[LINK] "Nous sommes Charlie"

[rfmcdonald]

Language Log's Geoffrey K. Pullum explores the meaning of "Je suis Charlie", and much else besides.

The actual allusion, Florent Guillaume points out to me, may very well be to the phrase "Nous sommes tous Américains", the title of a front-page editorial in Le Monde editorial after 9/11/2001 (see this article for details).

Linguistically, Je suis Charlie is unlike I'm Spartacus in one respect: it's ambiguous. The verb être ("be") and the verb suivre ("follow") happen to share the first-person singular present tense form suis, so Je suis Charlie can be read either as the mostly intended defiant moi aussi solidarity claim (I am Charlie too, and if you attack the magazine Charlie Hebdo you attack me), or the much less dramatic "I follow Charlie." I suppose the two meanings could be intended simultaneously, but it is surely the first that predominates.

The ambiguity is only there in the first-person singular. If we at Language Log wanted to say "We are Charlie", taking the side of Charlie Hebdo rather than the side of the cold-blooded killers who slaughtered the staff at the magazine's morning editorial conference, the French would be Nous sommes Charlie, and it would mean only "We are Charlie", not "We follow Charlie."

All official Muslim commentary on the Paris massacre has voiced shock and disapproval, but BBC Radio 4 interviewed a couple of British Muslims who insist that nothing can justify insulting the prophet, so the editorial staff and cartoonists in Paris brought their fate upon themselves. This is really rather shocking. The people who hold these views truly miss the point of the kind of society we have in countries like France, Britain, and America. It is simply not negotiable for us whether people should be free to express unpopular or even offensive views, linguistically or artistically: unless very substantial arguments can be given that harm will ensue (you don't get to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or threaten someone with death), you should be free to hold whatever opinions you have come to and express them in any way you wish.