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A language professor from The University of Western Australia is researching remnants of French culture in ex-colonies throughout the world - and in the process, sampling croissants and coffee in unlikely places.

Professor Srilata Ravi from UWA and Professor Claude Couture from the University of Alberta will review the impact of French colonialism in North America, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. They hope to show that in many parts of the world, a French heritage has become a source of diversity and resistance to Anglo-American conformity.

"We think of French culture as being confined to France but it has survived in creative ways in many other places," Professor Ravi said. The pair intend to find out how forms of French culture survive and resist in these pockets, through language, literature, popular culture (cinema, music, sport), food and other social rituals. In their comparative study they hope to show the extent to which Francophone cultures have, over the last 200 years and more, evolved independently and innovatively away from the influence of the French metropolitan centre.

"Food cultures in Francophone societies outside France reflect ways in which these regions have incorporated ‘Frenchness'," Professor Ravi said. "For example, coffee drinking in urban Vietnam has a distinct ‘French flavour'. In Mauritius, despite the departure of the French in 1810 and the presence of the British for more than 150 years, the fact that two of the most widely read daily newspapers are still published in French demonstrates the remarkable resistance of a very distinct ‘Francophone Mauritian' identity to Anglophone homogeneity."

Places where French, as well as several varieties of Creole, are still spoken include North and sub-Saharan Africa, Mauritius and Reunion, regions of the North Atlantic including the Caribbean and Canada, and areas of the United States including Louisiana, parts of New England and Florida.

Professor Ravi, European Languages and Studies Discipline Chair and Convenor of French Studies, was educated at La Martinière in Calcutta - a school founded by a Frenchman Claude Martin, who arrived in the 18th century in India to fight for the French but changed sides to become a Major General in the British Army.

Media references

Professor Srilata Ravi (+61 8) 6488 2176
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs) (+61 8) 6488 5563 / (+61 4) 32 637 716