The concept of "semantic collision'' is
best understood by an example. The word "chat'' in French means a small feline
animal, while "chat'' in English means a conversation and is a term used on the
Internet; such "chats'' aren't comparable to dogs. It is difficult to differentiate
between "cancer'' in English, French, and Spanish, since the term is the same. For
similar reasons, we haven't tried to measure the impact of the mode: "mode'' means
fashion in French, but something else in English. The father of structuralism is not in
this study because the "jeans'' people wear are more popular than him. Spanish
networks are counted only in the plural ("redes'') to avoid counting the color red.
Smith, Dupont, and Garcia could be extremely famous, but without a composite name, it is
very difficult to distinguish their homonyms....
Several names (like Lenin or da Vinci) were
put in either English or original spelling to permit searching.
Famous French People
It seems that, seen on the Internet, the
French do not match the cliche of a man on a bicycle with a baguette and a beret! The
renown of France comes, above all, from her philosophers. The men and women (Marie Curie!)
of science are not badly placed. Fictional French-speaking characters (in particular
Asterix and Tintin) are very well mentioned on the Internet. In painting and literature,
the results are fair, nothing more. In music and politics, French speakers are far behind
English speakers. But doesn't all that reflect the real position of France in the real
world?
To recapitulate, the French people who come
out best are, in order: Louis XIV, Napoleon, Asterix, Descartes, Voltaire, Pasteur, Victor
Hugo, Chirac, Tintin, Pierre and Marie Curie, Ravel, De Gaulle, Pompidou and Mitterrand,
Camus and Sartre (neck and neck), Clovis, Rodin, Rousseau, Barthes, Charlemagne, Moliere,
Monet, Dior, Brel, Depardieu and Truffaut....
Some important people don't figure in the
tables even though they should. Before you condemn this situation, first try the same
method!
The figures turn up Mandelbrot, a
contemporary French mathematician who created fractals, which are very fashionable in
computer graphics. Cyberspace is not chauvinistic: Christian Huitema, French, of INRIA, is
better known than the former president of the Internet Society (this is probably because
he has published in the media). The author of this study, modest contributor to the
Internet from the region of the Caribbean and Latin America, is cited more than the very
active Executive Director of the Internet Society and is also more known in cyberspace
than the French soccer star, Michel Platini! Why? Once again because he has written a lot
in the Internet world and because, for the moment, soccer is a theme less prevalent on the
Internet than... the Internet itself.
In politics, France past and present holds a
place which corresponds to its real influence. The very strong showing of French president
Jacques Chirac is the direct result of his politics concerning nuclear testing, which
provoked strong polemics on the net and endless discussions that saturated the French
USENET newsgroups for several weeks.
The Road to Globality
Finally, the tables reflect the common global
perception of topics and people. It isn't very satisfying to see O.J. Simpson equaling
Martin Luther King. It is ironic to see Sartre and Camus neck and neck before history. It
is amusing to discover that the Italian rake is a bit ahead of the Spanish one. It is
maybe curious to see Juan Luis Guerra count more than Manuel de Falla, and anyway logical
to see him pass Alain Souchon and Maurice Chevalier.
Finally, the Beatles are not more famous than
Jesus Christ, as John Lennon once claimed they were. And Satan is stuck between Bach and
Darwin!
In the final analysis, in the same way the
Internet does not escape the effects of other media, other media do not escape the
Internet. Thus the recent murder of Rabin increases his score, and the young movie
director Kassowitz begins to capitalize on his very recent prize.
The most remarkable (not to say inconvenient)
example is certainly that of O.J. Simpson, with which the U.S. media have succeeded in
blanketing the entire planet, even the online planet. But in some years that will reduce
in importance.
Each reader will be able to feel surprised,
often frustrated, sometimes informed, to discover in our selection the absence of some
word or person might seem indispensable. And you're right! This is an exercise without
pretensions that we have made for the Day of French Culture and Language; our intention is
only to permit debate that is not exclusively subjective, by providing some empirical
information. This exercise is very imperfect, but the results give us nonetheless a better
idea of quantitative aspects that underlie the debate about the place of French in the
Internet. Two times, twenty times, or two hundred times more, these are not all the same
thing!
If Tintin and Mafalda are far ahead of
Buffalo Bill, Butch Cassiday, or Billy the Kid, if Marcuse doesn't lead our philosophers,
if George Pompidou is level with Franklin Roosevelt, maybe it's because culture isn't a
problem on the Internet? If French speakers are so low in song and cinema, that's more a
problem of language and commerce than a problem of culture. If jazz is at least equal on
the Internet with classical music, that would explain why more American composers than
French (see Bolling)! And it would seem the Internet just reflects the state of things,
without party and without priority, by the fair play of statistical phenomena resulting
from the participation of groups of individuals in a system of simple economic rules. Here
the doors are open wide to all.
The result many people expected was not
established: no favoritism was demonstrated towards the United States in cyberspace! One
can be scandalized to see Smith count ten times more than Dupont. But if the criteria,
less subjective, is that of international renown, the result is not so shocking: Bob Dylan
and Marilyn Monroe are not Americans, they are members of the planetary culture. Walt
Disney and Michael Jackson are for sure Americans, but above all they are champions of the
global economy.
The criterion of placement is clearly linked
to the degree of globality of the person. We can also come to see that web pages
come from different countries and languages.
Of course, cyberspace does play favorites, in
this order:
- citizens of cyberspace (as we have seen,
without respect to their mundane nationality),
- the sciences
- current events
- and people already presented in other media.
If there is an important question posed by
the utilization of languages, it is not a cultural problem (unless at the level of the
global culture that underlies the Internet).
Concerning languages, the solution is simple.
Make your own information resources in your own language. Put it up without subtitles and
without dubbing it into another language. Be actors in the evolution of the Internet and
not just spectators.
On the base of the present research, but with
more systematic work supported with more scientific criteria at the linguistic level, and
enlarging the domain of research to other Internet services (mailing lists, news, Gopher,
WAIS), it should be possible to establish an "observatory of the place of French in
the Internet.'' If you have funds to assist with this task, don't hesitate to contact
FUNREDES, who will be able to propose a plan of work.
What are the trends? For those who have done
research for a long time, there is no doubt of a net trend towards equitable
representation of languages and of cultures.
For us, the real debate is elsewhere. Will
the Internet become a virtual market? Or will it remain the temple of researchers where
the god of information is partaken in all liberty?
The true cultural debate is whether the
culture of mercantilism is going to do away with the global neo-culture of the networks
that the researchers have created and that is characterized by:
- respect of cultures and of persons
- plurality and openness
- transparence and solidarity
- free circulation of information
|
