Talk:Language police

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This article was nominated for deletion on 2007-11-07. The result of the discussion was Speedy Keep.

[edit] Trash

This article is trash. Would it be acceptable to have an article named Bastards containing links to people who were referred to as "bastards" by whoever? The only legitimate redirect here is the one for the book The Language Police by Diane Ravitch.

There is already an article aptly named List of language regulators for institutions regulating languages in countries of the world (eg. Office québécois de la langue française, Académie française, Academy of the Hebrew Language, Academy of the Arabic Language, Central Hindi Directorate etc.) The term "Language police" is defamatory for any of these institutions : none of them use brute force to bully people into speaking or not speaking a language. That's ridiculous. -- Mathieugp 15:24, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

It is a common English expression in general use, and it is not defamatory. It is well understood to be figurative usage of the word "police"; or more equivalent to the usage of some of the verb forms of police, as when somebody polices an article on Wikipedia by keeping track of it on his or her watchlist. Gene Nygaard 15:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, in the case of Quebec for sure and likely other places as well, they actually do have officers from that office who patrol the streets and issue citations for violations of the law on signs and the like. Clearly "police" even in the officers of the law sense. What's I'd say is a whole lot closer to being defamatory is the notion that to be called police you should be engaging in the "use of brute force to bully people." Gene Nygaard 16:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

1) I am well aware of the figurative usage of the word "police" in English. The book by Diane Ravitch uses the expression "language police" in a very clear and justifiable sense, that is, to refer to "pressure groups restricting what students learn", which has nothing to do with what Language regulating bodies do (that is regulate grammar, syntax and vocabulary.)

2) The Office québécois de la langue française is mandated to received complaints from Quebecers when they buy a product and discover at home that it doesn't include a French manual of instructions, or when they try to speak their language in a store to obtain service but the person can only speak English (and/or some other language) to them. Some Quebecers know their rights. They know they have the right to be served in French in Quebec, a right they have nowhere else in Canada. Complaints are compiled, cases are followed and sometimes investigated. In the overwhelming majority of the cases, and that is a verifiable fact, the issue is closed because it was just ignorance on the part of the business (law is complicated). For example, a store owner cannot serve his/her clients in French. They are more than happy to receive the help of the government to freely translate menus, brochures etc in the language most universally understood in Quebec. Then they hire a person able to speak French as first, second or third language to do service to customers. Sometimes, people refuse to comply and are fined. They are typically doing it because they were told to do so by Brent Tyler or some other Alliance Quebec lawyer. It didn't happen very often, but evey case got a great deal of media coverage. They even talked about it on American TV, unlike the majority of the other cases where the shop owners ended up increasing their sales by following the universal business rule "speak the language of your clients".

3) You are wrong about "officers of the law sense". "Office" in French is synonymous whith "bureau". In English, you could also say "Board". We are talking about the Quebec Board of the French language here. The institution does not have the power to "patrol" streets (in what? special language policy cars?), the agents that are sent to evaluate compliance to sign/advertizing regulations, the majority of the time after receiving complaints, do not have a badge and do not carry a weapon.

4) It is very clear here that the expression "language policy" made you picture the wrong thing which is the intent of those promoting the expression in the the Anglo-Canadian media. After that, people like me are on the defensive, we look like we are trying to justify and explain something that shouldn't be and no matter what we say we look stupid and the damage is done. The distorted image of a suspicous "language police" is imprinted in the minds of millions of English-speaking people in Canada and elsewhere. That is called propaganda and defamation. -- Mathieugp 16:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

No. It's called free speech, a legitimate expression of disapproval of government action being taken that often has a negative impact on people. Gene Nygaard 17:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Media that pretend to inform and give an educated opinion on some issue are expected to seek facts, respect their existence, not make abstraction of it and write fiction. I think you are missing the important point here that people are complaining about the bashing on Quebec in the Anglophone press of Canada because the recurrent accusations are 1) NOT FOUNDED ON FACTS and 2) follow patterns typical of HATE LITERATURE where an ENTIRE community is depicted as being more A, B, C and D because of its linguistic/ethnic/religious etc difference. In other words, it is HATEFUL RACISM in disguise.

I should also give you a little pat on the back, however. Thinking that you need a badge and a weapon to be called police is a big step up from thinking that you need to use brute force and bully people. Still not right, of course. And I'd be very surprised they didn't carry a "badge" in the form of some time of official identification to confirm their official function. Gene Nygaard 17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

When you'll be able to refute sound arguments based on facts with other sound arguments based on facts, I'll consider you worthy of my time and energy. Thank you. -- 19:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you need to realize that Diane Ravitch did not invent this term in her 2003 book. I was familiar with it more than thirty years ago, and heard it applied to France long before I heard it applied to Quebec, and it is applied in many other situations as well. Congressman Roth (who doesn't have a article yet, but whose term in office ended before 2000), for example, was emphasizing that what was being proposed in Congress would not create language police in the United States. You could argue with him whether that was true or not, but clearly he expected other members of Congress to understand what he meant by saying that.

Ravitch's use was an extension of the original meaning into the area of review of textbooks for bias, not the other way around. She built on existing terminology. Gene Nygaard 12:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)