The strategy of condescension, expression of the prioritization of languages An ethnographic approach of the French/Creole relationship to the island from La Réunion

Abstract

The Creole of Reunion Island has been recognised as a language since the 2000s and the creation of a CAPES in Creole. Yet, several factors still make it a “minor”, underestimated language. Our study in various school classes shows that a strong feeling of diglossia seems to prevail; the pupils’ representations appear to be encouraged by teacher’s behaviours and an all-too-strict administration. The teachers behave in a condescending way towards Creole, justifying their attitude by their lack of training. This refusal to take into account the various origins of pupils in a way other than condescending is due to institutional, social and generational discrepancies between teachers and the rest of the population.
The most mysterious discrepancy to this day has been the one between normality and pathology: the language habits of a good part of pupils (about 15% of them) are seen by school doctors as a kind of pathology, and on the basis of this medical interpretation,
educational cures are deliberately left aside whereas disparaging medical diagnoses are given pride of place. Thus, not only is the hierarchy of the French/Creole divide strengthened, but also that between French and other foreign languages.