Algeria and the French language, an ambiguous relationship

Language is the medium of the experiences, of the intellectual and cultural environment of a social group. A tool for meeting other value systems or social codes, it is also decisive in the emergence of a feeling of collective and individual belonging. For a society, the issue of languages is therefore fundamental and eminently political because language is a vector of individual and collective identity. By virtue of its geographical location and its history, Algeria is the breeding ground for a mixture of different ethnicities, cultures, languages and influences. If this diversity is an asset, it is also a source of individual and collective identity problems deeply rooted in Algerian society. Undermined, both by colonization and by the Arabization policy, Algerian society still maintains a strong ambivalence towards the French language. This work seeks to go back to the origins of this complex linguistic situation, by understanding the links between identity and language, and poses the need for Algeria to recognize all the languages and identities that compose it for a unified society.

Autorentext

Apasionada de los temas culturales internacionales, Claire Polak, actualmente consultora en comunicación cultural y Flora Finlay, directora del proyecto, coescribieron este libro en 2016 después de sus estudios en Ciencias Políticas - Relaciones Internacionales (Cultura y Francofonía) en la Universidad Jean Moulin Lyon III.