Francophonie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map showing the worldwide distribution of the French language
Map of all full members, associated states and observers of the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)
The five colors in the flag of the OIF symbolize the five continents.
Organization chart of the Francophonie. After the Ministerial Conference (CMF) in Antananarivo in 2005, the OIF is the main actor in the Francophonie.

The term Francophonie (often also Francophonie ) is to be understood on two levels of meaning: On the one hand, Francophonie refers to the entirety of the French-speaking (Francophone) territories, i.e. the French- speaking area . This language area includes at least those territories in which French is the official language and territories in which French is the mother tongue of the majority of the population.

On the other hand, the Organization internationale de la Francophonie (OIF; in German roughly 'Internationale Organization der Francophonie') is often referred to as the Francophonie . The French are differentiated by the way they are written. The language area is referred to as la francophonie , the organization as la Francophonie .

In addition to France , the OIF also includes numerous former French colonies , which today still maintain more or less cultural, linguistic and at least political contact with the former colonial power and / or in which France acts as a protective and regulatory power in the event of a crisis . The OIF is therefore also seen as the French equivalent of the British Commonwealth . This organization shows its geopolitical character at the latest with the admission of states like Moldova and Bulgaria , which have no direct historical or linguistic-cultural connection to France .

In 2018, around 300 million French speakers (including non-native speakers) lived in the total of 61 OIF member territories and the 26 territories with OIF observer status.

development

The term Francophonie was used for the first time in 1880 by the geographer Onésime Reclus (1837-1916).

The Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) achieved an international breakthrough under the chairmanship of the former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali from 1997 to 2002.

The Chirac / de Villepin government had written the fight against the supremacy of English on its flag. The then Minister of Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, pushed for two things: a French-language worldwide news channel (based on the CNN model ) and a special search engine (general and for digitizing books). While the first project initially appeared to be a failure, France 24 , which can be received in French, Arabic and English, has since gone on air. But also for his second project, Minister of Culture de Vabres won (reluctant) support from other Europeans. However, there is a lack of money.

In 2013, the Minister of Culture, Geneviève Fioraso, allowed English to be taught in some courses at state universities after private (business) universities and the Grandes Écoles had been using a special permit for years. As always on such occasions, the decree led to a high-pitched debate about the importance of Francophonie today. Members of the Académie française spoke of the “unprecedented impoverishment and marginalization” of French, other professors invoked the “end of French universal culture” and France would become a “province under linguistic tutelage ”. Another voice warned: “Fioraso wants to force teaching in the language of Wall Street .” National Assembly MP Pouria Amirshahi, representative of the French living outside France in North and West Africa, warned that it was France's mission, “the to defend the French language all over the world ”. Others said the plan violated the Toubon Act to protect the Francophonie of 1994. However, Fioraso remained successful.

On the occasion of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2017, 52 authors emphasized that the French language belongs to everyone around the world, not just the French. They took up a similar appeal from 2007:

“Everything that has been written since the beginning of time belongs to all of us,” repeated theater director Antoine Vitez emphatically. And we feel compelled to say today that the French language belongs to everyone and that it exists thanks to borrowings and translations, just like all the other languages ​​that it has encountered and that have enriched it. We willingly receive and welcome in our words, in our imperfect and imperfect languages, everything that others have said and written, as well as everything that is written today and what is still to be written. And in this way, as Paul Ricœur suggests to us , this “linguistic hospitality, in which the pleasure of living in the other's language is rewarded by the pleasure of being with oneself, in one's own welcome home, the word of the stranger to receive "to honor."

- 52 French language authors, Frankfurt 2017 :

Members of the OIF

The following lists the member countries of the Organization internationale de la Francophonie by continent and membership status (as of 2018).

Europe

Full members and associated members (A)
Observing function

North and South America

Full members
Observing function

Note: French Guiana does not have its own seat in the OIF

Africa

Full members and associated members (A)
Observing function

Asia

Full members and associated members (A)
Observing function

Oceania

Full members and associated members (A)

Membership requested and withdrawn

In 2016, Saudi Arabia applied for membership. However, shortly before the decision at the Yerevan summit in 2018, the Saudis withdrew the application.

To spread the French language

Some data on the use of the French language:

  • Over 900,000 language teachers teach French worldwide.
  • French is
    • Official language or one of several official languages ​​in 32 countries.
    • the second most common mother tongue of EU citizens (after German).
    • second most used language (19%) in EU authorities (after English with 41%)
    • the third most popular internet language within the EU (after English and German).

French is the official language of the following international organizations:

Represent the 57 OIF states
  • 8.1% of the world population
  • 29% of the UN member states
  • 4.2% of global gross national income (2010)

literature

  • Jürgen Erfurt : Francophonie: Language - Discourse - Politics . Uni-Taschenbücher UTB M, Francke, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-8252-2645-X
  • Georg Glasze: The Discursive Constitution of a World-spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: the Case of Francophonia. In: Geopolitics , Vol. 12, H. 4, 2007, pp. 656-679. PDF (884 kB).
  • Georg Glasze: The discursive constitution of Francophonie as an “international community” and “geocultural space”, in: Paul Reuber, Iris Dzudzek, Anke Strüver (eds.): The politics of spatial representations. Examples from empirical research . Series: Forum Politische Geographie, 6. 2011, pp. 73–108. PDF (1.6 MB).
  • Kian-Harald Karimi: La dernière resource de notre grandeur. The Francophonie between the imperial past and the postcolonial future, in: Susanne Stemmler, Gesine Müller (Ed.): Space - Movement - Passage. Postcolonial Francophone literatures . Series: Edition Lendemains. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 3-8233-6515-0 , pp. 15–31
  • Kian-Harald Karimi: Une francophonie des cultures comme modèle d'un ordre multipolaire et multilingue, in: Ute Fendler, Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink, Christoph Vatter (eds.): Francophonie et globalization culturelle. Politique, Médias, Littératures. Series: Studies on Francophone Literatures Outside Europe, 30. IKO-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 3-88939-888-X , pp. 17–38
  • Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink u. a. Ed .: Écrire en langue étrangère. Interférences de langues et de cultures dans le monde francophone. Series: Les cahiers du center de recherche en littérature québécoise, no 28. Éd. Nota bene & IKO-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 2-89518-103-9 (anthology with approx. 20 authors, also online)
  • Ursula Reutner (ed.): Manuel des francophonies . de Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-034670-1

Web links

Commons : Francophonie  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. z. B. in Henry Samuel: Ireland signs up to French version of the Commonwealth in bid to wield more clout after Brexit. telegraph.co.uk (The Telegraph) October 11, 2018
  2. FAZ , May 22, 2013, by Michaela Wiegel
  3. Dossier ( Memento of the original dated November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the 52 authors, their names there as well as the proof of the Ricoeur quotation for translation @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buchmesse.de
  4. List of the 88 États et gouvernements membres de plein droit, membres associés et observateurs de l'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Accompanying document to the 17th meeting of the heads of state and government of the French-speaking countries in Yerevan, 11-12 October 2018 ( PDF 220 kB)
  5. Daniel Steinvorth: Saudi Arabia doesn't want to be Francophone. nzz.de (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), October 13, 2018
  6. French: a language for the (world) economy , accessed on April 21, 2013. Notwithstanding this source, only the OIF member states are taken into account here.
  7. Mark Davis, GDP by language This puts the francophone countries in sixth place, after the English (28.2%), Chinese (22.8%), Japanese (5.6%), Spanish (5, 2%) and German-speaking (4.9%) countries.
  8. personalized access, therefore only to be found via search engines. Free of charge, no registration