French Language Legislation in the Digital Age: The Use of Borrowed English Telecommunication Terms and Their Official French Replacements on Twitter and in the American Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

How effective is language legislation? In the age of digital communication and increased globalization, is it possible to create vocabulary and enforce its use? In an effort to continue to develop and modernize the French language to compete with the influx of English technology terms, the French government creates replacement terms for borrowed relevant technological English vocabulary. To determine the use and result of these French replacement terms in real-time communication, the micro-blogging social media website, Twitter, was used as a means of gathering linguistic data from Twitter users within 15 miles of Paris, France. Then, three leading introductory French textbooks are examined to reveal whether American students of French are being taught the French government\u27s lexical choices or their borrowed English equivalent