French : from Dialect to Standard

Perhaps the Revolution's greatest contribution to the diffusion of the standard in France lies in fact in its rhetoric, in his formulation of the new ideology of the standard. It is paradoxical that since the Revolution of 1789 the French state has sought in the name of democracy and egalitarism to impose a standard variety which hab been crystallised under the "ancien régime" as a hallmark of class distinction. This contradiction has done nothing to weaken the ideology of the standard in France. It is probably the reverse which is true: on to a stock of beliefs about the elegance, precision, logicality, universality, etc., of the standard variety inherited from the "ancien régime", were grafted new political connotations associating this variety with national identity and libertarian values. Since French was the language of Reason, it bacame mandatory for people who wanted to be considered reasonable and truly French to speack French 'correctly".