Wednesday 18 December 2013

The Future Impact of Verlan


In his article entitled Les fractures linguistiques, Jean-Louis Clavet affirms his belief that verlan continues to play a role in stigmatising immigrants within the banlieues. He also states, rather down-heartedly, that the situation of a fractured society embodied by a fractured language will only worsen as young banlieue members grow older and their children learn to speak in the same divisive manner as their parents, ensuring the continuation of their separation from wider society. This use of argot and verlan will perpetuate and instil a separation of banlieues, causing future generations to cling onto this use of language as a part of their identity rather than to reject it as an obsolete manner of communication which has a negative impact upon their integration with other sectors of the social order. Calvet notes that the endemic unemployment and social unrest of the banlieues goes hand-in-hand with the cultural separation, in which the use of argot and verlan plays a considerable role, of these districts from others.

Hence, the development of argot and in particular of verlan has served for nothing more than to pollute the magical French language of Molière; to present a language of deceit for criminals and miscreants and to engrain social divide between the banlieues sensibles and the rest of French society. Its cultural impact has only presented a manner in which to instil division and to create a multicultural society which is determined to remain separated by its multiethnic origins. This rather bizarre form of anagram has evolved into something far more damaging than one could have imagined, offering the disguise of vulgarities from those about whom they are spoken and giving young people in the toughest schools and areas an increased vocabulary to offend and abuse. But, is there not something beautiful about its diversity? Is not the brilliance of language in its evolution? Are not rappers urban poets whose work Molière would fully appreciate?

No comments:

Post a Comment