Laboratoire de Sociolinguistique (Dynalang).

Portuguese immigration is essentially work and family-oriented. Most of

the families arrived during the nineteen-sixties and seventies (65,2 % between

1960 and 1974), running away from misery, the dictatorship of Salazar and for

some of the men, running away military service in Africa.

At that time it was estimated that approximately one million Portuguese,

out of the nine million that made up the population of Portugal, lived abroad,

mostly in francophone areas of Europe.

Portuguese immigration in France today covers three generations.

These families come from villages in the North and center of Portugal,

from the Porto region. They are in majority a rural population, with little

schooling at the time and the language they speak bears regional marks that

make it resemble Galician or Spanish.

The Portuguese settled mainly in the Paris region and mainly in certain

suburbs in the South and South-East of the capital. But Portuguese speakers

represent 4.25 % of the population of “Ile de France”.

They are concentrated in certain occupations. The women are in the

service sector, as cleaning ladies or janitors of buildings where they are put up

with their families. The men worked in construction activities (usually in teams

with men from the North African countries). At the beginning they were

employees and quite a few of them managed to create their own businesses in

this same building branch.

Portuguese immigration has long been characterized by activities in

voluntary associations, parishes, sport associations, etc. where they reproduce

the connections they had in their home towns with neighbors and cousins.

The first weddings took place in Portugal or between Portuguese

«!fiancés!» who had met in the home country. Later on and nowadays the

tendency -especially among young men- is to choose a Portuguese companion or

the daughter of Portuguese immigrants. Most of the "exolinguistic" marriages

take place with people from Spain.

Immigration from Portugal has been constantly decreasing since 1974 :

Portugal has itself become, over the last ten years, a country of immigration

from Africa and South America.

The most recent data come from the Family Survey conducted

simultaneously by INED-INSEE at the time of the 1999 population census. The

overall picture is the following :

The survey estimated the number of Portuguese speakers (Lusophones) at about

600.000 (six hundred thousand people) in France.

Portuguese speakers in France in 1999!: 600,000.

Roman languages!:

Spanish!: 38,5 % among which 51 % of everyday use

Italian!: 27,4 % among which 45 % of everyday use

Non Roman Languages

Arabic!: 65,3 % among which 60,4 % of everyday use

Turkish !: 86,6 % among which 84,1 % of everyday use

The rate of transmission of the language by parents to the children is

about 67,4 % on the national level. It can be compared to Arabic transmission

which is 65,3% and Spanish transmission which is 38,5 %. It is only slightly

higher for mothers (52,7 %) than for fathers (49,6 %). Thus the rate of family

transmission of Portuguese is especially high, if one considers that what is dealt

with is a very old migration.

Characterization of Portuguese language transmission is synthetized in the

following frame!:

- parents use more Portuguese!but women switch more than men,

- children use more French than their parents in their communication with

them,

- second generation people mostly use French when talking to each other

(even in Portugal).

- by holidays in Portugal,

- portuguese courses (ELCO or associations).

- by the absence of Portuguese as L2 in French educational system,

- French stereotypes about Portugueses and Portuguese language.

The parental idiolect is made up of!:

a) An archaic and rural form of Portuguese, the language that they heard during

their childhood in the fifties, little affected by the standardization, according to

“Lisbonish” characteristics, that took place in Portugal in the second part of the

20th century,

b) But also of a Portuguese that bears the marks of its prolonged contact with

French, particularly on the lexical level,

c) The parents' competence in French is very variable, probably better among

the women than among the men, who usually have a very strong accent,

characterized by the fricatives, regularly stigmatized by the French population.

On phonetic level!:

- northern pronunciation!: spanish pronunciation of initial /b/ or /v/

- modification of nasals, diphtongs ans /r/

- substitution of / / by /s/ (by second generation children)

On lexical level!:

a) archaïsms, like «despois» for «depois» (english!: after).

b) ruralisms : «sertao» for «frigideira» (fr. poêle à frire),

c) sociolectal marks of illiteracy, like : «vental» for «avental» (fr. tablier)..

On lexical level too (U. Pereira Santos Bendiha, 1996 quote 720 items)!:

d) loanwords!: «!pubela!» (fr. poubelle)

e) interferences!: «!botelha!» (garafa, fr. bouteille)

f) changes in meanings («!interes!»),

Surveys carried out through interviews as well as recordings trace the profile of

bilingual communication in the families. Code-switching takes place on the

following pattern: the parents speak Portuguese to their children who answer in

French, but, a fluent sort of switching also takes place on the inter and intraphrastic

level. This is a short example of a conversational story! (corpus

«!Ribeiro!», 2000, mother speaking with daughters) :

E!: como nao cabia no ascensor MONTOU-me apé, olha / il en a mis

partout, et depois là encima naquela escadinha que TOURNA que

TOURNA/ euh!: ele era grande, olha / Y’avait partout des épines / alors

assim!: «!Ah mais le vôtre!» euh, pôs assim a mao no naquele «!mais le

vôtre, il est / il est faux!», digo assim «!bah oui je vais pas chaque année

acheter un!: un sapin que ça coûte cher!» // diz ela «!moi aussi, j’avais un

faux, mais je l’ai jeté/ j’ai été tellement bête / que j’ai jeté même les

The children all speak French, being schooled in French schools and they

speak French among themselves. Second generation can very rarely be seen as a

community in France: there are virtually no Portuguese-speaking "gangs".

They sometimes have access to a more standard form of Portuguese

through the ELCO programs (courses in Language and Culture of Origin given

by teachers sent to France from Portugal) or thanks to courses in Portuguese

offered by associations. However, Portuguese, contrary to other languages like

Spanish, German and to a certain degree Italian, is rarely part of the French

school curriculum as a foreign language. Consequently, it has not benefited from

any institutional recognition or from the written and oral practice that other

(minority) languages have in schools.

Some female university students specialize in Portuguese, others choose to

specialize in French as a foreign language or in modern languages.

I already mentioned the grand-parents' role in Portugal in refreshing the

second generation children's Portuguese language. But what about these

children's children ? At the beginning, forty years ago, Portuguese migrants

meant to go back home to retire, in the house they had built with their savings.

In fact, such a return does not always take place. Accustomed to city life and

certain (especially health) services, the women no longer dream of returning to

their childhood village. They especially want - and their husbands do too - to

stay near their grand-children, born and bred in France. The to-and-fro way of

life thus continues (naturally with certain time differencials) after retirement,

between France, where they still have their home, and Portugal. Called upon to

look after the grand-children or to take them during vacation time, they also

transmit their particular variety of contact language. Thus it is that one can see,

among the young bilingual children, as among their parents of the previous

generation, a fluctuation in competence in their two languages, according to the

time they spend in Portugal.

Generally speaking, we would like to distinguish, as far as the relations to

home country are concerned, between five types of immigration to France which

I associate with different linguistic behavior patterns!:

- Integration concerns those who progressively let go of their parents'

language and assimilate into French

- To-and-fro: this is typical of those who over the year shuttle back and forth

between France and Portugal,

- Nomads are usually polyglots because they are connected to the buying and

selling of food and technical goods around the Western Mediterranean,

- Finally, the diaspora!has its place in a very open international network with

a very strong symbolic reference to roots.

- Stand by concern migrants who are simply waiting for something or

somewhere else (refugees, students, US visa seekers).

The Portuguese belong to the first two types. They are very well

integrated (one speaks of them as being an «!invisible!» migration), and by

shuttling back and forth between France and their villages for vacations, they

keep in touch with their region or country of origin. They often build large

houses there which are visible proof of their having succeeded.

The young children are linguistically "refreshed" by their grand-parents, who

speak or spoke a local variety. As they get older, however, they feel at odds

with the young Portuguese of their age who speak a contemporary standard

variety and whose teenage culture they do not share.

Called "little Frenchies" by the Portuguese, they go on speaking French with

their siblings and cousins "from France" and prefer to stick together. This

creates, "over there", during the summer vacations, strange little Frenchspeaking

pockets in a traditionally monolingual region.

Others prefer to study - namely by taking advantage of the European

exchange programs in the universities - to marry, or to settle in Portugal. The

linguistic difference I just mentioned may lead to hyper-correct attitudes which

only go to show their linguistic insecurity. If, on top of it all, they do not feel

legitimate as full-fledged French-speakers, they have a hard time finding their

own place. They then become victims of "symbolic violence" or "double binds"

that block them all the more that their access to higher education has been faster.

As was explained earlier on, this bilingualism among migrants is a contact

bilingualism. It is spontaneous, not controlled, not given any value by normative

rules such as school code which controls and legitimates the norm only possess

by French native speakers. Michèle Koven (2004) emphasizes this point,

stigmatizing strong monolingual ideologies that are currently found both in

France and Portugal: every single deviation from the norm is stigmatized.

Where, ideally, transitional immigration should add some value (French spoken

in Portugal and Portuguese spoken in France), the reality is in fact totally

different;

- in France, Portuguese migrants are made fun of because of their overuse of the

phoneme /sh/ (they are rather nastily called “guèches”: apheresis on the parodic

pronunciation of “portugues” by Portugueses) and because they are unable to

pronounce the French /y/. Their French is thus considered as bad.

- in Portugal, people condemn both their old-fashioned variety of Portuguese

mixed with French words and the way they use French in inappropriate

circumstances.

These phenomena are deeply felt more or less consciously by migrants’

children.

that we believe it is Portuguese!!» (J.M).

They aren’t even aware that they are mixing the two languages. (Dina, in

Fernandes, 2000).

in Portugal and that I never did. In Portugal I am always French. (L.

corpus “Darrous”, 1999)

Portugal and those you can meet here in France. (Daniel, in Fernandes,

2000).

culture (M.R in Fernandes, 2000.).

When they discover such a lack of awareness of the changes in their own

language as opposed to the Portuguese norm (cf. the Portuguese who wonder

why they are not understood by waiters) they feel in danger as far as their

integrity is concerned: they get “destabilized” because they do not own their

language any more.

In the case of Portuguese, we must face the fact that the relation between

languages and borders are still very strong in Europe And that monolingual

ideology remains firmly in place in both countries. J.A.Fishman and

J.J.Gumperz when they talked of “integration” or of “assimilation” took the

“host society perspective”. But what we are proposing now is a more global

perspective, taking into account both societies and the relationship between

them because for the “go-and-fro” migrant and his family, it is his everyday

experience.

In that perspective, Portuguese is not seen only as an heritage language

only, and the day to day reactions of natives to migrants varieties of language

have to be viewed as a socio-semiotic process where accent and loanwords are

have to be considered as icons which are signs of a categorization process as

“migrants” in both countries.

Sociolinguistic studies of Portuguese as a language of immigration are

fairly abundant and can be found in the extend bibliography given above,

especially when compared with those done on other languages spoken in France.

The seniority of this emigration allows for a diachronic approach of the

phenomenon of transmission, of the changing forms and evolutions in language

use, over three generations now. The considerable homogeneity of the dialect

spoken and the society created by the groups involved, allow us to come up with

general hypotheses about each and all of the internal and external factors

affecting the evolution of the language and how it is spoken in France. I have

tried to present and explain the link between social considerations, connected to

the migratory ways of life, and finer observations of language practices in situ. I

hope that in so doing, and thanks to the work I have synthetically presented here,

it will possibly establish a basis for a solid comparison with other migrant

languages spoken in France or in the United States.

Note!:

The work referred to here owes much to regular scientific collaboration with

Elena Correia, Elena Carreira Araujo, Roselyne de Villanova and Michele

Koven.

Extended bibliography used for this article :

ARAUJO-CARREIRA Elena (1991). «!La nature et les mécanismes du contact des langues,

Barcelone, vol.1, 157-180.

BAZIN Claire et Geneviève VERMES : «!L'enseignement du portugais et de l'arabe dans le

secteur associatif", Migrant Formation, 83, 1990!; n° spécial!: Un bilinguisme particulier, 76-

89.

BOUTET Josiane et DEPREZ Christine (à paraître). «!Ici et là-bas, privé et public! des

CHARBIT-HILY-POINARD : «!Le va-et-vient identitaire, Migrants portugais et villages

d'origine!», 1997, Cahiers n° 140, Travaux et Documents, publication INED , diffusion P.U.F.

CORDEIRO Albano et HILY M-Antoinette (1999). «!Les Portugais entre discrétion et

reconnaissance!», in Sigila, n°3.

CORREIA Helena et Margaret BENTO (1997). «!Les effets du retour définitif pour les

migrants de la seconde génération sur quelques variables phonologiques du portugais en

milieu rural!», Actes du colloque de la SILF (Société Internationale de Linguistique

Fonctionnelle) à Coimbra, Portugal, diffusion P.U.F..

CORREIA-LABAYE Helena (forthcoming, 2004) «!Bilinguality and the inter-generational

transmission of languages!»in RODRIGUEZ-YANEZ X-P. , A.M. LORENZO-SUAREZ &

F. RAMLO (eds.) Bilingualism and Education: From the Family to the School. Munich:

Lincom Europa, 145-161

DEPREZ Christine (1994/1999) : Les enfants bilingues : langues et familles, Paris, Didier-

CREDIF, collection "Essais".

DEPREZ Christine (1999). «!Les enquêtes «!micro!». Pratique et transmission familiale des

langues d’origine dans l’immigration en France!», in CALVET Louis-Jean et René

DUMONT : L’enquête sociolinguistique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 77-102.

DEPREZ Christine (2002). «!Le jeu des langues dans les familles bilingues d’origine

étrangère!», Estudios de Sociolinguistica 1 (1), 59-74.

DEPREZ Christine (2004, forthcoming)!: «!Family Languages in France: first results of a

demolinguistic survey!»! in RODRIGUEZ-YANEZ X-P. , A.M. LORENZO-SUAREZ & F.

RAMLO (eds.). Bilingualism and Education: From the Family to the School. Munich:

Lincom Europa, 93-106.

10

Paris III.

GONCALVES Albertino (1996). Imagens e clivagens : Os Residentes face aos Emigrantes,

Porto, Ediçoes Afrontamento, Biblioteca das Ciencias do Homem, Sociologia,

Epistemologia/22.

GROSJEAN et PY (1987) : «!La restructuration d'une première langue : l'intégration de

HERAN François, FILHON Alexandra et DEPREZ Christine (2002)!: « La dynamique des

langues en France au fil du XXème siècle », Population et Sociétés, n° 376, février 2002.

HEREDIA de -DEPREZ C. (1983). "Les parlers français des migrants" in Frédéric

FRANCOIS (éd.). J'cause français, non ?, Paris, Maspero-La Découvert, 95-126.

HILY et ORIOL (1993). «!Deuxième génération portugaise : la gestion des ressources

identitaires!» , R.E.M.I., Vol. 9, n° 3, U. de Poitiers-CNRS, 81-93.

HILY Marie-Antoinette et Michel POINARD (1987). «!L'enseignement de la langue d'origine

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KOVEN Michèle (1998). «!Two languages in the Self/The self in Two Languages!: French-

Portuguese Bilinguals’ Verbal Enactements and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse!»,

Ethos, 26(4)!: 410-455.

KOVEN Michèle (2001). «!Comparing bilinguals’quoted performances of self and others in

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KOVEN Michèle (2002). «!An analysis of speaker role inhabitance in narratives of personal

experience!», Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 167-217.

KOVEN Michèle (forthcoming, 2004). «!Transnational Perspectives on Sociolinguistic

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L’Harmattan.

RODRIGUES RUIVO Jorge (2002) Portugais et population d’origine portugaise en France,

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11

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