L’expansion de l’anglais : une menace pour la francophonie universitaire?

Abstract

There is a belief that Francophone institutions and organisations are powerless to counter the attraction of academics towards the English language. According to many Francophone decisionmakers, the expansion of the English language and its current supremacy in academia are largely driven by globalisation. This article questions this belief. In fact, drawing from two multilingual contexts, I will show that the demand for English stems from internal sociolinguistic dynamics. To support my stance, I will analyse some of the sociolinguistic dynamics in South Africa and Mauritius. More importantly, I will show that scholars should not conflate and confuse the expansion of the English language in science with the challenges of French-speaking academics. If, for example, Francophone institutions and organisations want to address the specific problem of the attraction of French-speaking academics for English academic journals, a safer approach would be to analyse how the English-speaking academic world is structured, what it offers and that Francophone academia does not offer. Pending such a comparative study, this article proposes that a number of initiatives be implemented in order to prevent the situation from becoming more difficult to manage in the future.