BENHAMIDA, LAUREL; PHD
 
                        UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, 1989

                        LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICS (0290); EDUCATION, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (0279); LANGUAGE, MODERN (0291)
 

                         A study was conducted of francophone translators and interpreters as adopters and agents of planned
                         lexical innovations promoted by the French government. The two major research questions were: (a)
                         whether there are relationships between sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and socioprofessional variables
                         and reported adoption, variable adoption, or rejection of planned innovations; and (b) whether the
                         francophone translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological banks and
                         organizations serving them are functioning as agents of diffusion, in unregulated contexts, for the official
                         terms. The data are based on three questionnaires sent to individual francophone translators and
                         interpreters in francophone countries (but not France), schools training translators and interpreters in
                         francophone countries (but not France), and to terminological banks and organizations serving
                         francophone translators and interpreters. Indicators of the sociolinguistic profile of individuals were found
                         to be good predictors of reported adoptive usage, while additional variables need to be specified and
                         tested for the prediction of reported variable usage by sociolinguistic context. While the majority of
                         respondents are members of the group which believes translators and interpreters should be active
                         agents of diffusion, missing data on this item suggests that it is controversial. Mother tongue French and
                         years of experience were good discriminators of group membership. Schools, as a group, were not
                         found to be functioning as active agents of diffusion. Language activity/affiliation of a school was a good
                         predictor of school policy, however French identity correlated negatively with support of official terms.
                         Terminological resources were found to be diffusing both official terms and competing alternatives as
                         well as providing information to users about the source of authority for an innovation. It is suggested that
                         translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological organizations could be powerful
                         agents of diffusion of planned lexical innovations primarily through their many weak links with
                         francophones worldwide. Evidence of some of the difficulties in implementing the planning of an
                         international language by a national government, such as loyalty to regional sources of authority or client
                         demands, was found in the data analysis.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603