The French Foil and the Valorization of "Universal" American Values.

Drawing from a variety of disciplines, this paper examines some of the tensions reflected and reproduced by the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of critical interpretation of accounts of the global spread of English published in five American-owned prestige press publications--the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Part of a 275-text data pool generated for a forthcoming dissertation, the texts discussed and analyzed in this paper wrap the story of the global hegemony of English around Anglo-Franco competition and rivalry. They embrace what the author calls the French Foil narrative, or a story about the global hegemony of English that pits English against French, the United States against France, and Americans against "the" French. Generally, the story told is one in which English is triumphing over French because of its superior status as a popular language. This anti-elitist plot line relies in particular on the consummate antagonist of American populism, the French intellectual. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]