[Text on screen]: My Francophonie
[François Larocque]: My Francophonie…
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: My Francophonie is…
[François Larocque]: …it’s my identity.
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: …all the accents that I pick up on, in French.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: My Francophonie is international.
[Lucie Hotte]: It’s joyful. It’s something that I rejoice in, continuously.
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: Right now, it’s the creation of Portuguese words from French.
[François Larocque]: I think it’s also a wonderful passport to the whole world.
[Text on screen]: An expression in French that I like
[André Lecours]: Something I can say in a video, obviously…
[Lucie Hotte]: I often use expressions and my children don’t always understand me, so "it adds a bit of spice to our lives". There’s one!
[François Larocque]: “I still have crusts to eat.”
[Mwali Muray]: One of my favourite expressions is “That’s life!”
[André Lecours]: So, here I’m going to have to turn to my late father. He used to always say: "Give birth, so we can baptize!" It means we have to hurry up, we have to get things going.
[François Larocque]: “Tripping over the flowers in the carpet”. Another expression I really like.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: I really like the expression “rapailler”. It means to pick things up. There’s a Quebec poet, Gaston Miron, whom I really like, who wrote a collection of poems called “L’homme rapaillé”, and I like that image because it reminds us that we should always pick ourselves up.
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: Lately, what’s caught my attention is the word “cocotte”. I like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth, and I’ve adapted it into Portuguese to call my cat, for example. So, I say “minha cocotinha”. So there.
[Text on screen]: I celebrate the Mois de la Francophonie
[François Larocque]: I like to celebrate it by reflecting on the place of French in Canada and in Ontario.
[André Lecours]: One of my first reflexes when celebrating anything Francophone is to turn to food.
[François Larocque]: I also like to do it by drinking French wines. I think that’s a good way to celebrate the Mois de la Francophonie.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: I like to celebrate the Mois de la Francophonie with my colleagues, with my students, in the university context because I think that Francophone scientific culture is distinct and it’s worth highlighting its originality and its unique contributions.
[Text on screen]: The research stage that I like best
[François Larocque]: The beginning. I really like starting research projects. I also like to finish them, don’t get me wrong.
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: That first moment when constructing the object of study and analyzing the data.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: What I like best is creating a new research project, creating a new problematization, a new query.
Janaína Nazzari Gomes: It’s also when things start to click, click, click. And that’s a very powerful moment.
[Lucie Hotte]: I think I pretty much like them all. Even preparing a grant application, which most of my colleagues don’t like. I enjoy it.
[Mwali Muray]: Without a doubt, I like the interviews best.
[André Lecours]: The elucidation of a problem.
[Lucie Hotte]: When you get to the end, you’ve made the discoveries, and you’re like, “Look what I found!”
[Text on screen]: Research in French
[François Larocque]: Doing research in French speaks to me. I think it’s very important. And that we can do it alongside other researchers who are interested in other aspects of the Francophonie, that’s a unique privilege.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: Francophone scientific culture offers a different perspective and a different theoretical viewpoint to better understand society. So, for me, it’s essential to cultivate this diversity and to support research in French.
[Lucie Hotte]: If we Francophones stop doing research in French, French will become a folk language, a language of intimacy, of family and friends, and it will no longer be a language of knowledge.
[Janaína Nazzari Gomes]: Research in French does not only depend on people who have French as their mother tongue. It depends on everyone who has chosen French to share their scientific knowledge. And so, it necessarily involves people who do not live in countries or regions where French is an official language. Like me, for example, who’s from Brazil.
[Stéphanie Gaudet]: It’s through networks that research is carried out, that projects are imagined, that teams are developed, and that we’re able to publish. It’s also about supporting the places of publication; the journals.
[André Lecours]: There are studies that show that the language used at the doctoral level has a great deal of influence on the language that researchers use in their research afterwards. So having doctoral students who do their courses in French, who write their thesis in French, as we have many, obviously, here at the University of Ottawa, I think that’s crucial.
[Mwali Muray]: Although it may seem difficult at times, it is so worth it. We’ve all gone through it. Truly, it’s a path that can lead to a really great career.
[Lucie Hotte]: By doing research in French, I’m proving to my students, and to my colleagues, that it’s possible to do it, and do it well, and that it’s possible to be recognized for this research that was carried out in French.
[Mwali Muray]: Research in French benefits our French-speaking community and benefits French-speaking researchers. So, dive in, take it on, and it will do you good. Best of luck!
