Comment protéger le français ? La Lutte entre réforme et tradition en France dans les années 1980 et 1990

This paper examines two French language policies discussed and eventually put into place in France in the 1980s and 1990s. The first policy regards the feminization of nouns related to jobs and professions. The second policy is a set of spelling reforms instituted in 1990. I look at how these debates show a tension between two clashing ideas on how to protect French: preserve the language as it was and reform it to fit modern society. In general, the literature focuses on the English invasion into French as the greatest change in the language in the second half of the 20th century. I argue that this invasion helped spur these debates, among others, over how to protect the future of the French language as a whole. The important shift in language in France was not based on the number of borrowed English words, but on the growing desire to protect French