The peaceful discussion as a relationship to the french language on the creating language website

Abstract

This article wants to participate in the studies on the relationship of the speakers to their own language - in this case, the French language. While the studies on the language show a “passionate” attachment that will take several forms, such as purist relationship (speaking without making mistakes), emotional relationship (the myths of beauty, order and clarity), ideological relationship (defending one’s own language), there are also “peaceful” places where the language is not disputed but discussed. We chose to work on the language creating website WikiLf - it is in creating a new word that we are most exposed to the way we see / think our language. Our analysis focuses on the use of meta-language which lets some knowledge of the language to emerge, which is capable to translate the relationship to one’s own language in a different way. We have demonstrated that there is a rather spontaneous relationship of Francophone speakers that seems stripped of all passion, distant from normative postures. The wikistes (the WikiLf users) give the example of a community that peacefully opens a discussion on the French language, which represents firstly an object of reflection, but also a research choice which allows us to position us to reflect on (and to consider) a more flexible relationship of the users of French language.