Good Afternoon everyone.
I would like to take a moment to congratulate the Edith Piaf class of 2008 – and to recognize all of your achievements, and to express what an honor it is to be speaking on the behalf of such a talented, diverse and accomplished group of individuals.  

Speaking on behalf of all students present, I would like to extend our appreciation and thanks to the French faculty.  It is through their dedication to teaching and their talent for cultivating a passion for French language and culture in their students, that the French program at URI has become internationally renown.

“To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing”– Edith Piaf.

Now, despite the fact that I am speaking to you in my native Rhode Island, in English, my native language, and hopefully you will understand me; delivering this speech on the French language is what I consider to be simultaneously the most natural and most difficult task. While there are an endless number of things to say about the language, literature, and culture of the francophone world, one always runs the risk of omission.

However, there is one specific concept that I would like to speak to today - that is the concept of living between two languages.  Living between two languages is a complex reality that many here today have had the privilege, and sometimes frustration of experiencing personally. What I mean by “living between two languages” is that, by learning another language and immersing oneself in a foreign culture ultimately leads to a realization of who we are outside, in-between, and through language. 

Rather than expressing the external world and our relation therein, the initially painful experience of parting with one’s mother tongue leads one to forge a dialogue of the self, to re-think ourselves through and beyond language, and by extension, to live beyond tradition, beyond convention, beyond restriction.

I have a tendency toward the abstract; so let me explain what I mean by this…

I would like to share with you one of my favorite French expressions. It is always appropriate, timely, and incredibly expressive, as well as being relatively easy to pronounce. 

Ca va is the French equivalent of “how’s it going”.  Ca va serves as both interrogation and response, thus it is not uncommon to hear a round of ca va’s going back and forth.  This can go on for a while.  Upon my arrival in France, this small phrase served as a point of initiation and integration to French culture and society, at a time when my expressing myself proved to be extremely challenging.   I can remember a couple of conversations, mostly with other foreign exchange students, but the French cannot be excluded from this either, which were composed primarily of two or three ca-vas, enthusiastic smiling and head nodding… and then about three minutes later, another round of ca vas.
 
Eventually we reached a stage in our linguistic development where we could debate the finer aspects of life, such as food, music, literature and politics.  But, it all began with that fundamental enthusiasm of the “ça va.”

There is always a point at which we are limited by language, and yet the wanting to express, the drive to express, to be able to convey ourselves and partake in discourse.  It is in our attempts as life long students of French that we are always between two languages – attempting to transcend and bridge that vast valley of silence and inexpression that is the language divide.

For me, as well as many of us here, learning French has been so much more than an exercise in translation, but a veritable re-conceptualization of who we are, what we wish to convey, and how a passion for expression and understanding has transformed us.  To exceed the limits and boundaries of expression in search of understanding is everything.  And yet we are never far from our origin.  As Piaf said “I am never far from Paris.”