The Internet and the French Language. Occasional Paper.

This paper examines the influence of the Internet on the French language from a predominantly sociolinguistic perspective, noting the main areas of debate between francophone businesses, governments, and "Institutions de la Francophonie," while considering theories of language in contact and language policy. It analyzes a number of arbitrarily-selected, current, France-based, francophone Web sites in order to ascertain the level of influence of Internet-specific, English technical terminology on the French language (neologisms and Anglicisms, types of Anglicism, semantic Anglicisms, lexical Anglicisms, and graphical Anglicisms). The paper identifies and isolates linguistic tendencies that may provide clues about the reasons for this influence, and it verifies the existence of concrete evidence to justify French Minister for Justice Jacques Toubon's 1997 statement, "The dominant usage of English on the Internet is a new form of colonization. If we do nothing, it will be too late [...] we will be colonized." Three appendixes present a database of Anglicisms, a database of acronyms, and a list of French sample Web sites. (Contains references including books, Web sites, and dictionaries). (SM)