Siskin: declining “buyers” of French in the foreign language marketplace

Siskin and his colleagues lay out a very detailed explanation as to why students would wish to study one language over another; they use Halliday’s categorization of language function as their primary tool for classifying language options. A given language is claimed by the authors to be perceived as stronger in certain categories (instrumental, transformative, aesthetic, etc) and weaker in others. This analysis hinges on the concepts of perception and comparison, which the authors admit. As such, the analysis is socially arbitrary. For example, Spanish is considered by Americans to be very strong in the instrumental category (due to environmental factors such as a large number of Spanish speakers in the US and our nation’s proximity to Latin America); however, in a country like India (where environmental factors are quite different), Spanish may be considered very weak in the instrumental category.

The shift, therefore, in the enrollment of French courses in the US is due to changing environmental factors (which lead to a change in social perception of the language). Since this is a decline, we must assume that either French is perceived as weaker cumulatively among all categories; or that French is perceived as stronger in certain categories, but that these categories are in some way of less (and possibly diminishing) importance when compared to other categories. The primary reason for this negative change in the perception of French is the positive change in the perception of other languages (specifically Spanish and Japanese, though the authors primarily focus on the comparison of French and Spanish).

Perhaps without realizing it, the authors have set up a very straight-forward economic scenario: the students (or “buyers”) who were for years loyal to the dominant product (French) in the marketplace of language instruction, have been persuaded to switch to what they perceive as newer, more useful products (Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, etc). The “categories” then are the selling points of a product (the authors claim French’s strongest attribute is perceived to be of an aesthetic nature while Spanish’s trump card is its utility or instrumental nature).

The authors’ data sampling mainly attempts to qualify exactly what consumer perceptions are concerning the two products; to get a bigger picture, they not only asked customers what they liked/disliked about the product they had chosen to purchase, but also asked them to evaluate the competition. The answers demonstrated that the two products/languages are perceived similarly in certain ways (both were perceived as useful when traveling) but with distinct character: the authors conclude French is perceived as more beautiful and refined, while Spanish is viewed as a strong résumé asset and more fun (indicated in the word association portion of the questionnaire which garnered responses such as “piñata” and “margarita”).

Of course, the aim of this whole affair is to offer options for revitalizing the position of our product (the French language) in the marketplace of American universities. Although the structure of the article separates these options into three “responses”, the first two don’t really offer much of anything new or useful in the way of advice and mainly consist of observational claims (Spanish and French are both useful, just in different ways; French teachers shouldn’t be “easier” on their students but should rather explain why they are making things difficult, etc). Clearly, the authors favor response 3 (inspired by Valdman/Voltaire) “Cultivons notre jardin”. I am in agreement with the authors here; the best option available is not to attempt to change the product image to make it more similar to the competing product (and risk alienating loyal customers) but to capitalize on the unique character inherent in the language. The authors conclude that the two products need not compete with one another since they excel at different categories of language function (and appeal to different consumer bases); however, despite these claims, these are still RIVAL goods. When French enrollment decreases, it is not because a large number of students have vanished into thin air; it is because they have chosen another option that they find more appealing.