The Académie de la Carpette anglaise, which may be translated as the "English Doormat Academy" (the word carpette means both "rug" and "fawner"), is a French organisation that awards an annual prize to "members of the French élite who distinguish themselves by relentlessly promoting the domination of the English language over the French language in France and in European institutions." Whether admired or despised for its tongue-in-cheek rhetoric, the Academy has captured the attention of many in the French-speaking world who genuinely fear that the growing pervasiveness of English will lead to the decline and ultimate demise of French.
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The Academy was created in 1999 by a group of four French-language associations. In 2001 a second award was introduced to spotlight "key figures and constituent bodies among the European and international nomenklatura who actively conspire to promote the use of English within European and international institutions". As one member of the Academy put it, its aim is "to reward all those obscure geniuses (...) who are only too ready to say: 'Welcome to our dearly beloved invaders!' as Ceramix proudly proclaimed in the album Asterix and the Big Fight." Like the Ig Nobel Prize, the English Doormat Award heaps ridicule on its recipients.
Winners of the English Doormat Award
Winners of the special Jury Award
1Albeit exaggeratedly, as Rwanda never dropped French as an official language and also never left La Francophonie.