Linguistics and the Study of Comics

6
Plurilingualism in Francophone
Comics
6.1 Introduction: the challenge
While interest in comics has now become more prevalent in the
academy, they are particularly appreciated in French-speaking locales,
like France, Belgium or Quebec, where they are named bandes dessinées
or BDs. Designated in these countries as the Ninth Art, the BD has a
status far surpassing that of equivalent English-language comic strips
(Forsdick 2005). In some cases, they are the object of theoretical discussions, such as when the stories of Bécassine, the Breton female peasant
working in the city, are deconstructed in the light of postcolonial
approaches. BD urban landscapes are also often viewed as influenced
by Le Corbusier’s architecture, while many forms of language can be
understood as linguistic contributions dating from the student revolutions of the 1960s. References are discernible in BD to ongoing debates
about feminism and other social issues. Drawing on psychoanalytic
and Marxist interpretations, Ann Miller elaborates on different possible levels of BD reading (Miller 2007). Moreover, the importance of
comics in present-day literature is reflected in national and international events such as the annual International Festival of Comics in
Angoulême, first held in 1974.
Some BD figures have become popular cultural symbols. Lucky Luke,
the Schtroumpfs, Astérix and, of course, Tintin have become markers
of the juvenile culture. As Joel E. Vessels (2010) reminds us, the status
of BD is also a topic of debate: for years the dominant opinion in the
academy was that BD foments rebellion, is a medium suitable only for
semiliterates, and constitutes an impediment to education. It is only in
recent decades that it has become widely accepted as a medium pertaining to the mainstream culture (see also McKinney 2008).
142
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Miriam Ben-Rafael and Eliezer Ben-Rafael
BD is now also well established as a legitimate component of youth
culture and of what some French linguists call parler jeune (Bulot 2007).
Indeed, BDs belong to those language practices which identify social
categories that include individuals from different milieux and generations, but still carry common identity markers. This parler jeune points
to models of language interactions that convey cultural orientations as
well as occasionally conflicting attitudes towards social realities.
In spite of its importance for the area of written literature, the linguistic
aspect of BDs has thus far been relatively neglected. Among others, one
may cite Forsdick’s (2005) work about different styles: realistic, comic, and
schematic. Others focus on BD’s vocabulary as reflecting the language of
present-day youth (Bulot 2007). However, most works on comics address
narratives and aesthetics, while the question of the languages and variety
of registers appearing in BDs has yet to be explored. In particular, studies
of the uses and roles of the different languages that meet in BDs are
lacking. In francophone countries, and especially in France, the absence
of studies focusing on language issues is overshadowed by the polemics
over the role of English. Some commentators go as far as denouncing the
presence of English as a genuine threat to the status of French in BDs
(Etiemble 1964; Lederer 1988; Voirol 1980).
Against this backdrop, this chapter ameliorates the shortfall of
research on plurilingualism in French BDs by discussing the forms
and models that plurilingualism illustrates. English indeed plays a key
role in BDs, but we would like to define here the importance of other
languages which are also present. In essence, this analysis challenges
the assumption that equates BD plurilingualism with the weakening,
even the loss, of French.
A previous study (M. Ben-Rafael 2008b) which focused solely on
English in BDs serves as our starting point. In that study, the special
status of English was related to the contemporary development
of globalization (Appadurai 2002) with its unprecedented flows of
resources, people, and symbols across the world. Innovations, political
news, and trends reach all corners of the globe, and English has become
the lingua franca of our epoch (E. Ben-Rafael et al. 2006). Moreover,
through its contact with almost every language of the world, English
influences their registers in many ways. It seems that no area – sports,
business, entertainment, technology or economics – is free of English
borrowings.
The impact of English, however, does not yet imply that people are
necessarily disengaging from their own linguistic and cultural heritage.
On this point, the literature discusses tendencies for ‘hybridization,’
10.1057/9781137004109preview - Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Edited by Frank Bramlett
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Plurilingualism in Francophone Comics 143
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