It is the kind of row the French adore, the kind of row, indeed, that could probably only happen in France: two distinguished defenders of the language of Molière slugging it out in the national press over the best way to stem its slow and seemingly inexorable decline.

In the red corner, Bernard Pivot, who for many years hosted France's main literary TV chat show and still presents its hugely popular annual dictation contest, Les Dicos d'Or; in the blue, Maurice Druon, venomous, arch-conservative octogenarian and former secretary general of the illustrious Académie Française.

"His great misfortune," wrote Mr Pivot of Mr Druon in Le Figaro this week, "is that he would like the French language to be in his image: starched, outdated, reactionary, egotistical, haughty, sinister...Under his pen, French is like a Louis XIV chandelier. How could today's youth want illumination from such an antiquity?"

But Mr Pivot, fulminated Mr Druon, was merely "an organiser of literary circuses, a presumptuous showman, a parader of dancing bears" who had promoted himself "the nation's chief primary school teacher" and committed the unpardonable sin of "stuffing his most recent dictation with slang".

The pair's vitriolic if eloquent spat is the latest expression of a debate that is increasingly dividing French writers and intellectuals: how best to ensure that their language survives intact the onslaught of English at home, and does not disappear altogether abroad.

For despite the existence of a veritable battery of protective laws and directives, and in defiance of the best efforts of bodies like the Académie, founded in 1634 to stand guard over the French language, and the General Commission on Terminology and Neology, which publishes acceptable Gallic alternatives for Anglo-Saxon interlopers, words like le parking, la start-up, la stock-option, le golden boy, le debriefing, le happy few, le show business and le email are now indisputably French.

Abroad, the language shows every sign of being driven out of the prestigious diplomatic arena. At the UN, where French is one of the official working languages, diplomats report an inexorable decline in its use over the past couple of decades, and things are even worse within Europe.

In 1986, according to EU fig ures, 58% of European commission documents were originally published in French, compared with just 30% last year. As for European council documents, only 28% were written in French last year, against 59% in English - whereas the two languages were level as recently as 1997, at about 42% each. The new mainly eastern European entrants joining this year, most of whose diplomats prefer English, will inevitably entail a further drastic reduction in the use of "la langue de Molière", French officials fear.

"What's at stake is the survival of our culture. It's a matter of life or death," Jacques Viot of the Alliance Française, which promotes French abroad, warned recently. For Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Mr Druon's boss at the Académie, "the defence of our language must be the major national cause of the new century".

For Mr Druon, a leading figure in the conservative camp, rigour and discipline are the answer. Blaming teachers, television, advertisers, the government, America and Mr Pivot for the decline, he wrote in a full-page article in Le Figaro last week that "a huge effort by the entire French nation" was required.

Politicians must make the protection of the language a plank of their electoral campaigns, Mr Druon wrote. Local and regional defence committees must be formed. Lax teaching methods must be overhauled, incompetent newspaper subeditors sacked, a television language watchdog formed, Anglicisms mercilessly rooted out and destroyed.

"The French no longer respect their language," said Mr Druon, "because they are no longer proud of themselves or of their country. They no longer love themselves, and, no longer loving themselves, they no longer love what was the instrument of their glory - their language."

For the reformist Mr Pivot, on the contrary, "a language must continually evolve, open itself up, enrich itself". Far from throwing up their hands in horror at Anglicisms, neologisms and slang, France's linguistic guardians must "encourage newcomers, welcome daring inventions". Rejecting and despising them will only mean that French comes to resemble Mr Druon, he concluded: "immobile, muffled, mothballed and sclerotic".