Still, Philippe Blanchet, a sociolinguist at Rennes 2 University, in the French region of Brittany, who has been tracking discrimination based on language for decades, feels there’s been some progress in the last decade. “People now regularly react when someone is attacked or discriminated” against due to their accent, he says. Notably, Jean Castex became the French prime minister in 2020, despite his striking Gascon accent (an accent that had historically been mocked and excluded from the halls of power).
