L'Académie Française

The Académie française is one of the oldest French institutions. Originally an informal group of writers and philosophers who, from 1629, would gather to talk about the different uses and aspects of the French language, the Académie was given its official status in 1635, under Louis XIII, by Cardinal Richelieu.

The Académie consists of 40 members, elected by their peers and commonly known in France as les immortels (the Immortals). Being chosen as an immortel is considered a supreme honour and it is, except in rare cases, a life-long commitment. Accordingly, a new member can be admitted to the Académie only when a seat is left vacant, that is to say after the death of a peer.

Since its creation in 1635, the Académie has had 705 members all chosen for their talent, creativity, and, of course, for their outstanding linguistic abilities-the Académie being essentially a linguistic jury. All the 'Immortals' are however not necessarily authors or poets, but also doctors, scientists, ethnologists, art critics, soldiers, statesmen, and churchmen. The aim of this institution is to gather a group of people who collectively, will be able to make decisions as to how the language should be used. Some of its distinguished members were, among many others, Jean de La Fontaine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Eugène Ionesco, Joseph Kessel, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Although fairly flexible about the profession of its members, the Académie was far from truly egalitarian when it came to gender. In 1980 it elected its first woman member in the 350 years since its creation - the author Marguerite Yourcenar. Female 'Immortals' remain in the minority and only 3 out of the 37 members are women.

The role of the Académie was clearly set from its first days: to regulate and codify the language by determining standards of acceptable grammar and vocabulary, its aim being to make the language "pure, eloquent, and capable of dealing with Art and Science" (Article 24).

The first task of the group was to create a normative dictionary. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française was published in 1694. The ninth edition is currently under way with volumes I and II already published, respectively in 1992 and 2000. When complete, the dictionary will include approximately 60,000 entries.

Nowadays the Académie still functions as an official moderator for the French language, but it is very often criticized for its rigid and conservative approach. Due to the leading role of English among the other languages of the world, the Académie's tends to focus on lessening the influx of English words into French by choosing and recommending the use of French equivalents. One recent example is the Académie's recommendation of the use of the word "courriel" instead of the English "e-mail".