The responsible use of language

“Giving things the wrong name makes the world a poorer place” (“mal nommer les choses c’est ajouter au malheur du monde”) wrote the French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus. Conference interpreters and translators, professions of which I have been a proud member for over forty years, go to more trouble than most to find the right words as the quality of their work depends on it. Perhaps that is why I am particularly sensitive to the way that language can - and often is - twisted to meet particular ends.

Contrary to conference interpreters and translators, politicians and trade unionists can of course be excused for exaggerating – it’s their stock in trade, a time-honoured way of oversimplifying complex messages to make an impact on their voters or members. This tendency did not start with populist politicians, but their rise has certainly accentuated it. The erstwhile leader of the French communist party, Georges Marchais, for instance, was known for his pithy and colourful expressions and particularly his habit of blaming everything that was wrong with France on capitalist barons (“le grand capital”) regardless of the fact that his party, as part of France’s immediate post-war government, had helped lay the foundations of its very generous welfare state. Today’s communist party and its soul mates in the CGT union lose no opportunity to denounce “the deliberate destruction of the (French) social model (“la casse de notre modèle social”) after the recent loosening of labour market regulations, the end to a particularly protective labour contract for railway workers or the probable future reduction of unemployment benefits.  As if universal health care, family allowances and 5 weeks paid holiday were about to be ditched at the instigation of globalized capitalist lobbies (“les lobbys mondialisés”) advocating a policy of unbridled liberalism (“le libéralisme sauvage”). At the other end of the political spectrum, the supposed consequences of “being submerged by immigrants” (“ la submersion migratoire de la France” ) are regularly denounced by the parties of the extreme right  for whom l’identité française, seen only as white and Christian, is under threat (“menace sur l’identité chrétienne (de la France)”) and held up as an ideal that cannot possibly, against all historical evidence, accommodate people who have different histories, religions or skin colours.

Most of us, who hear such phrases every day, quickly shrug them off as crass exaggeration and tend to consider them as unimportant as everyone can see where these speakers are coming from. Maybe. But repeated over and over again, do they not gradually erode the possibility of engaging in balanced discourse and civilized debate? And encourage people who should know better to actually indulge in unbalanced discourse and appear to believe what they are saying?

Take for example the case of the novelist Eric Vuillard, the author of an interesting novel entitled “The Order of the Day (“L’Ordre du Jour”) about the willing complicity of German industrial barons in Hitler’s rise to power, that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2017. During a recent conversation at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, he is reported* to have described the French government’s response to the gilets jaunes protest movement as “authoritarian” and asserted that restrictions on press freedom in France were in preparation. It is unclear whether he was really trying to suggest sinister parallels between today’s France and Hitler’s Germany. The article suggests that he was.  Be that as it may, the idea that the six week “Great Debate “, together with subsidies, tax breaks and extra allowances worth €11bn. can be considered as an “authoritarian” response is little more than a gross distortion of the facts.  Even if he was referring to the legitimate controversy over the tactics of the French riot  police during the gilets jaunes’ regular Saturday demonstrations, the inference that the police behaved with deliberate  brutality akin to that  of Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs is entirely unwarranted and unworthy of an intellectual figure, especially someone talking to a foreign audience that is probably not familiar with what actually happened and has only seen dramatic TV pictures and YouTube videos.

A really scandalous distortion of the facts however must be laid at the door of the gilets jaunes themselves. In a demonstration against police tactics last weekend, they called themselves “the mutilated as an example to others” (“les mutilés pour l’exemple”) This time, the reference is crystal clear: during the First World War a  number of French footsoldiers were executed by firing squads made up of their comrades  and on the orders of their superiors “as an example to others” (“ les fusillés pour l’exemple”), largely on trumped-up charges of desertion or cowardice in the face of the enemy. Only recently, almost 100 years after the events, have their reputations been restored by the official recognition that the vast majority of the “fusillés pour l’exemple” were terrified and traumatised young men who, at the critical moment, were unable to bring themselves to face almost certain death when ordered by officers to charge enemy trenches.

The gilets jaunes who formed the association of mutilés pour l’exemple comprise a few who were indeed unfortunate enough to lose a hand or an eye as a result of being hit by a police grenade. While there seems little justification for using such dangerous weapons (the most dangerous have since been banned for policing demonstrations) and a number of policemen are under investigation for being too trigger happy, considering themselves “mutilated as an example to others” seems a totally unacceptable abuse of language. Were the demonstrators ordered to demonstrate and, in the course of those demonstrations, to throw stones and rocks at the police and set fire to or overturn their vehicles? Of course not!  Were the police under orders to fire their grenades indiscriminately with the aim of injuring and maiming as many demonstrators as possible? At a time when the 30-year anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre is a stark reminder of what really happens when security forces open fire on a crowd with live bullets, precisely as an example to others, the suggestion is preposterous. Were any demonstrators actually killed as a result of police action? No. The only fatalities that did occur during the gilets jaunes protests were caused by traffic accidents for which the protestors themselves were indirectly responsible during their occupation of roundabouts. And although losing a hand or an eye is certainly a serious injury, the small number of those who were injured in this way received prompt and effective medical attention.

By assimilating their fate to that of the “fusillés pour l’exemple”, these gilets jaunes have simply thrown discredit on their movement and clearly shown that shrill exaggeration can only obscure a balanced assessment of what caused their movement in the first place.

One can only hope that both the novelist and the shadowy gilets jaunes leaders will think twice before identifying their words or deeds again with far more dramatic and far-reaching historical events. Legitimate criticism or protest does not make the world a poorer place; self-serving and self-pitying justification for it certainly does.

*In an article in the Financial Times of May 30, 2019: “Lessons for the present from French historical fiction” by Frederick Studemann.

Servants of the public ?

One the more surprising and at the same time revealing moments of the crisis of the “gilets jaunes” was a scene broadcast on the evening news some time ago in which a pensioner thrust his pay slip into the hands of Emmanuel Macron on a walkabout and demanded to know why he was receiving €100 less from one month to the next. In full view of the attendant cameras, Macron considered the piece of paper, explained some of the deductions but after poring over the slip for a minute or so, ended up admitting that he couldn’t answer the question!

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from this scene and none reflect well on the enormous French administrative machine and the army of civil servants who run it: the first is that pay slips, like so many other official papers, letters and circulars either from, or in the form required by, the French administration are frequently not easy to understand. The number of lines in a pay slip, detailing all the deductions described in acronyms like CSG, CASA, CRDS etc. is probably pretty incomprehensible to most employees, even those who have completed high school - notwithstanding that two of them disappeared during 2018. Little wonder that most people only look at the bottom line which is their take-home pay and are not fully aware that such deductions from their gross salary correspond to their contributions to health care, unemployment, occupational accident insurance and pension.  It is true of course that their employers’ contributions to these same services are much higher.

More generally, the big and largely successful effort made some years ago in the British civil service to write “plain English” and make official letters and circulars more easily comprehensible even to the least educated members of society has not yet been seriously considered, let alone copied in France. Perhaps now that 80% of any age group pass their school leaving baccalauréat at 18, it is generally considered that they are well armed to understand opaque civil service prose and abstruse acronyms! There was, it is true, under the Hollande presidency, an attempt to simplify many administrative procedures. A Simplification Committee was even set up. It doesn’t seem to have simplified very much and, more importantly perhaps, its remit didn’t run to actually simplifying the language in which such procedures are written.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the scene mentioned above is that public services are not always easily accessible and that many civil servants are not doing their job properly even when they are. One imagines the pensioner referred to above trying to call an official from the pension service to ask about the series of deductions that he clearly does not understand. The chances are that after being asked repeatedly, by a suave and usually female recorded voice to the accompaniment of a repetitive and irritating jingle, to press 1, 2 or 3 on his keypad, he will end up with a recorded message saying either that his call will be answered in no more than 10 minutes or that nobody is available to answer it and that he should please call back later. Should he be lucky enough to live close enough to an administrative office and try to consult a real live official, he can expect to wait for quite some time before being called forward - the whole process usually taking the best part of half a day. But there are fewer and fewer such offices. In my home town of over 20 thousand people in the Paris area, the social security office has been closed down and moved 20 kilometers down the road. If you live in a rural area you would be lucky to find an office within 50 kilometers of your home. As to the state-run pension service, it has been “streamlined” over the years and only one national telephone number is now available for queries.

Little wonder that anger and frustration have built up among people who do not understand the constant changes to legislation and regulations that can have a big impact on their pensions or other benefits. The lack of understanding and access to another human being who can give comprehensible and reassuring explanations breeds suspicion if not downright hostility. 

The French system is surely not alone in these failings. Even if the French have coined the adjective “kafkaien”, derived from Franz Kafka’s stories, to describe the cruel absurdity, seeming indifference and real opacity of an administrative system,  it is little comfort to a flummoxed French pensioner to be told that it can be a lot worse in other countries, particularly the U.K, as anybody who has seen Ken Loach’s film “I, Daniel Blake” will know.

To be fair though, there are timid attempts in France to bring the administration closer to the people, especially those who are scattered throughout mainland France's countless rural areas. A network of public service hubs (Maisons de Services au Public) is being set up, complete with computers, internet connections and dedicated phone lines, where people can go and either call or connect to a number of public services. On TV the other night, a pensioner was seen asking for help from the sole employee at the desk of one of these newly opened facilities. He refused to help out in a rather surly manner, saying that if he left his desk, he would be unable to answer other queries. As is often the case, the idea is sound, but the initial implementation is poor and the front-line staff apparently unprepared and probably untrained. The latest official figure puts the number of these hubs at 1281 but many are still a long way from where some people live.

Interestingly, in the nationwide consultation in connection with the “Great Debate”, two questions asked whether respondents would like to see itinerant public services or multi-purpose civil servants who could answer a series of administrative questions on anything from health care to unemployment benefits and pensions. It has also been reported recently that following the loosening of criteria for income related tax benefits (crédit d’impôt), 340 extra officials have been recruited to help claimants fill out their application forms at local family allowance offices.

This is surely a positive move but behind it lies the whole question of a root and branch reform of the very organisation of public services in France that would make them more accessible to people, regardless of their claim or query or where they live. Ideally, answers to such calls and queries, providing incomplete and sometimes incomprehensible answers should give way to a pro-active attitude where front-line public servants would provide accurate and straightforward answers to queries and provide information about rights and how to claim them. This would surely do a lot to relieve legitimate frustration and hostility. The timid attempts so far show that there is at least an awareness in high places of the need to act in this way but it is very early days yet, and it will take time as well as long and difficult negotiations with the powerful civil service unions to break many entrenched habits and turn an army of mouse clickers, often barely visible behind their large screens, into people who can be truly called servants of the public !