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The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

matthewfraser-thismuchiknow.com

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Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#31

Post by cdavid »

kelnos wrote: post #26
cdavid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usage of couriel instead of email is not enforced by the state, but is suggested by the French Academy (which is not a governemental organization). The State can enforce the usage in the documents it produces itself, but this is different. Courriel is not made-up, it was actually coming from French Canadian. While this may be a bit ridiculous (being that I have never heard anyone in France saying courriel), this…

I would also note that in the US, every mention of fuck or other obscene word is beeped when put on air. How is it that different...? It's very different. Bleeping expletives is a result of (idiotic) anti-obscenity laws. Banning talk of Facebook or Twitter is (officially, anyway) about not advertising commercial entities on news outlets, and some misguided notion of "fairness" between various social networking servic…

But the article is about the over-regulation in France - in that aspect, you have the same idea of banning some language. The reason why is different, but the idea of controlling language itself is not specific to France.

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#32

Post by r00fus »

alain94040 wrote: post #28

I'm disappointed by the comments on this thread. HN usually performs better, but somehow the discussion got derailed. Facts: a law has been on the books for more than a decade about forbidding the promotion of brands outside commercials. For instance, you can't mention any specific brand of medication (like Viagra) outside of a news context, you have to discuss the medicine itself. The body in charge of enforcing tha…

Bingo. In the US, we're used to interweaving corporate brands into our collective psyche, and it's ok with us (well, most of us).

In France, it's disallowed on fairly understandable ideals.

Which brings up the counter-question (left as exercise for reader):

Is the US too corporatized?

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#34

Post by gbog »

bonch wrote: post #27
BoppreH wrote: post #18

Though the story is interesting, I'm flagging this article for extreme bias while trying to sound like a news outlet. The author took a law that makes a little sense and tries to find hidden agendas, self interests and contradictions in official reports with little or no evidence. I'm sorry if this is not supposed to be a news article (even if the law is not new), but I really don't like explanatory articles throwing…

> Though the story is interesting, I'm flagging this article for extreme bias while trying to sound like a news outlet What are you talking about? What about it is trying to "sound like a news outlet?" It says right in the side of the page, "Matthew Fraser - Reflections on life and literature in Paris." It's clearly a blog. > The author took a law that makes a little sense and tries to find hidden agendas, self inter…

> This is the same government that insisting on inventing its own term for email that was more "distinctly French."

Are you talking about Québec? They did invent "courriel", if Wikipedia is right.

Disclaimer: I'm French.

Now I think it is a mistake to mix the two aspect of the topic:

On one side, it is forbidden to do covert advertisement in France, be it for a French trademark or anything else. The guys on TV can't have a laptop with a well-known fruit on it's very visible back, as they can't wear a T-shirt with "Louis Vuitton" on it. Sometime it make thing a bit harder for journalists, because so many people have transformed themselves in flesh-ads. This is just a choice of the French. They prefer having less brands in their sight, and I happen to share this taste with my countrymen.

There is the other part of the topic, the "war" against English words in the supposed defence of the French language. This war can be sometime fought also by nationalists, but it is not nationalist by itself. (Or trying to maintain one's cultural asset is nationalist? Is it nationalist for Bushmen to try to keep their culture alive?)

On this part, I agree with the goal, which is to keep a French language as a strong cultural vector, but I don't agree with the means (keeping English words away).

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#35

Post by gbog »

zdw wrote: post #19

The japanese solve this problem by writing all their "loan words" from other languages in a different script (katakana) whereas all native words are in either chinese characters (kanji) or the phonetic alphabet (hiragana). I say the french do the same. Just require that all non-french words be typeset in Papyrus, or Comic Sans. Should deal with the issue nicely.

Funny idea. In fact, you're joking but it is already the case. In French, loan words must be italicized, and if not italics available, isolated in French quotes, « comme ceci ».

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#36

Post by strayer »

whackedspinach wrote: post #4
sawyer wrote: post #2

As absurd as it is, I'm pretty sick of every media outlet on earth attempting to herd me to their FB/Twitter page every time they're on air or commercial.

While I agree that it is annoying, a law is not the way to fix that. It's also very useful, as it connects the viewers with more information. I don't think anything would convince news outlets to stop since it drives up their website traffic, etc.

A law could be the way to fix that if it concerns state-owned media, which in France (and Europe, in general) is mainstream.

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#37

Post by joejohnson »

plainOldText wrote: post #13

How about the word verb "to google" ? Shouldn't this be forbidden too, according to the french reasoning? Or do they not use it at all?

That was exactly what I came here to write. I understand the spirit of this law, that using facebook and twitter is using a public good for advertising outside of the context of an ad. But some of these brands have a tendency to become words in there own right, and like kleenex or google, the word becomes synonymous with the brands' function. I believe Webster has included "Google" as a verb now. It'd be interesting to know how french people say "to google", and if this legislation addresses such uses of the term on public broadcasts.

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#38

Post by mturmon »

drats wrote: post #16
mturmon wrote: post #8

The OP speaks about French resentment of Anglo-Saxon cultural encroachment as if it's some kind of childish French fixation ("That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed; indeed, it has been documented and analysed for decades.") But then, remember Freedom Fries and cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys, and it seems like we all have our childish s…

But it really is a silly childish thing. They made up "courriel" just so they didn't have to use "email". But electronic is électroniques in French (and both ultimately come from the Greek) and the English word "mail" is derived from Old French. It's an opportunity to underline the French in English and shared heritage I would have thought. As the other comment points out, the things you point to weren't mandated by…

What I said is that both initiatives are somewhat petty, and somewhat comparable (government officials deprecating "foreign" terms). The article fails to recognize that both cultures have their peculiarities, and treats this trait as being peculiar to the French.

I agree that when the President, vice-President, and SecDef of the U.S. hold up another country to ridicule, as President Bush and his leadership team did with regard to France ("old Europe" and all the rest), it is indeed different in many ways than a set of French broadcasting bureaucrats forbidding certain words.

I'm just not sure the difference works strongly in favor of your argument that the French case is more outrageous.

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#39

Post by ryanf »

Soljin wrote: post #33

Interesting article. HORRID writing. GTFP. This guy clearly wants to be a journalist but just isn't cutting the mustard. I should have to be 30 inches in your article to find the quote for why they are doing it, which makes some sense.

Get the fuck...?

Re: The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

#40

Post by bergie »

bonch wrote: post #29
mturmon wrote: post #8

The OP speaks about French resentment of Anglo-Saxon cultural encroachment as if it's some kind of childish French fixation ("That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed; indeed, it has been documented and analysed for decades.") But then, remember Freedom Fries and cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys, and it seems like we all have our childish s…

Keep in mind that France actually invented its own term for email simply to have a term that it considered to be more French.

Many languages have their own terms for various modern things. In Finnish email is sähköposti, though often casually we just call it meili
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