.
Sometimes they mocked our @uebec accents. Sometimes they made double-edged compliments—tellin• us our accents were
mi
gn
on
(cute). Sometimes they even tried to imitate us. In
television
interviews for a spe
, cial on Quebec singer Céline Dion, her family members were even subti- tled (French Canadian TV never subtitles Parisians, even when they are
; incomprehensible). tLttiOn. Being summoned by mode ic
)uge means you’re being summoned
Even so, it wou1dn’t be fair to categorize this behavior as arrogant. We by justice (the institurion) . A
summons by moderne $ means you’re !-
everitually understood that, in France, correcting a person in mid-sen-
being invited (by the person). Naturally, the Acodémie Fron9nise bOught this
renee in not considered impolite, as it is in the Anglo-American world. ärgument and opposed
Ohanging the gender of titles. The government
Jean-Benoit was often corrected for not making the liaison between words. appointed a committee to decide, but most people just adopted the change
In Quebec French, the silent consonant at the end of words is not always pronounced before a word that starrs with a vowel. The French are
i6 8 six.ty milliori frenchmen can’t be wrorig
strong language i69 absolutely manic about liaisons, which can be very elaborate. Vons essnyey d’éaier on éAtique tion é9ois (you try to stretch too tight an elastic) becomes Vons y’essnyez d’étirer tin n’élnstique
trop p’épais.
Making every available liaison is a mark of good education in France. Quebeckers can take or leave the liaison, but generally consider it precious sounding.
Julie found herself in an interesting situation. She speaks Quebec French with an English accent, yet the French tended to hear only her Q_uebec accent. Quebeckers had very little contact with the French for nearly two centuries, from 1763 to about 1940, so the languages, under- standably, are quite different. Because Quebec is in direct contact with a predominantly English continent, Anglicisms crept into Quebec French in a different way. Julie discovered this firsthand when she tried to buy a both tle of iced tea at our local bakery on Avenue St-Ouen. Iced tea has been around for a long time in Quebec, long enough for them to just translate it into Aé gbcé. But when Julie asked the French baker for a th gAé, the woman almost dropped her baguettes.
“You mean an
eese tee,”
she said, twisting the English words “iced tea” into something that sounded like certified French.
Julie was in the odd situation of having a Parisian instruct her on how to mispronounce words ir+ her owr language. Eventually she got used to that (and she got into the habit of explaining that English was her first lan- guage). The French have an irrepressible habit of correcting language use, and they do so indiscriminately. France has dictated the standard of box usoge for so long that nobody really questions it. The standard French die tionaries used in Quebec, for instance, are French. Examples for word use refer exclusively to foreach reality, as seen from Paris. So it’s no surprise that Parisian French consider their language to be the standard.
In France there is also a sort of residual belief in the intrinsic genius or superiority of the French language. These days, that prejudice is clearly being fueled by France’s rivalry with Anglo-American culture. Many peo- ple we met in France, even highly educated ones, spoke to us matter-of- factly about how the French language was infinitely “richer” than English, with a “wider vocabulary.” English has approximately five times more words than French, so the argument about richness is definitely open to
debate. But the French believe their own story (partly because they do we
their language more richly).
Again, the roots of the belief go back centuries. One of the creators of
the doctrine of hon usnge, Dominique Bouhours ( 1628—1702), a grammars ian, wrote that the French language “may be the only one that follows exactly the natural order and that expresses thoughts as they rise to the
mind.” The idea that the French language was innately superior had tri-
umphed by the eighreenth century, when author Antoine de Rivarol
(1753—1801) wrote his Discount str I’ Unieersolité de In Lnngue Frnn(oise. He claimed, “Of all languages, the French language is the only one that has an element of probity attached to its genius. Defined, social, and reasonable, it is not only the language of the French, but the language of humanity.”
By the nineteenth century, most who learned French disagreed with this kind of chauvinism, but the idea of its superiority still has sway in
modem France. What’s clearly not debatable is that the French love and value their language and use it with great care. Many people in France sim- ply mistake good language use for an intrinsic QUality of the language itself. You might say the French lack perspective. But all cultures are self-
’ centered. Now that English is the dominant global language (replacing French), it is common to hear or read nonsense like Rivarol’s about the
genius of the English language.
Interestingly, the British abandoned the idea of creating a French-style English academy after a heated debate over the issue in the eighteenth century. But even if the British had created an academy, their successful
colonial policy meant that they would have lost control of it early. Only 10
percent of those who speak English as their mother tongue now live in Britain. English, of course, has its purists too, but there has never been a single authority to enforce good language use. Because so many people speak English in so many different wa ‘s, getting the message through” is
the spirit that dominates the use of English today. COFitrary to what many
French believe, English is not a simple language. As a French ocodémicien once put it, English is a language that is relatively easy to speak poorly. The real difference is that, unlike the French, English speakers tolerate poor use
of their language. ‘ 7 °* ty m’llio ri fre nchmen can’ t be wro rig
The French have a complex relationship with English. In pre- revolurionar y France, there was actually a wave of Anglomania. During the French Revolutior many political terms were picked up from English, including
tonne rnement
and réeoIuriOn—a term that applied only to astronomy prior to the English Revolution of 1688. Yet in the same period there was alSO a Shift against foreign influences in the French language. peari cultures were going rhrough about the same process at the
time. The British and the Germans were modifying spellings of foreign
words to make them look native. In France, the Abbé Grégoire preached against the use of foreign words and dialects, which was ironic since, by chanting the merids of the Revolution, he was using an Anglicism.
The idea of protecting the language against Anglicisms actually started
in Quebec. In a population of seven million now, six million can be con- sidered native speakers of French. This is a very small French pool in a sea of three hundred million English speakers—no other linguistic group has a similar situation except, maybe, Baltic-language speakers with respect to Russian, or Hebrew speakers with respect to Arabic. Starting in the 1960s, Quebec leaders became conscious of the necessity of prorecting the French language, and they implemented various policies, inc1udin,• a policy of offi- cial bilindualism in Cafaada. The (juebec government also created a set of language laws that carefully circumscribed the use of the English language on signs, enrollment in English schOOls, and in public communications. The French followed the trend ten or fifteen years later.
Until the 1970s, the French were very
laisse z-faiie
with respect to the
English language. Oddly, one of the first high-profile initiatives to protect French came from IBM France in 1954. At the time, IBM was try irig to pop- ularize the use of computer mainframes. Most cultures adopted a version of the English term in their own language—like
compumdoi
in Spanish or
com-
9xter in German. In French, the first two syllables of the word computer resemble the worst insults imaginable—con and pixie (meaning cur+t and whore ). SO IBM France created its own trademark term,
ordmateur,
which the French government officially adopted ten years later.
The idea of language cOntFOl OOZed in the French political class in the
1970s, mostly as a result of foreign influence from Quebec and French
strorig language I} I
speaking countries in Africa. In 1975, the National Assembly passed a law making it mandatory to use French in publicity, though the measure didn’t prove very effective in the long-term. In 1992, the Constitution was mod- ified to state that “the language of the Republic is French.” In 1994, a new law modified the publicity law of 1975 and added fines of up to four thou- sand dollars for companies that didn’t use French. More importantly, the new law forbade publicly traded companies and individuals in the service of the State from using any language but French in their communications. Language rules have always been controversial in France. In the 1990s,
the government wanted to forbid the use of English terms outright. The
Consett
Cotistitationel (Constitutional Court) ruled against such a prohibi tion, no doubt taking into consideration the realities of daily life in France, where English words abound. Quebeckers, who are very purist about Anglicisms at the official level, constantly reproach the French for using English terms. In reality, each culture just uses different Anglicisms. As one common joke puts it: Quebeckers pnrquent the car in the
smtionnemeni
(parking) while the French stotionnent in the parking.
•. . Legal measures will not stop the French from using English terms. At ‘ best, they will slow the process down. One need only walk down a street in ‘ Paris or any provincial French city to notice the proliferation of English words and expressions. As Quebeckers, we were surprised to see that
French people use English expressions to project a kind of corhet or sophis- tication, much like English speakers use French expressions to project
j sophistication when they are talking about cuisine, fashion, or even inter- national affairs. The French go to do ie Shopping with Ie cnddie. After work,
{‘ they do L wnlkin•. Stylish young French businessmen and women speckle
;. their vocabulary with English business terms. The influence of English is evident everywhere American culture is imported. The Belgian fast-food chain Quick sells Yes chichn sings. McDonald’s meal deals are called Best o} meals.
‘ The borrowing of English terms is the source of ceaseless arguments between France’s language purists (who reject them) and
linguists
(who actually welcome them). Linguists argue that French borrows from all 1} H 6DU miÎÏÏOn frenchmeri cas’t be wrong
languages, so why should there be a stigma attached to Ie scanner or Ie shoppin„ but none on h sQogheiti or Beer? Half of the basic vocabulary in English comes originally from old French, not including the more recent adoptiOn of cooking and military voCabulary. At the moment, English dominates the vocabulary of new technology, but that does not pose a rhreat to the existence of the French language. As the history of the French language shows, ordinary use and fashion eventually prevail over purism, but purists never go down without a fight. (There’s more about anti-Americanization in chapter 20.)
Given the French penchant for controlling vocabulary and language usage, it £hould not come as a surprise that they refuse to hand their cul- ture over to “market forces. Culture in France han always been closely associated with the country’s national and internatiOnal ambitions. rarlJOiS I (1515—47) made French mandatory in dispensing justice, but a1so created the
ColÂge de Rience,
the Royal Library, and a policy of pub- lie works, and hired writers as diplomats and high civil servants in his court. Art, for him, was rtot simply a matter of decoration, but a means of aKirming French power. At the same time that he created the French Academy, Cardinal Richelieu founded an institute for the promotion and development of science and the arts, of which the French Academy is only one part. Louis XIV oversaw and encouraged an impressive quantity of
àrLlS tiC FOduction, mostly in architecdure, with the single goal of affirming
strong language 123
‘ . Francois Mitterrand appointed a prodigal Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, who embarked on a vast program of subsidies to all (some now say, any) avant-garde artists in France. Artists, like intellectuals, are very influential
‘ , in left-wing circles in France. Mitterrand needed to unify the Left to stay in power, and he reasoned that keeping artists happy was a good means to this. It didn’t hurt. Mitterrand won two consecutive seven-year mandates. (The best source on the issue is Le Go«eernement de In Culture by Maryvone de Saint Pulgenr.)
Now, radio and cinema are the main transmission belts of popular cul- ture and language. So the French government conducts an open campaign to defend these industries against the incursion of English. The French government does everything in its power to promote the French film industry, to the envy of many of France’s neighbors. The French film indus- try is notoriously well funded. The proceeds from an 11 percent tax on movie tickets go directly toward funding national film production. The government pays French producers advances on box office earnings so they don’t have to wait for profits before making their next movie. Hollywood considers these perks unfair, yet French cinema is one of the few national
film industries that has survived the onslaught of American cinema.
Americans are quick to accuse the French of subsidizing movies they
don’t watch themselves. In bad years, less than 50 percent of French moviegoers watch French films; ?001 was a vintage year with 50 percent. But compared to other countries’ performances, this isn’t bad. In 2000, US OWn @Ondeur. He also subsidized men of science, even
outside où
Britain produced 115 films, Italy 87, and Germany 61, while France France, the most famous being the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelrri Leibniz ( 1646—17 16), who invented calculus.
In the second half of the twentieth century, while France was aggres- sively affirming its place in international institutions, the State created scores of organisations to promote the international presence of the French language. In 1962, President Charles de Gaulle (1944-46, 195 9) set Out tO increase France’s
grandeur
by giving André Malraux (1901-69) the mandate to create a Ministry of Culture. Malraux had a lofty objective. he proclaimed France’s mission “tO £0 OSI to humanité the mearis and the me thod of an intellectual and spiritual action.” In 1981, socialist president
churned out 163. Most of the measures France uses to encourage cinema started in the 1960s and even the fifties. French cinema was in complete disarray at the time and government funding spawned an entire generation
or
influential filmmakers. As a matter of cultural choice, the French put much more energy into cinema than television. They produce six hundred hours of original television material per year—half of Britain’s thirteen hundred hours, and one-third of Germany’s two thousand hours. French TV chains are big investors in cinema. They play a lot of films, and since French TV doesn’t show many commercials, watching films on TV is actu- ally pleasant.
ryd sity mlllion frenchmen can’ t be to rug ‘
Measures in the field of music are much more recent. In the early t99Os, the music on French radio stations was mostly American. One of France’s senators, Michel Pelchat, decided to do something about it—a logical reflex because French senators can introduce bills unlike their Canadian peers. Pelchat looked across the Atlantic and saw Canada’s radio regulation system, which specifies how much air time each radio station must reserve for national production. Most English Canadian radio sta- tions must devote 40 to 60 percent of the their airtime to Canadian artists. And most French Canadian radio stations must play a similar percentage of French language music, or music in a language other than English.
Pelchat launched a campaign to get similar regulations applied to French radio- Many French opposed the idea, arguing that they should be allowed to listen to whatever they wanted. That was no coincidence— French music was regarded as corny. But Pelchat’s camp won by arguing that the only way to protect French culture was to guarantee radio time for French artists. Interestingly, this measure had the support of many French executives at big labels like Warner and Sony, who souq•ht a bigger outlet for their owr domestic production. The regulations actually apply to lan- guage, not nationality, so one interesting result has been a boost to a new generation of Quebec musicians who were largely unknown in France until then. Many Quebec artists have become celebrities in France as a result. Following the new regulations, French rap also took oft. Ftench rappers are quickly entering the musical mainstream, but they are still very influential in defining France’s new counterculture. The stars are mostly Beurs fluent in Verlnn.
While we lived there, not a week went by in France without talk of
l’excep hon cultuielk
(the cu[tural exception). Since its creation, at the beginning of the 1990s,
1’excepñon
cultured has become the rallying cry of all of those who oppose the idea that culture should be left to markets alone. The idea first surfaced during the 1993 round of discussions before the signature of the GATT, where issues of intellectual property and subsi- dies to arts and cultures were or the table for the first time. At the time, the U.S. film industry was calling for the elimination of French film subsi- dies. French filmmakers and intellectuals rallied together and put forward
strorig language I} 5
the concept
of l’exception culturelk.
They argued that the arts could not be treated like mere commodities to be traded freely, since they wete the vehi- cle of culture. France wanted protective measures for the am to be per-
‘ mitted and even encouraged international trade agreements in the name of fostering national identities. Canada also supports the idea, although
Canadians tend to be less confrontational than the French in promoting it. the French managed ro win over other European countries, then other GATT member countries, with the idea
or l’exception
culturelle. The World Trade Organization now accepts the notion that culture has to be pro- tected and subsidized.
In the meantime, the term
exception
cuiturelle has become a catch
phrase the French use to justify any form of resistance to Americanization. French trade negotiators and government officials have become defensive about the protectionist overtones the term has internationally, so they have started to use the expression “cultural diversity” instead. It is, of course, ironic that a nation so bent on leveling cultural differences now preaches the virtues o( distinctiveness and diversity. On the other hand, France’s language and cultural policies have always been determined by the interest of the State. In a way, the Fre
Attachments:
6025317_1_Chap.-12–Strong-Language-.PDF

How can you distinguish yourself from other candidates in an interview and still keep your responses short and to the point? Explain your answer in a well-written paragraph. Provide specific examples where possible. Be sure to review for grammar, spelling and proper language mechanics before submitting.