«We need to make rectified spelling the benchmark for the long term».»

Le Regard Libre N° 78 - Antoine Bernhard

Jean-Pierre Siggen is a member of the Fribourg government and head of the Department of Education, Culture and Sport, and is currently President of the «Conférence intercantonale de l'instruction publique» (CIIP). In this capacity, he is the main spokesperson for the spelling rectifications that will be applied to French teaching resources from 2023 in French-speaking Switzerland. This reform is far from unanimous; Jean-Pierre Siggen defends it vigorously.

Le Regard Libre: Why is this spelling reform necessary today?

Jean-Pierre Siggen: This isn’t about today, but rather a reform that dates back to the 1990s. In fact, it’s not a reform, but a set of corrections aimed at improving consistency in French language instruction—corrections that the CIIP did not develop. We’re simply facing a practical problem: the teaching materials need to be rewritten for French-speaking Switzerland. And the question has arisen as to whether or not to take the revised spelling rules into account when drafting these teaching materials, a process that is set to begin today.

These corrections break with a tradition in the French-speaking world that holds the Académie française to be the authoritative body for language changes. The corrections in question come from the Higher Council for the French Language, not from the Académie Française. Furthermore, in 2016, the Académie Française reiterated its opposition to any authoritarian changes to the language imposed by politicians. On what grounds does the CIIP have the authority to implement these changes?

The Académie française has responded to directives from the French government that sought to impose the revised spelling—to the best of my knowledge, including within the civil service. First, it’s important to note that the Académie française had approved these changes; the Académie française regularly revises its dictionary and incorporates corrections and new words in each edition. To my knowledge, the Académie française has already incorporated some of the spelling corrections from the 1990s into its dictionary. This French context is not at all comparable to ours. Here, there has been no decision affecting everyday life in general. The CIIP has authority delegated by the cantons, and we are only discussing educational materials whose publication cannot be undertaken by private institutions, as French-speaking Switzerland is too small. Given developments in other countries, we felt it was appropriate to propose the revised spelling in teaching materials, while recognizing that the traditional spelling remains perfectly acceptable. We have no prescriptive stance on spelling in this regard.

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However, the revised spelling has not yet become widely accepted in common usage. Isn’t it purely arbitrary to impose it as the new standard?

No. It is true that we have decided to make the revised spelling the standard. However, it has been in use since the beginning. In the early 2000s, the CIIP reiterated the principle that one can choose between either spelling system, which remains the case today, except for teachers, who will be required to teach the revised spelling. It’s also important to note that we’re using teaching materials from other countries that have also made this transition. That said, these changes take time to be fully understood. We will develop new teaching materials, a process that will take several years. It will take several more years to introduce them into classrooms from first through eleventh grade, and they will be used for one or two decades. Meanwhile, in other French-speaking countries, these spelling reforms continue to spread at varying speeds and with varying degrees of opposition, but the train is already in motion, and we’re not going to turn back to the station to do something else. It is absolutely essential to establish the proposal to make the revised spelling the standard in the long term.

Beyond pragmatism, doesn't this reform have an ideological dimension?

There’s no ideology behind it, unless you make one up. It’s simply an effort to be consistent. If «boursoufler» has only one «f» and “souffler” has two, and if we propose adding a second “f” to “boursoufler,” I don’t see any ideology in that. The Academy itself regularly makes adjustments to spelling. Don’t forget, either, that a significant portion of the roughly 2,000 words affected are foreign words that have been Frenchified. This is a much-needed strengthening of the language—certainly not an ideological one.

What about this aspect of promoting gender-neutral language in «Le petit livre d’OR,» the explanatory booklet on spelling reforms for which you wrote the preface?

You’re right to point that out, because there are two key elements: on the one hand, corrected spelling, and on the other, inclusive writing. We have decided not to introduce inclusive writing into teaching materials, because that would run counter to the principles of revised spelling. If you add mid-word dots or double letters at the end of words, reading becomes very complicated, if not impossible. As for today’s sensitivity, which calls for us to be mindful—among other things—of balancing female and male examples in books, we meant to say that we can naturally ensure that genders are alternated. The CIIP wishes to reiterate that we can certainly take current sensitivities into account using existing methods, without distorting the language. Here, I share your concern: there is certainly an ideological element to wanting to impose mid-dots everywhere under the pretext of gender.

In «the little OR book,» one finds phrases such as «respecting diversity and ensuring the visibility of genders and cultures» and «taking care to use non-discriminatory language.» These phrases are virtually identical to those used by certain activists.

What we’re saying is that we can do a better job of incorporating gender into our teaching materials. We’re certainly not going to go back to using teaching materials that only include male names. All job titles have been feminized; we can take that into account. The idea is definitely not to say, «There are fifteen male examples and fourteen female examples—that’s not normal!» We’re not at the point of keeping a strict tally on this, but we can simply take current sensitivities regarding gender representation into account—without turning it into a science or a battle, and above all without altering language in a way that distorts it, as certain ideologues would like.

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