ABSTRACT
Historically, the French language has been one of the main forces shaping the French sense of nationhood; over the years, national pride has constantly been linked to pride in the language. In the nineteenth century, French spread beyond Europe, mainly into Africa, as a result of colonization; within Europe it became not only a literary language but a scientific one, the language of such major figures as Pasteur, Poincare and the Curies. The threat posed by English is seen not only as a threat to the dominance of French, but also to its integrity and even to its survival. Since the 1950s, there has been a chorus of protest against the invasion or contamination of French by borrowings from English. Napoleon is an appropriate symbol of the French language for two reasons: at home he was associated with a strong centralizing tendency and he used French superiority to carry French influence abroad.
