Egalité in a Hierarchical Society

By: Patrick Deem

April 9, 2013

I have lived in France for over eight months now, giving me the chance to think about many different issues in French society. Only recently, however, was I able to find a word to describe an aspect of French culture that I have witnessed in a number of different contexts. While this blog post might prove controversial to French people or other Francophiles out there, the word is hierarchy.

To begin, I hesitate greatly before using this word. As the concept of social hierarchy can be equated with inequality of one kind another, the word has a charged connotation. Additionally, the word is perhaps particularly heavy in France, a country that defines itself by its Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. As many visitors to France quickly notice, many French administrative buildings bear this famous motto on their walls.

More significantly, as my French law course emphasized last semester, many French people are quite proud of their country’s efforts to guarantee the equality of all its citizens. Going back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, French constitutional law has highlighted that “men are born and remain equal in all rights.” Moreover, the very first article of France’s current constitution (one of many) declares that France “ensures the equality before the law of all citizens, without distinction of origin, race, or religion.”

Beyond these lofty ideals, however, I have found that French society does not always treat its residents with the equality France’s constitutions attempt to guarantee. As many have stated before me, race and religion remain a divisive factor in contemporary France. I personally realized these divisions more fully over my fall break, when I had the privilege of staying with the family of my French-Algerian roommate and good friend in their home in the banlieues of Paris. Walking through their town of Mantes-la-Jolie and speaking with my roommate’s family and friends, I got a strong sense that many of France’s less privileged do not believe that their country treats them with equality.

But I would rather not focus on the topic of race and religion in France. Rather, I have recently become much more aware of France’s perhaps less apparent social hierarchy built around age distinctions. To be sure, societies around the world treat their children, adolescents, adults, and elderly differently. France’s particular version of the value “respect your elders,” however, has affected me in ways that I had not expected.

Perhaps the most obvious marker of this French social hierarchy is linguistic. In French, there is a clear difference between a less formal way of saying “you”—tu—and a more formal way—vous. As a student of French in the United States, I learned that this difference is meant to designate respect. Traditionally, French people use vous for elders, superiors, and colleagues in a professional setting, whereas they use tu when speaking among friends or to children. And yet, I have also realized that linguistic difference can reinforce a hierarchy between those deserving respect and those the French consider young.

For example, in a French classroom, students are expected to refer to their professors with the respectful vous. Professors, on the other hand, have the choice of using tu or vous with their students.

More personally, I have experienced this uneven relationship from the perspective of a student and of a professor. Obviously, I am a student in my classes. In contrast, when I volunteer for a local charity, tutoring local middle and high school students, I am the professor. As a result, on my first day, every one of my tutees referred to me with the more formal vous. After I insisted, however, that they call me the less formal tu, they made two changes: a linguistic change to the supposedly "less respectful" tu and a mentality change to consider themselves as my equal. I became someone who could not only teach them difficult math concepts, but also with whom they could have a more personal, friendly conversation.

At the same time, I have witnessed how this hierarchy between different age groups can benefit older French people, even to detriment of younger ones. To explain, with my supervisor in my campus job and the manager of my school dormitory, for example, I have always used the more respectful vous, while they have referred to me as tu. Throughout my year abroad, I have casually accepted this and other, less superficial manifestations of our unequal relationship, simply as a facet of French culture.

And yet, when a disagreement arises, I have found that those with greater social status have had a distinct advantage over those with less. In my campus job, my supervisor has made sarcastic comments to other students and to me that the French would describe as “jokes to the second degree.” As students, however, we cannot necessarily respond in kind. More starkly, when discussing issues in the dormitory, the building manager has found it appropriate to disregard the opinions of some of my peers, on the grounds that they somehow “lack refinement and manners” or that they are in some way merely “amateurs.” In all, as is the case in most cultures, the French social hierarchy requires younger people to act deferentially towards their elders. However, it does not necessarily require older people to treat the younger generation with mutual respect. Rather, it allows for younger people to be treated as socially inferior.

As this description about French culture may go against France’s self-image as a country defined by its equality, I understand that this blog post may spark controversy. I would say that all of the ideas stated here are based on personal experiences in France and with French individuals. Still, I would welcome any comments below. Hopefully, through this kind of forum, we can add nuance, however small, to our collective understanding of France.

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