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dissertation entitled

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LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS AND THE PERCEPTION OF REGIONAL
LANGUAGE IN MODERN FRANCE

BY

Lawrence Allen Kuiper

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance and Classical Languages

1999

ABSTRACT
LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS AND THE PERCEPTION OF REGIONAL
LANGUAGE IN MODERN FRANCE
BY

Lawrence Allen Kuiper

This dissertation examines the social evolution of
French and its changing relationship with other languages
(or dialects) within France. More specifically, we explore
literature as a trace of the development of language
perception in the emergence of a distinct French society.
We then empirically investigate the present situation of
language perception among respondents in Paris, the center
of the French norm. While linguistic policy and language
institutions are discussed, the historical overview section
focuses primarily on literature.

Because of its status as both socio-cultural artifact
and as linguistic evidence (in other words, as both creator
of linguistic perception and repository of linguistic
exempla) literature is a fitting object for the historical
section of this study. Literary works helped create and
reinforce the image of standard French as the prestige
dialect and the accompanying image that other languages
within metropolitan France were linguistically inferior and

that speakers of these varieties had cognitive defitziencieS-

Over time, the complicity of literature in the maintenance
of linguistic norms, whether prescriptive or social, became
secondary to the literary artist's need to create new forms.
The generic and creative diversity of French literature
since the mid-nineteenth century make tracing a coherent
linguistic perception of regional variety less feasible than
with earlier works. In recent times, the state of regional
linguistic perception has become less clear, and is best
examined instead through an empirical study. The findings
of this study, conducted in 1995, comprise the second part
of this dissertation. Using a newly-designed model for
characterizing the perception of dialects, the second part
of this dissertation analyzes interviews of speakers in
Paris. More than simply a reiteration of the perceptions
outlined in the literary survey, this empirical study adds
detail and depth, while also illustrating that the monument
of a dominant dialect's power over dominated languages can

take at least as long to dismantle as it did to build.

This dissertation is dedicated to Kenneth Kuiper and Mair

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

My greatest thanks go out to Professors Laurence Porter and
Dennis Preston, without whom this dissertation would never
have been started. It would not have been finished without
the moral support, inspiration or direct intervention of
some other special people, whose names I shall print here
(in alphabetical order) and whose kindness I shall always
recognize with gratitude: Anita Alkhas, Karen Bouwer, Wayne
Cooley, Susan Gass, Kenneth Kuiper, Natalie Lefkowitz,
Patricia Lunn, James Mileham, William Nichols, Albert
Valdman, the 75 Parisian respondents, and the approximately

700 students in my classes over the last ten years.

 

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

PART

PART

ONE: REGIONAL LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC NORMS IN
LITERATURE: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . 11
INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ll
.LINGUISTIC PERCEPTION IN LITERATURE: PORTRAYAL AND
CHARACTERIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
LINGUISTIC NORM AND LITERARY NORM . . . . . . . 21
CHAPTER ONE: REGIONAL DIALECTS IN LITERATURE OF THE
MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER TWO: REGIONAL LANGUAGE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
FRENCH LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
CHAPTER THREE: THE RISE OF THE NOVEL, THE RURAL/URBAN
DICHOTOMY AND LANGUAGE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
FRENCH LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
CHAPTER FOUR: LITERATURE AND REGIONAL LANGUAGE AFTER
THE GREAT REVOLUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

CONCLUSION TO PART ONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

TWO: PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY: PRESENT-DAY PARISIAN
VIEWS OF REGIONAL LANGUAGE VARIATION . . . . . . . 112

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

CHAPTER ONE: THE STUDY
SECTION ONE: THE TEST GROUP . . . .
SECTION TWO: THE TASKS
PERCEPTUAL MAPPING
THE RATING TASKS . . . . . .
DEGREE OF DIFFERENCE RATING
CORRECTNESS RATING
PLEASANTNESS RATING
TAPED INTERVIEWS
CHAPTER TWO: THE RESULTS
SECTION 1: PERCEPTUAL MAPPING
SOME EXTREME CASES
THE COMPOSITE MAP
SECTION 2: CORRECTNESS RATINGS
SECTION 3: DEGREE OF DIFFERENCE RATINGS

SECTION 4: PLEASANTNESS RATINGS

SECTION 5: BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE TAPED

INTERVIEWS AND MAP LABELS

BURGUNDY, AUVERGNE, MASSIF CENTRAL,

SAVOIE/JURA AND NORMANDY: THE "RURAL"

REGIONS

BRITTANY

PARIS

THE SOUTHWEST

123

123

127

127

127

134

135

135

136

136

136

136

138

143

151

155

160

160

165

166

169

THE NORTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

ALSACE AND LORRAINE . . . . . . . . . . 176

PROVENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

THE STRENGTH OF THE NORM . . . . . . . . 185

CHAPTER THREE: CHARACTERIZING THE NORM . . . . . 188
SECTION 1: DESCRIPTIONS OF THE STANDARD . . . 188

SECTION 2: THE CORRECTNESS PHASE - DISSENTERS

194

CONCLUSION TO PART TWO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
LINGUISTIC PERCEPTION AND LINGUISTIC EXPERTISE . . 204
(LANGUAGE) PERCEPTION AND (SOCIAL) KNOWLEDGE . . . 210
NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
APPENDIX A: COLLECTION DEVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
APPENDIX B: FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
APPENDIX C: TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

INTRODUCTION

This dissertation is divided into two parts. Each part
'has its own detailed introduction, and then is divided into
smaller chapters. Part one examines the social evolution of
the French language and its changing relationship with other
languages within France. More specifically, we explore
literature as a trace of the development of language
perception in the emergence of a distinct French society.

In Part two, we empirically investigate the present
situation of language perception among respondents in Paris
— the center of the French norm.1

Although linguistic policy and language institutions
are discussed, part one focuses primarily on literature.
Because of its status as both socio-cultural artifact and as
linguistic evidence — as both creator of linguistic
perception and repository of linguistic exempla - literature
is a fitting object for the historical section of this
study.

Like most European languages, French has historically
evolved along two lines: 1) as a language of nationalism and
2) as a language of nationismz. .A nationalist language is
one that serves its speakers not only as a communication
device, but also as a marker of ethnic and cultural

distinctiveness - “not only a vehicle for the history of a

 

 

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nationality, but a part of history itself” (Fasold, 1984, p.
3). Nationalist perceptions of language tend to be quite
powerful because they are bound to the emotionally charged
concept of origin and to nostalgia for that origin.
Preservation of the nationalist language seems a natural
goal of its speakers, who View it as an important part of
their identity. The cultural instinct of language
preservation becomes a powerful tool in politics, because
leaders can use it to justify expansion of national borders.
French began being a nationalist language — a symbol of
ethnicity and historical lineage - in the sixteenth century
at the latest.

During the sixteenth century, French was also
establishing itself as a language of nationism. The demands
of nationism on language are practical — facilitating the
smooth function of government and the economy by providing a
tool for communication. Nationist goals can often interfere
with the nationalist purposes of other languages. The need
for simple and efficient communication often dictates a
government’s linguistic policy. If measures aimed at
meeting these practical needs are perceived as a threat to
the survival of another language under the same
jurisdiction, civil unrest can result. Conversely,

government policies often confound nationalist and nationist

criteria in creating linguistic policy. They perceive
dialects or sociolects as a threat to the supremacy of the
dominant language, on which hegemony depends, and can react
strongly with decrees and policies against the use of
certain languages. As France expanded, nationist
rationalizations added the force of practicality to the
fervor of nationalism. The combination was deadly for
languages in regions politically dominated by the French
Crown and later the French Republic. France found itself in
a diglossic situation where standard French became the
universal prestige (or ‘H') language and regional dialects
became grouped together as so many non-prestige (or ‘L’)
varieties.3

Portrayals (and perceptions) of French and regional
dialects corresponded to the practical needs of nationism
and the growing voice of nationalism. Literary works helped
create and reinforce the image of French as the prestige
variety and the accompanying image of other languages
(Provencal, Catalan, Basque, Breton, Franco—Provencal,
Picard, Limousin, etc.) within French territory - that they
were linguistically inferior and that they reflected the
cognitive inferiority of their speakers.

Literature historically participates in the

establishment and maintenance of linguistic norms. This

relationship is more or less Visible in a literary work
depending on the historical sociolinguistic circumstances,
and on the genre of the work. Linguistic standardization is
a complex process depending on a variety of social,political
and economic circumstances. The story of standardization is
recorded in scholarly grammars or important legal documents
written in or about the emerging prestige-bearing dialect.
Literature, however, is perhaps the most visible agent in
language standardization. Creative literature not only
accompanies, but also participates and leads in the process
of language standardization. In the early stages of
standardization especially, literature actively participates
in the process."Literary heritage” is among the nine rubrics
listed by Ferguson and expounded on by Fasold (1984, 36-38)
for explaining differentiation of ‘H' from ‘L' varieties in
diglossia. But literature is more a trace of linguistic
attitudes and perceptions than other sources are. Grammars
and legal documents describe and define the position and
nature of the standard, while literature portrays and
characterizes standard language’s relationship to non—
standard varieties.

Creative literature from a given period never fully
represents linguistic practice from the same period. During

the early period of French standardization — from the 13th

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century stabilization of grammar, through the subsequent
codification of grammatical rules to the 18th century
mythologization of the French standard - literature as a
form of communication between writers and readers was a
minority experience. Only with the educational reforms of
the nineteenth century and the increasing literacy that
resulted did literature become a form of mass communication.
Up until that time, literary works addressed a fairly
definite group of readers or spectators who often shared
their goals and viewpoints.

Poets in the sixteenth century, like Joachim DuBellay
and the members of the Pléiade group, were simultaneously
involved in three crucial projects of standardization:
establishment of the new norm’s prestige, codification of
its grammar, and artistic creation with it. DuBellay's
Défense et illustration de la langue francoise — as much
litterary manifesto as linguistic declaration — combines
these three phases into one coherent whole. He holds that
the enrichment and vitalization of French relies on the
ingenuity of poets. The Defense can be seen as having the
nationalist motive of establishing and preserving French as
a prestige variety to rival and replace Latin. The
illustration extols the possibilities of creating in French,

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invention: French can easily enrich itself by borrowing
words it may lack from Latin and Greek, the two languages
DuBellay thinks French should supplant as prestige language.
To someone knowing of the eventual dominance of French - and
the resultant denigration of other dialects — DuBellay’s
argument in favor of French has a strangely egalitarian
ring:

[...] les langues ne sont nées d’elles mesmes en
facon d’herbes, racines et arbres: les unes
infirmes et debiles en leurs espéces: les autres
saines et robustes, et plus aptes a porter le faiz
des conceptions humaines: mais toute leur vertu
est née au monde du vouloir et arbitre des
mortelz. Cela est une grande rayson pourqouy on
ne doit ainsi louer une langue et blamer l’autre:
veu qu’ils viennent toutes d’une mesme source et
origine: c'est la faintaisie des hommes: et ont
été formees d’un mesme jugement a une mesme fin:
c'est pour signifier entre nous les conceptions et
intelligences de l'esprit [[...]languages are not
born of themselves like grasses, roots and trees:
some unhealthy and weak: others healthy and
strong, and more apt for embodying human
conceptions: but their whole virtue is born of the
want and will of mortals. Therefore this is a
great reason not to praise one language and
disparage another: since they all come from one
and the same source and origin: and were formed by
the same judgment with the same goal: that is to
signify between us the conceptions and
intelligence of the mind] (DuBellay, 47-48)

DuBellay's stance on the basic equality of languages would
not be maintained as a theme among later grammarians, nor
would his insistence on the necessity to borrow words from

other languages to enrich French.

 

 

 

 

 

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As French gained prestige, the urgency to maintain it
as the norm diminished. Since the middle ages, France has
gradually evolved from being a “multi-national state” toward
being a “multi-ethnic nation” (see Fasold 1984, 2—3). For
language this evolution means that speakers of languages
other than French have — with a few notable exceptions such
as the Corsican and Basque separatist movements — shed any
aspirations of creating a separate nation based on
linguistic (or any other) criteria. The supremacy of French
was established gradually. Authors writing in French during
the early years of French standardization and seeking
immortality through their works must have perceived
preservation and expansion of French as their self-
interested duty. Le beau style, le bon usage and expanding
the dominance of French were common causes.

As the durability of French was gradually ensured,
literary authors turned increasingly to creating
esthetically pleasing works, with less regard for the
preservation of the language. As originality (or novelty)
became the earmark of creative genious, the goals of
literary creation gradually diverged from those of
linguistic purism. For example, the prescriptivist Abel
Hermant, writer of a bi-weekly column on linguistic usage

for Le Temps from 1929 to 1939 and principal compiler for

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the Grammar of the Académie francaise, uses no author from
later than the eighteenth century as an authority for his
pronouncements. Hermant, himself an author, obviously
thought that writers since the revolution had abandoned some
fundamental part of the language.

While preservation of a pure norm may have preoccupied
many authors less over time, a dynamic relationship has
persisted between standardization and littérateurs.
Literature still often provides examples for grammarians’
rules and illustrates usage in dictionaries. As part of the
educational canon, the literary works have helped form a
generalized perception of what separates ‘good’ from ‘bad’
French.

But with the ambiguous standing of modern literature in
relation to the linguistic norm, literary works since the
middle of the nineteenth century are no longer reliable
records to trace the linguistic perception of their (vastly
larger) readership or of their authors. This difficulty is
amplified when the focus is on perceptions of regional
variation, since recent authors in French — when they have
shown a reaction to normative language at all - have done so
using socially rather than regionally marked language.
Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le métro, and the more recent

writings of Frédéric Dard (under the pseudonym of San

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Antonio) are two notable examples of imitations of a
socially-marked spoken register in literary works. Authors
who have chosen to write in a regional dialect tell us
little about the dominant perception of language in that
region. Instead they indicate a movement to revive that
language by renewing its literary tradition — certainly a
valid stance, but one that sheds little light on current
French speakers' perceptions of regional language varieties.

The first part of this dissertation, then, will be a
historical overview of the situation of regional language
varieties in works by selected French authors. Part one is
divided into sections defined by historical periods.
Historical periodization tends to be arbitrary, and ours is
no exception. In part one of this dissertation the chapter
divisions begin with the middle ages and the sixteenth
century, then one chapter for each century up to and
including the nineteenth century. Works have been chosen
based on the presence of a clear portrayal of regional
language within them.

Part two of this dissertation is an empirical study
whose goal is to establish a coherent picture of the
perception of regional language in contemporary France. The
study, conducted by the author in 1995 uses a newly designed

model for characterizing the perception of dialects. The

 

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study examines responses to questions and interviews of
speakers in Paris — the economic and cultural center of
France. More than simply a reiteration of the perceptions
outlined by the literary survey, this empirical study adds
detail and depth, while also illustrating that the monument
of a dominant language's power over dominated languages can

take at least as long to dismantle as it did to build.

10

Part one: Regional Langgago and Linguistic Norms in
Litgraturg: A.Historical Overview

INTRODUCTIQE To PART ONE

Quantitative sociolinguistics has mainly related
language performance in individuals or groups to their
social (age, gender, economic, etc.) status. Scholars of
literature, on the other hand, have most often viewed “text
[as...] an autonomous verbal structure which has been
severed from the process of communication” (Fowler, 180).
In other words, literary works lie outside the interactive
framework that guides sociolinguistic analysis. Historical
linguistics has similarly focused on describing language
change, rather than explaining the extra-linguistic reasons
for such changes.4

One current of sociolinguistics has focused on the
unspoken attitudes of speakers toward dialects and
sociolects. Ryan and Giles (1982) and Labov (1972) have
shown how linguistic variation often translates into
judgments about the character, cognitive ability or social
mobility of speakers. Gumperz (1982) has shown that
culturally differing interpretation of certain prosodic
features can lead to misunderstanding of message, while
variation in cultural definition of various linguistic

settings can lead to conflicting strategies between

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participants, and can often cause speakers to mistrust the
motives of their interlocutors. Most work on language
attitude has concentrated on specific linguistic items or
patterns, and speaker reaction to these specific variants.
Such language attitude studies explore the unconscious
influence of linguistic variation on the social and cultural

pre- (and mis-)conceptions of members of a speech community.

Studies that concentrate on linguistic perception
contrast with such attitude studies because they attempt to
discover linguistic viewpoints that are intact when no
specific linguistic input is present for judgment. In other
words, instead of trying to answer the question, "What
reaction does linguistic item X provoke in members the
speech community?", perceptual studies ask, "How (according
to what criteria, with what linguistic features in mind, if
any) do members of a speech community mentally organize the
linguistic space around them?"

Since they always (implicitly or explicitly) compare
language varieties, linguistic attitudes and perceptions
inevitably base themselves on some form of normative
language. In the early stages of language standardization,
grammarians write rules favoring the use of the socio-

politically dominant language variety. Very often, the link

12

 

 

   

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between political power and language dominance remains just
below the surface. It is occasionally, however, quite
explicit. For example Antonio de Nebrija published what is
considered to be the first grammar of Castilian in 1492, the
year in which Fernando and Isabel, the "Reyes Catélicos,"
finally took Granada from the last Moorish ruler. In the
same year, they offered Moors and Jews the option of
converting, and expelled those who were unwilling to do so
from Spain. Nebrija was writing at a time when the Spanish
state was emerging from the medieval linguistic situation in
which related but distinguishable languages, perhaps more
accurately described as Iberoromance dialects of Latin
(Galician, Leonese, Asturian, Aragonese, Catalan, Castilian,
Valencian), were spoken all over the northern half of the
peninsula, and other Romance dialects had grown up in
contact with the Arabic spoken in the southern areas
dominated by the Moors. When Ferdinand of Aragon (and
Navarra, Catalonia and Valencia) and Isabel of Castile (and
Leon) married in 1469, their union brought together a great
deal of territory, and their defeat of the Moors in 1492
paved the way for a modern state. Nebrija understood that
this new state should have only one language, and he
dedicated his grammar to Queen Isabel in a prologue

containing these words (with updated orthography):

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Una cosa hallo y saco por conclusion muy cierta:
que siempre la lengua fue compafiera del imperio"
[One thing I find and most truly conclude: that
language was always the companion of empire],

Que despues que vuestra alteza metiese debajo de
su yugo muchos pueblos barbaros y naciones de
peregrinas lenguas, y con el vencimiento aquellos
tenian necesidad de recibir las leyes que el
vencedor pone al vencido y con ellas nuestra
lengua, entonces por esta mi arte podrian venir en
el conocimiento de ella como ahora nosotros
aprendemos el arte de la gramética latina para
aprender el latin [That after Your Highness put
beneath her yoke many barbarian peoples and
nations of foreign tongues, and that at their
defeat they had a need to receive the laws that
the victor imposes on the vanquished, and with
them our language, so by this my art they could
come into the knowledge of it, as we now learn the
art of Latin grammar in order to learn
Latin](Nebrija, 2-10 Patricia Lunn,
trans.)Although French grammarians of about a
century later did not so explicitly link political
dominance and grammar rules, the relationship
remained a rather obvious subtext of the
linguistic struggles between Paris and the
provincial parlements.5 As France expanded,
French monarchs - particularly Louis XIV —
repeatedly cited language as justification for
their conquests (see Lodge, 1993, 1994, Achard and
Kibbee).

No matter what the motivations of grammarians they have

seldom displayed knowledge of real language performance.

Rather,

they arbitrarily make rules from some the linguistic

performance of a select group, while at other times using

language performance as a counter-example to what they feel

should actually be said. The effect that grammarians and

the often quasi-governmental language-regulating

organizations such as L’Académie Francaise have on

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linguistic performance appears in the form of retrospective
corrections of pronunciation or grammar because of
preservationist spellings or oft-repeated but misinterpreted
grammar rules.5 The forces of standardization may have a
greater effect on language attitudes and perceptions than on
actual performance. Literature may offer the clearest
historical trace of linguistic perceptions and attitudes
since it often attempts to portray or characterize, but
hardly ever to prescribe linguistic performance overtly.
Literature more or less consciously reflects the
sociolinguistic perceptions of its author, while also
conveying those of its audience or readership.

Linguistip perception in literature: portrayal and

characterization

There is a strong historical relationship between
linguistic and literary norms. Critics have often judged
literary works based on linguistic standards. Literary
works in turn often serve as models for the norm. Because
of its pivotal role in establishment and maintenance of
linguistic norms, literature both strongly influences and is
influenced by linguistic perceptions. In this chapter we
examine the historical relationship between linguistic and
literary standards and explore how French literature reveals

perceptions of regionally and socially marked French.

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Exploring texts by well-known authors, we shall show how the
development of standard French corresponds to the portrayal
and occurrence of regionally and socially marked language in
these texts.6 Literature in this study shall be defined
traditionally - as a body of drama, poetry and fiction
generally regarded as the artistic component of language and
as an object of scholarly study. Such an institutional
definition of literature is indeed debatable. But in the
study of language perception, the social and academic
institutions that help establish these perceptions are often
in focus. Literature participates in and benefits from the
growth and dominance of the language in which it is written.
Canonical literature often reflects the historical situation
of the language, and the supposed linguistic perception of
its readership (or audience in the case of drama).
Furthermore, the literature that dominates the present
educational canon in France models normative language, and
thus continues to influence language perception. While the
imposition of French as the national language may have many
deleterious facets, we shall View any complicity of
literature in these efforts as a generally value-neutral
reflection of the historical sociolinguistic situation.

The works examined in this part of the dissertation

have been chosen because they portray regional language in

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one of two important ways: as dialect or sociolect
portrayal or as characterization of non—standard language
and speakers. Dialect portrayal is the insertion of
regional (or social) linguistic features into reported
speech or narration. Characterization of dialect and
sociolect entails narrative descriptions of the
pleasantness, correctness or social acceptability of various
language varieties.

Of course, dialects surface in many early French
manuscripts, starting with the well-known Serments de
Strasbourg - the earliest known document written in French.
Study and criticism of regional dialect in medieval texts
generally focus on decoding texts. Dialect use is based on
the author's pragmatic need for expression using available
lexical items. Dialect use in these early texts can hardly
be considered “portrayal,” since during the Middle Ages many
dialects were competing for dominance — there was no
backdrop of linguistic standard with which dialect protrayal
could contrast.

By the sixteenth century standardization and promotion
of the French language became consciously linked to literary
movements. Poets wrote treatises glorifying the beauty of
the French language, and as their newfound ideal language

took shape, it made non-standard local dialects targets of

17

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criticism. Montaigne among others openly ridicules the
dialects spoken in his own region of Bordeaux.7 Rabelais
chooses to portray scholarly incompetence and pretension in
the person of a Sorbonne pupil from the Limousin.8 His
écolier limousin is an early literary example of provincial
boorishness mocked.

As French boundaries became more stable in the three
subsequent centuries, regional identity was perceived
increasingly as ethnicity and decreasingly as nationality.
Regional boundaries in France that had been perceived as
national and political were now seen as ethnic and
administrative. Like the expanding French state, the French
language was elevated to a level of higher importance than
any regional varieties. A once multiplicitous linguistic
landscape developed into a binary opposition — language was
either proper French, or not.

With the exceptions of Corsica and the Basque region,
nationalistic and political aspirations of French regions
perished with the Revolution and the Napoleonic
centralization.” Though movements have arisen to preserve
regional ethnic heritages (e.g., in Provence, Brittany) an
increasingly mobile population has obscured ethnic
boundaries once clearly demarcated geographically by

customs, language, architecture, etc. Accordingly, now

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social norms — as much or more than geographical location —
determine linguistic prestige. The older regional ethnic
distinctions have largely blended to form a socially-charged
urban/rural dichotomy. Nobles flocked to Paris under the
later Bourbon kings to discard their regional identity.
Paris and its linguistic norm became synonymous with social
mobility. The derogatory label “provincial" denigrates
those who do not comprehend the unwritten rules and tastes
of refined (Parisian) society. Parisians indiscriminately
stigmatize being provincial, without reference to any
particular province.

A subtext of this part (part one) is how judgments
contained in the characterization and portrayal of regional
language increasingly identify socio-political (rather than
geographical or cultural) differences. Noel du Fail's (c.
1520 -1591) works foreshadow the use of the pastoral as
social critique — he illustrates the tacit alliance of
country nobility and peasantry and favorably compares this
model to the dominant and corrupt Court and the rising
bourgeoisie in Paris. Moliere, a Parisian writing for the
court, often equates provincial status with social standing.
In Mbnsieur de Pourceaugnac language use functions as
character portrayal along both regional and social axes.

Marivaux’s Le Paysan parvenu illustrates social climbing as

19

geographical movement. An important subtext for Marivaux’s
narrator-protagonist’s success is his linguistic
adaptability —- recognizing his own linguistic deficiencies
and adjusting to meet Parisian standards. In George Sand’s
pastoral novels, rural culture is a setting for social
'commentary.9 The ills of urban society are cured by
simplicity - an intellectual return to nature. The common
sense of Sand’s characters is rooted in their symbiotic
relationship with their rural surroundings. This rural
simplicity is reflected in their language, but even more so
in their statements about language. Sand’s Utopian view —
meant as a model for the transformation of society - also
reflects nostalgia for a rapidly evaporating rural society.
Balzac - in La Maison Nucingen and Les Paysans — is less
generous in his portrayal of peasants and rural speakers.
He displays a city-dweller's mistrust and linguistic disdain
for the rural folk he portrays.

Both Balzac and Sand represent the final phase in
French literature where a coherent picture of regional
language perception can be seen. Although authors that
followed them may have produced images of regional language,
they become increasingly difficult to distinguish from
images of socially-marked language. The distinction between

the cultural and the socio-economic, already somewhat

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muddled in Sand and Balzac, becomes nearly non-existent
after them - and it is the same with characterizations of
language. Certainly some complicity between literature and
linguistic norms remained after their time, but the traces
of this relationship start to disappear along with any clear

definitions of either literature or norms.

Linguistic norm and literary norm

In its own statutes, the Académie acknowledges the
close relationship between literature and the maintenance of
linguistic norms.

L'institution de l'Académie francaise ayant pour
objet de travailler a épurer et a fixer la langue,
a en eclaircir les difficultés et a en maintenir
le caractere et les principes, elle s'occupera
dans ses séances particuliéres de tout ce qui peut
concourir a ce but; des discussions sur tout ce
qui tient a la grammaire, a la rhétorique, a la
poétique, des observations critiques sur les
beautés et les défauts de nos écrivains, a l'effet
de préparer des éditions de nos auteurs
classiques, et particuliérement la composition
d'un nouveau dictionnaire de la langue, seront
l'objet de ses travaux habituels. [The institution
of the Académie francaise having the object of
working to purify and fix the language, to clarify
its difficulties and to maintain its character and
principles, will in these particular meetings be
involved in anything that can coincide with this
goal; discussions on all that concerns grammar,
rhetoric, poetics, critical observations on the
beauties and faults of our writers, the
preparation of editions of our classic authors,
and particularly the composition of a new
dictionary of the language will be the subject of
its habitual work.] (Caput, 12)

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According to this 1816 statute, linguistic codification
entails criticism of literary works and the creation of a
classical canon. Literary creation is a forum for
(positive and negative) examples of acceptable usage. From
its inception the Académie has imposed its presence in
literary norms and style. The majority of the Académie
members who achieved lasting notoriety are literary
authors.10 The predominance of literary figures within the
Académie has made it a focal point for literary debate. Even
in the earlier stages of standardization, when the norm was
tied to a specific group of speakers literary use was seen
as a stamp of approval:
la parole qui se prononce est la premiere en ordre
et en dignité, puis que celle qui est écrite n'est
que son image [...] mais le consentement des bons
Auteurs est comme le sceau, ou une verification,
qui autorise le langage de la cour et qui marque
le bon Usage, et décide de celui qui est douteux
[the spoken word is first in order and dignity,
since the written is only its image [...] but the
consent of good authors is like the seal, or a
verification that authorizes the language of the
court and that marks proper Usage and decides
which Usage is questionable]. (Vaugelas)
When in succeeding generations the norm was placed outside
of USage and in the past, the only point of reference was
"l'image écrite de l'usage de cette époque. [...]
Le raffinement des auteurs classiques [devient] la
norme a imiter et a préserver, et en fait tout
naturellement la base de la grammaire normative

francaise [the written image of language use of
that period. [...] The refinement of the

22

classical authors [becomes] the norm to imitate

and preserve, and in fact very naturally the basis

of French normative grammar]. (Wolf, 110)
Linguistic norms and literary norms became the same
phenomenon, and writers are in the position of confronting
or conforming to prescriptivist linguistic constraints.
Although many authors have revolted against the norms of the
Académie while others have acquiesced, few have not somehow
reacted to its influence. One reaction was the creation of
new academies. The Goncourt brothers, for example, founded
a literary academy to offer an alternative to what they
perceived as a too conservative body. A youthful Marcel
Proust was involved in a farcical imitation of the academy
in which the newly elected members instead of accepting
their membership with a speech would do so "par une série de
grimaces [with a series of grimaces]" (Peter, 27).

The creation of new academies and mockery of the old
one does not, however, mark the decline of the common
association of literature to linguistic standard. Written
language had taken precedence over spoken since the standard
of bon usage was made historical rather than dependent on
current court usage. The only examples of proper usage were
written. The hegemony of the written has promoted authors

to the status of linguistic standard-bearer even while some

23

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of the French hold only "mépris et sarcasmes [spite and
sarcasme]" for the Académie (Caput, 4).11

Classical literary language serves not only as the
model for language standards, but has historically stood as
the model for literature in general and has remained quite
fixed relative to the changes in spoken language “[qui] font
en plus — pour citer Raymond Queneau -- que la langue
écrite (surtout la langue littéraire) est aujourd'hui pour
les Francais une langue étrangere [that moreover cause —
to quote Raymond Queneau — the written language (especially
literary language) to be a foreign language for French
people today] (Wolf, 110). The status of written or
literary language is therefore similar to many forms of
expert knowledge in a society: it is sanctioned by schools
as a model; since for most it is like a "foreign language",
it is impossible to master fully (thus unnattainable), its
definition is nebulous and dependent on the capricious
judgments of a class of individuals deemed qualified to
define it.

Literature, however, maintains a dual status in
relation to social judgments. On the one hand, literature
is a linguistic production. A literary work is a message
form like a newspaper article or a political speech. In

this role, literary production serves as a linguistic model.

24

Literature also has the status of art works. Middle class
consumers tend to prefer works sanctioned by legitimating
institutions, whereas upper-class readers choose works based

on the less democratic

mode d'acquisition le plus insensible et le plus
invisible, c'est-a-dire le plus ancien et le plus
précoce; c'est la ce qui fonde les invariants du
discours dominant et qui donne leur air
d'éternelle jeunesse a certains themes, pourtant
strictement situés et datés comme tous les
topiques du discours mondain sur le gout inné ou
sur la maladresse «des pédants» [most impalpable
and invisible mode of acquisition, that is the
oldest and most precocious; here is what founds
the invariants of dominant discourse and gives an
appearance of eternal youth to certain themes,
which are, however, strictly placed and dated like
all the topics of cultured discourse about innate
taste or the clumsiness of pedants. (Bourdieu, 79)

The system of cultural capital (described by Pierre Bourdieu
in La Distinction) is the system which perpetuates the
exclusivity of the intellectually elite social classes by
appraising art works based on cryptic criteria — thus
maintaining a differentiation between everyday tastes and
cultivated tastes. Accordingly, when particular literary
tastes are generalized to too large an audience, elite
tastes shift rather abruptly to new models. This tendency
is visible in the

deuxieme moitié du XVIIe siécle [ou] le

renforcement de l'autorité des mondains et de la

Cour, joint a la tendance des gens du monde a

devenir plus cultivés, réduit la distance entre
les doctes et les mondains, favorisant le

25

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développement d'une nouvelle espéce de lettrés,
incarnée par les Jésuites Rapin et surtout
Bouhours [second half of the seventeenth century
[when] the reinforcement of the authority of the
erudite and the socialites, together with the
tendency of people to become more cultured,
reduced the distance between the erudite and
socially distinguished classes, making conditions
favorable for a new kind of literate people,
exemplified by the Jesuits Rapin and especially
Bouhours. (Bourdieu 79)
Another example of this tendency for upper-class artistic
tastes to shift when they lose their distinctiveness from
popular tastes is the co—optation of the Romantic movement
by the French elite. Napoleon's regime found Romantic
individualism threatening to the democratic ideals of the
Revolution, and promoted enlightenment writers as basis for
political ideology. The beginning of Romanticism's
legitimated rise coincides with the Restoration, and it
reaches its apex in 1830 at the end of Bourbon Restoration
and the beginning of the July Monarchy. The surge of
Romantic literature following the fall of Napoleon comes not
simply from the coincidence of relative artistic freedom and
advantageous political climate. The quasi—canonization of
enlightenment authors during the revolutionary reign had
widely disseminated knowledge of these authors’ works. The
vast majority of the literate population had become familiar

with the works of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and

Rousseau. The time was ripe for a new vanguard of elite

26

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artistic taste. The individualist aesthetic of Romantic
authors made them perfect candidates to replace their
Enlightenment counterparts whose works represented the old
(and unacceptably common) political, social and by extension
cultural order. Many of the literary figures associated
with Romanticism (e.g., Nodier, Hugo, Vigny, Musset,
Chateaubriand, Lamartine) also became members of the
Académie. At the time of their admission to the Académie
these authors were known for genres other than the realist
novel and were therefore seen as relatively non-threatening
to the social order. Romantic literature's thematic and
generic ties to pre-revolutionary literary styles also made
it non-threatening.

As the normative goals of the Académie became less
palatable to many literary figures, the role of literature
as a source of linguistic authority became less clear.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century some literary
figures began to view the Académie as a no—longer viable
authority for the maintenance of the French language.
Still, in the twentieth century, authors such as Paul
Claudel, Francois Mauriac, Anatole France, Marguerite
Yourcenar, and Paul Valéry were among the prominent literary
figures who were also members of the Académie.

Increasingly, however, authors and their styles have

27

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diverged from the norms of the Académie and they are thus
decreasingly held up as examples of le beau style.12

The relationship between linguistic and literary norms
historically has been one of divergence, rather than
convergence. Literature is the artistic component of
language. As art it is necessarily seen in a different
light than is other language. And the goals of artists are
not always compatible with those of rule-makers. In the
early stages of language standardization, the survival and
prosperity of French was a necessary component of authors'
artistic ends - if they were to gain lasting notoriety, then
the medium of their expression needed to be well-
established. Similarly, prestige and standardization were
desirable to creative authors, since both helped procure a
wider audience to appreciate their works. But at the very
period when French linguistic norms were turning reactionary
and reverting to the past for examples — around the mid-
eighteenth century — literary authors and audiences began
placing greater importance on novelty as a judge of artistic
value. Voltaire’s example perhaps best illustrates this
shift in value away from academic controls on aesthetics and
toward novelty. His neo-classicist drama is comparable in
quality to many of his seventeenth—century predecessors, but

he was (and is today) well-known far more for his

28

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philosophical tales and letters than for his drama. The
valorization of novelty in literature and individualism in
art, along with the relatively secure position of French
dominance, removed much of the common ground that literature
and linguistic prescriptivism had once shared. The
perceptions espoused and created in literary works have

endured like the works themselves.

CHAPTER ONE: REGIONAL DIALECTS IN LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE
AGES AND THE RENNAISSANCE

French language historians traditionally refer to the
Serments de Strasbourg (842) as the first document written
in French. The Serments were a treaty dividing the Holy
Roman Empire along linguistic lines — Germanic and Romance
languages were to be on opposite sides of the disputed
Lorraine region. The text — like many others from the
ninth through the thirteenth century - has dialectal
features. Critics rightly treat regional language in
medieval texts from a technical linguistic standpoint,
separating and explaining regional language elements
distinct from the historical French dialect. Given that
French was competing for dominance over other languages just
as the French kingdom vied for supremacy over surrounding

regions, medieval texts were written before most formal

29

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standardization of French. The common mixing of regional
languages in medieval texts results from uncodified or
competing norms combining with the pragmatic needs of the
writers. Although medieval authors occasionally chose the
language of their works for political reasons (e.g., Dante
choosing to write in Italian in order to make an implicit
statement about the prestige of the language), the use of
multiple dialects within one text was not intended to carry
an-implicit message. The thirteenth century saw a gradual
disappearance of regional features from official charters.
In the late fourteenth century, there is royal support for
the translation of documents from Latin into French.
Formalized translation suggests that a perception of an
existing standard French had emerged. Villon’s fifteenth
century poems in argot are perhaps the earliest examples of
the purposeful use of non-standard French in a literary
work. Villon’s poems contrast not to a set of grammatical
or lexical rules elaborated by grammarians, but to a norm
defined by other poets of his time. Villon creates an
ironic or humorous tone by writing in a literary style while
intermingling slang terms. Since Villon when no known
grammatical treatises had been written elaborating the rules
and structure of French, his work in non-standard language

is perhaps the most compelling evidence that a standard was

30

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indeed strongly established by the middle of the fifteenth
century.

Until French emerged as an uncontested prestige
language, dialect juxtaposition for satirical or
metaphorical purposes would be impossible. Implicit
messages about non-standard language are possible only
after the establishment of a standard. In French, the
standardization begun by littérateurs in Villon's time takes
a codified form in 1531 with Isagoge in Linguam gallicam by
Jacques Dubois. DuBellay’s Defense et illustration de la
langue francoise (1549) supports the use of French in
literary works. He sees French as a forum for creation
following ancient examples. Although DuBellay’s title
indicates a language in need of defense, what DuBellay is
really defending is the increasing use of French in
literature, particularly by members of the Pléiade group of
poets - a group whose priorities were the promotion and
standardization of French.

From the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth
century, the crown and the legal courts were debating over
which language should be used during court proceedings. The
Crown favored French and issued edicts accordingly.
Documentation of royal reiterations of the rule shows that

there was some resistance from the parlements. The

31

political struggle over the language in the courts is
probably peripheral to the more central political issue -
control of the legal system. In literature — probably a
much stronger indicator than are court documents of
linguistic trends among the literate - Latin was no longer
the language of preference.

Rabelais’ most famous gesture using language as a
caricature is his portrayal of the écolier limousin. Much
has been written about this scholar "qui contrefaisoit le
langaige Francoys [who deformed the French language]
(Rabelais, 232). From the standpoint of linguistic
portrayal, Rabelais uses a double-edged sword. The écolier
is a member of the dogmatic scholastic establishment. His
completely fabricated “learned” French — his penchant to
Pindariser (use pompous words to imitate the style of the
poet Pindar) — shows the corrupting influence of his
Sorbonne education that has taught him much form but little
substance. When Pantagruel threatens to skin him alive, the
écolier betrays his unsophisticated (rural Limousin) roots
by pleading for his life in his native dialect. The
language of the écolier (and not much else) perfectly
portrays him as a simplistic rural youth corrupted by the
backward thinking educators at the Sorbonne. Rabelais’

écolier simultaneously serves to mock an archaic norm and

32

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highlights the mental deficiency of those who don’t speak in
the new French norm that Rabelais advocates.

Rabelais’ contemporary and friend Noel du Fail portrays
country life in his Propos rustiques (1549) — a collection
of short tales and descriptions of country life told by
peasant narrators. Du Fail's other major works, Les
Baliverneries d'Eutrapel and Les Contes d'Eutrapel, are
stories that feature conflicting rural and urban social
values. Du Fail portrays his peasant Characters as
intelligent and sometimes unrealistically educated. His
rustic narrators are simple but not simplistic. Apart from
an occasional interjection that may be associated with rural
speech (Nenni!; Pardi!, etc.) Du Fail does not have his
rural narrators speak in dialect.15 The portrayal of the
peasants’ language does not approach realism.

Du Fail does, however, attempt to imitate
conversational style. Narrators often ornament their
stories with self-referential asides. Parenthetical remarks
such as “comme j’ay dit [as I said],” (60) “ce que j’ay
experimenté, [which I experienced]” (61) or “ce me semble
[it seems to me]” (88) portray a narrator who wishes to add
personal flavor to the story. These asides also paint rural

speakers as frank and simple.

33

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Narrators’ parenthetical asides more frequently

resemble proverbs:

Messire jean, 1e feu Curé de nostre Paroisse,
estant au haut bout [de la table] (car a tous
seigneurs, tous honneurs), haulsant les orées de
sa robe, [...] [Sire John, the late priest of our
parish, being at the head [of the table] (for one
should give honor where honor is due), holding up
the edges of his robe [...]].” (55).
The insertion of proverbs - “rules to live by” - suggests
the humble willingness of the peasant to live by
thesetraditional rules. This conservatism would correspond
to Du Fail’s general ideological stance favoring an alliance
between rural peasants and nobility against the burgeoning
urban bourgeois classes, which he views as corrupt and
unnatural.

Historians have studied Du Fail’s works as documents
describing peasant and country life in the sixteenth century
(See Milin, 1970: 533—551). More recently literary critics
have begun to treat Du Fail’s work as more than a simple
chronicle of everyday peasant life in Brittany. Du Fail’s
portrayal of peasant life provides a background for his
“structuration [sémantique] qui aboutit a définir des
modeles idéologiques et culturels d’une grande coherence
[semantic structure that ends up defining highly coherent

ideological and cultural models].” (Milin, 1974: 65). Du

Fail’s country narrators primarily present a forum for the

34

 

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exposition of the country noble's ideology. They represent
the positive pole of a dichotomy whose negative pole is the
city and court (see Milin, 1974: 69-76). This dichotomy
serves as a platform for Du Fail’s criticism of the mores of
the growing merchant classes asserting their increasing
power in urban France during the sixteenth century. In his
introduction to Les Propos rustiques, Du Fail (writing under
the anagram “Ladulfi” - cf. Francois Rabelais writing as
“Alcofribas Nasier”) evokes the pastoral writings of Cicero
and Virgil (44). An idealized country setting and strong
nostalgia are important elements Du Fail borrows from these
precursors. While maintaining a traditional vision of
feudal hierarchy, Du Fail’s pastoral ideal expresses a
"solidarité économique (et géographique)" between country
nobles and peasants "face aux bourgeois" (Milin, 1974: 87).
Though Du Fail's exemplary province is Brittany, the
city/country antagonism is generalizable:
La province (et les provinces étrangeres lui sont
assimilées) est, en effet a Paris ce que la
campagne est a la ville. Le provincial représente
la permanence du passé, 1e naturel, alors que le
parisien, plus «évolué», a de ce fait perdu son
caractére naturel, a «dégénéré» [The province (and
the foreign provinces are assimilated) is indeed
to Paris what the country is to the city. The
provicial represents the permanence of the past,
the natural whereas the Parisian, more 'evolved',

has because of this lost his natural character,
has 'degenerated']. (Milin, 1974: 99)

35

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Du Fail's pastoral functions not only as an exposition of
the rustic country life of the Breton peasant and noble, it
is also a platform for launching attacks against sectors of
society that have abandoned the simplicity of provincial
life.

Although regional differences - ethnic, linguistic,
cultural — were still obvious in the sixteenth century,
Parisian political hegemony (and the accompanying linguistic
dominance) grew, leading to a Paris/non-Paris polarization
that would eventually superimpose itself onto the perception
of a multi-cultural, multi-lingual state.

Michel de Montaigne illustrates that perceptions of
regional language in relation to an established norm were
quite strong when he was writing his Essais published ca.
1572 to 1588:

Mon langage francois est altéré, et en la
prononciation et ailleurs, par la barbarie de mon
creu; je ne vis jamais homme des contrées de deca
qui ne sentit bien evidemment son ramage et qui ne
blessast les oreilles pures francoises. [...] 11
y a bien au-dessus de nous, vers les montaignes,
un Gascon que je treuve singulierement beau, sec,
bref, signifiant, et a la vérité un langage masle
et militaire plus qu'autre que j'entende; autant
nerveux, puissant et pertinant, comme le Francois
et gratieus, delicat, et abondant [My French
language is altered in pronunciation and in other
ways, by the barbarity of my region; I never saw a
man from this side of the land who did not hardily
show its cadence and hurt pure French ears. There
is well above us, toward the mountains, a Gascon
that I find singularly beautiful, dry, short,
meaningful, and in truth a more virile and

36

military language than any other I understand; as
sinewy, powerful and pertinent as French is
gracious, delicate and abundant]. (Montaigne,
622)

Montaigne's comparison of the Gascon dialect to French lists
several different types of assessment. The traits he
mentions are esthetic (beau, delicat, gratieus) functional
(signifiant, abondant) cultural (masle, militaire) and
phonetic (blessast les oreilles, sec, bref). The reference
to oreilles pures francoises marks his perception that a
strong norm is in place. The pure language (or the pure
ear) still belongs to a certain group of speakers and has
not reached the mythical status that it does in the
eighteenth century. Using regional language alongside the
French norm is no longer accidental and tolerable.
Montaigne expressed disbelief when Pasquier claimed to have
found "certains provincialismes" in some of the Essais.
Pasquier proceeded to show Montaigne specific examples from
the Essais of "plusieurs maniéres de parler familieres non
aux Francais mais seulement aux Gascons [several ways of
speaking familiar not to the French but only to Gascons]"
(note in Montaigne, p. 1591). Pasquier’s reaction to
Montaigne’s gasconismes (the term that by the eighteenth
century had become common for referring to errors in French)
illustrates that French standardization had become
sufficiently elaborate that readers could be offended by

37

“intrusions” from non—standard varieties. Montaigne’s own
views of the Gascon dialect, and his initial incredulity at
Pasquier’s claim, show that he strove to avoid such
intrusions into his writing.
CHAPTER TWO: REGIONAL LANGUAGE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
FRENCH LITERATURE

The seventeenth century marks the establishment of
Parisian dominance over much of Europe. The borders of
modern France changed little following the long reign of
Louis XIV. As stated above, territorial gains -
specifically support of Holland against Spain (1607), the
annexation of territory in Gascogne (1663) and the
annexation of Franche-Comté - were commonly linked to
language. The seventeenth century also saw the
establishment of the Académie Francaise (1635) and the first
edition of its dictionary (1694). Following the Ordonnance
de Villers—Cotteréts (1539) that declared that all judicial
records in Provence be kept in French, similar documents
emerged establishing French as the official language in
other provinces - Pau (1620), Western Brittany (ca. 1640),
West Flanders (1683), Alsace (1685) and Catalan-speaking
Rousillon (1700). French also began replacing Latin in many
international treaties — including the treaty if Aix-la-

Chapelle (1668) between France and Spain, and the Treaty of

38

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Nijmegen (1678) between France and Holland. Frenchwas also
declared the language of the church in 1629 for all
documents not being sent to Rome (see Kibbee and Achard).
Although these decrees did little to change the linguistic
situation in the provinces — peasants and nobles alike
continued to use the languages of their province in their
everyday lives - they helped firmly establish Parisian
French as the language of power and prestige.

Many canonical authors of the seventeenth century came
to Paris from the Provinces as literary and linguistic
standards became localized more than ever in the Parisian
court.16 Much of the literary canon from this period
consists of theater and poetry. Poetry and theater in verse
form offered no plausible opportunities for the insertion of
regional dialect, since the speakers in these works were
usually mythological characters or heros of antiquity — gods
and superhuman heroes speak standard language as a rule.
Many seventeenth-century French plays were translations or
adaptations of earlier classical Spanish or Italian theater
(e.g. Corneille's Le Cid, Moliere's Dom JUan). Dramatists
also commonly inserted verse and borrowed words from other
European languages. From the standpoint of linguistic and

cultural exchange seventeenth-century French theater is

39

perhaps the richest of any period in the history of French
literature.

But the language contact in this literature happens
primarily between prestige varieties. Italian embodied
artistic sophistication because it represented the beginning
of the Renaissance that eventually spread to France.
Regional varieties became the target of increasing ridicule
and their speakers were portrayed as unworldly bunglers.
This portrayal prevailed in the letters of Madame de Sévigné
during her visits to Provence and Brittany. She often
writes of the unrefined provincial ways of her acquaintances
in these provinces. She complains of the poor speech of her
hosts and deforms their names in a manner that can be
interpreted as ethnocentric disregard at best, mockery at
worst (see Duchéne for a full account).

Moliére's plays offer several glimpses of the Parisian
perception of provincial language and speakers. To ensure
his position as the favored court poet, Moliere’s plays
needed tacitly to favor royal policy of centralization. One
form of such implicit support is recurring ridicule of the
provinces and their inhabitants in a number of his more
popular plays. Instead of being written in verse form, most
of Moliere’s comedies attempt to recreate spoken dialogue.

Moliere was Parisian by birth and grew up close to the Court

40

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— his father was the tapissier du Roi. Because Moliére was
Parisian and wrote his greatest successes for the Court, his
caricatures are a good measure of the status of provincial
language and speakers during the time he wrote (z1646-1673).

Moliére first extensively uses language style to
satirize in Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). Moliére pokes
fun at la préciosité — a trend in court society defined by
flamboyant and clever language. Préciosité had nearly died
out by the time Moliére's play was presented. Its status as
passé made it an easy target for satire and caricature.
Moliere exploits preciosité's preoccupation with how things
are said without regard to what is said. He is also keenly
aware of the social propriety of préciosité. The formality
of préciosité - its focus on finding abstract or obscure
ways of expressing simple notions - is contrasted with the
unsophisticated language of servants, who can only see
language as a direct expression of the concrete. (see
Moliére, 1: 201)

There is evidence in other plays by Moliére that the
social distinction between upper and lower class was
beginning to fuse with geographical distinctions. The
centralization of power in Paris and the gravitation of the
noblility to the court had begun to contribute to a

geographical conception of social position. Membership in

41

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upper classes resulted as much from where as from whom one
came. Moliére‘s first lengthy portrayal of rural language
comes in Dom JUan (Moliére 1: 726-742). Three peasant
characters play a role in one of the title character's
amorous conquests. Pierrot is betrothed to Charlotte, who
in turn is seduced by Dom Juan. Later in the scene we learn
that Charlotte is the second of two peasant women fallen
prey to Dom Juan. The first victim, Mathurine, arrives on
the scene in time to quarrel with Charlotte over who will
marry Dom Juan. The function of the scene in the play is to
show Dom Juan's ruthless character. He does not hesitate to
prey on even the most innocent and vulnerable sectors of
society - poor peasant women who could only dream of
marrying a noble. Because Dom Juan is set in Sicily, the
rural peasants speak with a “peasant” dialect that does not
identify the speakers with any specific region. Rather, the
dialect Moliére most closely imitates is that of the rural
area surrounding Paris (note in Moliére, p.928) — the
peasant speech with which his Court audience would be
mostlikely to recognize as rural. The phonetic and
grammatical traits of Moliere's peasant dialect are fairly
regular.13 Significantly, Charlotte's register changes when
addressing the nobleman. She uses the dialect forms "avenc"

and "bian" when addressing Pierrot but the standard forms

42

"avec" and "bien" while speaking to Dom Juan (see Dauzat).
This switch shows that Moliére understood how addressee
influences register choice.

Moliére's peasants embody simplicity, and their
occasional mispronunciations (e.g., Marotte’s filofie in Les
Précieuses ridicules, or Alain's strodagéme for stratagéme
in L'école des femmes [Moliere 1: 416]) or misuse (e.g.,
Lucas in Le.Médecin malgré lui saying défiguré instead of
dépeint or figuré, either of which would have fit his
meaning) give them the air of harmless buffoons who would
never knowingly, but quite often unknowingly do wrong.

Moliére's provincial buffoons are not always peasants.
Wealthy or titled provincials are often central figures in
Moliére's comedies. The title character in George Dandin is
a wealthy provincial who has married into a noble family.
His rural roots make him the target of a more sophisticated
Parisian noble family — the Sottenvilles. The family name
"Sot-en-ville", which translates roughly to "fools in the
city", reinforces the urban/rural polarity that lends comic
tension to the play. Like the servants in Les Précieuses
ridicules, Dandin is too unsophisticated to grasp the
importance of form over substance. Dandin’s inability to
grasp the formalities of language is highlighted in his

discussions with noble in-laws (see Moliere 2: 194-195). A

43

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similar illustration of this rural/urban linguistic
dichotomy takes place between the protagonist (Clitandre)
and his valet (Moliere, 2: 198). The opposition central to
George Dandin constitutes a fusion of rural/urban and
noble/peasant dichotomies. Language perceptions -
understanding the implicit rules of language that identify
people from different social groups — play an important role
in the establishment and maintenance of this central
opposition. Moliére brings this opposition clearly to the
foreground a year later in the comedy—ballet.Mbnsieur de
Pourceaugnac.

The characters Pourceaugnac and Dandin have many
similarities. Both come from the provinces. Pourceaugnac
is from the Limousin, though the ending of his name has a
Gascon ring. Dandin's province is unknown. Both characters
in the original performances wore costumes representing
provincial tastelessness (note in Moliére 2, pp 891, 899).18
Both provincials are identified with the legal profession
(see note in Moliére 2, p. 891).19 As legal professionals
both characters possess the same fatal flaw: they both have
ambitions to rise on the social scale from noblesse de robe
to noblesse d'épée. Dandin's ambition is crushed only after
he has married into a noble family — he is controlled and

ridiculed by his wife and in-laws who afford him the same

44

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social status as before the marriage. Pourceaugnac tries to
marry into a noble family and.Mbnsieur de Pourceaugnac is
the story of his orchestrated failure.

.Mbnsieur de Pourceaugnac, much more overtly than George
Dandin, exploits the rural/urban social polarity for comic
effect. The particle (de) in Pourceaugnac's name makes him
nominally part of the nobility. Since he comes to the city
seemingly for the first time, he doesn't have the experience
and resultant cynicism that Dandin demonstrates from his
opening monologue. Pourceaugnac's pride is intact and he is
outraged and confused by the urbanites' mockery as he enters
the city (and the play):

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Hé bien, quoi? qu'est-
ce? qu'y a-t-il? Au diantre soit la sotte ville,
et les sottes gens qui y sont! ne pouvoir faire
un pas sans trouver des nigauds qui vous regardent
et se mettent a rire! Eh! Messieurs les badauds,
faites vos affaires, et laissez passer les
personnes sans leur rire au nez. Je me donne au
diable si je ne baille un coup au premier que je
verrai rire.

[MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Well what? What is it?
What is happening? To the devil with the stupid
city, and the stupid people that are there! to
not be able to take a step without finding fools
that look at you and start laughing! Hey idle
gawkers, go about your business and let people
pass without laughing in their faces. To the
devil with me if I don’t smack the first one I see
laughing.] (Moliére 2: 327-328)

Pourceaugnac does not understand the laughter because he
fails to realize that his mission to hide his noblesse de

robe origins - which he continues throughout the play — is a

45

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visible failure. For the noble audience that watches
.Monsieur de Pourceaugnac in 1669, laughs come from the title
character's inability to comply with the court's unwritten
codes of fashion. He brags about his outlandish costume
which he "[a] voulu mettre a la mode de la cour, " [wished
to be in fashion with the Court] and is even convinced,
"qu'il fera du bruit ici" [that it will turn some heads
here] (Moliere 2: 331). The visual evidence that
Pourceaugnac believes his clothes are in fashion combines
with his rural and robe roots to make him the perfect dupe
for the cruel tricks the city dwellers Sbrigani, Nérine and
Lucette will play on him in the name of Julie and Eraste —
the courtisan lovers.

Pourceaugnac must eventually succumb to the
machinations of the intriguers because he represents an
obstacle to the true love of Julie and Eraste. His noblesse
d'épée pretensions, however, are not his greatest crime
against Parisian court society. In her speech introducing
the conflict, Nérine articulates Pourceaugnac's greatest
transgression:

NERINE [s'addressant a Julie]: Assurément. Votre
pére se moque-t-il de vouloir vous anger de son

avocat de Limoges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, qu'il
n'a vu de sa vie, et qu'il vient par la cloche

vous enlever a notre barbe? Faut-il que trois ou
quatre mille écus de plus, sur la parole de votre
oncle, lui fassent rejeter un amant qui vous

agree? et une personne comme vous est-elle faite

46

pour un Limosin? S'il a envie de se marier, que
ne prend-il pas une Limosine et ne laisse-t—il en
repos les chrétiens? Le seul nom de Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac m'a mis dans une colere effroyable.
J'enrage de Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. Quand il
n'y auroit que ce nom-la, Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac, j'y brfilerai mes livres, ou je
romprai ce mariage, et vous ne serez point Madame
de Pourceaugnac. Pourceaugnac! cela se peut-il se
souffrir? Non, Pourceaugnac est une chose que je
ne saurois supporter; et nous lui jouerons tant de
pieces, nous lui ferons tant de niches sur niches,
que nous renvoyerons a Limoges Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac.

NERINE [addressing Julie]: Certainly. Your father
joking when he says he wants to stick you with his
lawyer from Limoges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,
that he has never seen, and so he comes (what’s
more) to take you away and irritate us. Is it
necessary that for three or four thousand more
shillings, on the word of your uncle, he rejects a
lover that pleases you? and is a person like you
made for a Limousin? If he wants to get married,
why not take a Limousin woman and leave us
Christians alone? The name Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac alone made me horribly angry. I am
in a rage because of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.
When there would be only that name left, I would
abandon everything or I would break up this
marriage, and you not ever be Madame de
Pourceaugnac. Pourceaugnac! Is that bearable?
Non, Pourceaugnac is a thing that I could not
stand; and we will put on so many acts for him, we
will play so many tricks upon tricks on him, that
we will send Monsieur de Pourceaugnac back to
Limoges.] (Moliére 2: 325)

Nérine's anger at the name "Pourceaugnac" verges on racism.

She refers in passing to Julie's love interest, but her

primary motivation seems to be banishing an unwanted

outsider with a provincial-sounding name. As if to de-

emphasize the importance of true love's triumph, Julie

47

 

 

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refuses to promise Eraste her devotion in case the plan to
eliminate Pourceaugnac fails (Moliere 2: 327).

Pourceaugnac's adversaries seem to have more than one
plan to expel him from the city, and the plans are often as
excessively violent as Nérine's sentiments above. In the
first act, Sbrigani and Eraste put Pourceaugnac in the hands
of doctors — a fate tantamount to death as Moliere makes one
of his many assaults on a medical profession he abhors. At
the start of his medical consultation Pourceaugnac believes
he is making plans for the upcoming wedding banquet, but by
the end he is about to be subjected to bleeding and purging
for "mélancolie hypocondriaque" (Moliére 2: 342). The scene
ends with a ballet in which doctors dance and sing a song
that tries to convince Pourceaugnac to take his medicine.

In a nightmarish end to the act, Pourceaugnac exits as all

the dansers follow him "tous une syringue a la main" [Each

with a syringe in his hand](Moliére 2: 347). The next time
Pourceaugnac is seen he explains to Sbrigani how he barely

escaped the mad doctors (Moliere 2: 353).

The next trick played on Pourceaugnac includes two
women pretending to be wives he had abandoned and to come
from Gascogne and Picardy. This play within a play, acted
out by Lucette (feinte gasconne or “fake Gascon woman”) and

Nérine (as the abandoned Picard wife) in front of Julie's

48

 

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father Oronte, includes long passages in the two regional
dialects. In his notes on Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Jouanny
points out that opinions are divided on the authenticity of
Moliere's dialects:

Le languedocien de Lucette, native de Pézenas
(Languedoc) est tres gasconnisé. Certains
critiques, tel Jules Claretie, se sont extasiés
sur la science linguistique de Moliére, et sur sa
conscience au travail, comme s'il s'était penché
sur des livres d'études. D'autres ont jugé ce
patois des plus approximatifs. La syntaxe y est
francaise, et aussi — ce qui est plus grave pour
les partisans de la competence philologique de
Moliere — les injures, pierre de touche d'un
dialecte. Lucette débite toutes les tirades avec
brio, ne détachant que des mots jalons qui,
proches du francais, sont intelligibles aux
spectateurs. Le reste du cliquetis crée
simplement l'exotisme voulu. Méme remarque pour
le pseudo-picard de Nérine [The Occitan of
Lucette, native of Pézenas (Languedoc) is very
gasconized. Certain critics such as Jules
Claretie, have glowed over the linguistic
exactness of Moliére, and over his conscious work,
as if he had labored over reference books. Others
have judged this patois as most approximative.

The syntax is French, and also - a more serious
charge against Moliére’s philological competence —
the insults, which are the touchstone of a
dialect. Lucette delivers all the tirades with
verve, making only certain guiding words stand
out, close to French, are intelligible to the
spectators. The rest of the noise simply creates
the desired exoticism. The same remark holds for
the pseudo-picard of Nérine]. (Note in Moliere 2,
p. 903)

The accuracy of the patois (or pseudojpatois) passages is
moot. The two patois- speaking characters are acting for
the other onlooking characters. Just as these characters

need Pourceaugnac and Oronte to understand their tirades,

49

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Moliére needed at least the general sense of what Lucette
and Nérine say to be comprehensible to the court audience.
The experienced dramatist knew his audience well and could
carefully mold these passages to prevent them from
interrupting the flow of the scene. Significantly, the two
characters communicate with each other in their own
respective dialect. In their exchange do they, like the
audience, rely on "mots jalons" to communicate? All
participants in the play — the speakers, the characters
looking on, and the spectators — grasp the meaning of their
exchange. Rather than separate languages the two patois
represent broken French where the "reste du cliquetis" [the
rest of the noise] — the main body of the peasants'
statements - are noiSe to lend exotisme to the play, and
realism to the play within the play. Oronte can easily
believe the scenario if he views provincials as a somewhat
homogeneous group. The accused polygamist and the two women
come from three distinct provinces that are far apart from
each other, yet Oronte does not question the likelihood of
Pourceaugnac marrying and fathering children with both women
or of all three somehow meeting in the city.

For Pourceaugnac misfortunes come from the city. Just
as Oronte believes the scandal played out for him because it

takes place between provincials, Pourceaugnac again

50

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attributes his plight to urban surroundings: "Ah! je suis
assommé. Quelle peine! Quelle maudite ville! Assassiné de
tous cotés [...] Il pleut en ce pays des femmes et des
lavements. [What agony! What a cursed city! Attacked from
all sides [...] It is raining women and enemas in this
country]" The backward yokel superstitiously compares his
bad luck with poor weather while the master deceiver
Sbrigani hopes the planned continuous misfortune will
fatigue "notre provincial" (Moliere 2: 362). The possessive
adjective makes the court audience co-conspirator with
Sbrigani.

The complicity between audience and Sbrigani continues
as he and Pourceaugnac discuss the legal issues raised by
accusations of polygamy. Pourceaugnac reveals his legal
training, and therefore his non-noble origins, by sprinkling
his speech with generous portions of courtroom jargon.
Sbrigani recognizes the jargon and tries to trap
Pourceaugnac into admitting the questionable origins of his
nobility:

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Oui; mais quand il y
auroit information, ajournement, décret, et
jugement obtenu par surprise, défaut et contumace,
j'ai la voie de conflit de jurisdiction, pour
temporiser, et venir aux moyens de nullité qui
seront dans les procedures.

SBRIGANI: Voila en parler dans tous les termes,

et l'on voit bien, Monsieur, que vous étes du
métier.

51

 

 

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Moi, point du tout: Je
suis gentilhomme.

SBRIGANI: Il faut bien pour parler ainsi, que
vous ayez étudié la pratique.

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Point: ce n'est que le
sens commun qui me fait juger que je serai
toujours recu a mes faits justificatifs, et qu'on
ne me sauroit condamner sur une simple accusation,
sans un récolement et confrontation avec mes
parties.

SBRIGANI: En voila du plus fin encore.

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Ces mots-la me viennent
sans que je les sache.

[MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Yes; but when there
would be information, adjournment, decree, and
judgment obtained by surprise, fault and default,
I have the recourse of conflicting of
jurisdictions, in order to create delays, and to
reach the means of annulment which will be in the
procedures.

SBRIGANI: Now that’s talking all the jargon, and
it can easily be seen, sir, that you are a man of
the craft.

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: No not me: I am a
gentleman.

SBRIGANI: You must have studied the law to be able
to speak this way

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Not at all: It is but
common sense that makes me judge that I succeed in
my justicative facts, and that they will not be
able to condemn me on a mere accusation, without a
restatement and confrontation with my adversaries.
SBRIGANI: Now there is some even nicer talk.
MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Those words come to me
without me knowing them.] (Moliére 2: 362-363)

The technical terms of the profession are so natural to

Pourceaugnac that he uses them contrary to his own will.

Wishing to hide his true roots he would avoid using them,

but he possesses none of the brilliance of the true

aristocracy - "ses lumieres sont fort petites, et son sens

le plus borné du monde," Sbrigani remarks (Moliere 2: 365) -

52

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and therefore none of its mastery of language. He cannot
avoid linguistic self-incrimination and finally (and
comically) resorts to consulting other lawyers only to prove
to Sbrigani that he is a true aristocrat. The caricature
that Pourceaugnac represents for Parisian court society
combines the social and the geographical. The increasing
centrality of the Paris court leads to the merging of
regional stereotypes — backward, naive, witless,
linguistically deficient — and social stereotypes of lower
class individuals aspiring to climb above their station —
transparent, self-important and (linguistically) un-
sophisticated.

Like the first act, the second act ends with a ballet
and song. This time the dansers and singers are lawyers
instead of doctors. The lawyers give Pourceaugnac little
comfort as they repeat to him that polygamy is a hanging
offense. The scene closes with Pourceaugnac pursued by
Sergeants and Procurers.

The third act has Pourceaugnac barely fleeing the city
(and his execution) dressed as a woman. Though his beard
gives him away easily, the disguise fools two dialect-
speaking Swiss men. They are attracted to the bearded woman

and invite her to watch the hanging with them. Though

53

Pourceaugnac—femme politely refuses, the ill-bred Swiss move
quickly to more lewd suggestions:

PREMIER SUISSE: Mon foy! Moi couchair pien avec
fous. _
MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Ah! C'en est trop, et
ces sortes d'ordures-la ne se disent point a une
femme de ma condition.

SECOND SUISSE: Laisse, toy; l'est moy qui le
veut couchair avec elle.

PREMIER SUISSE: Moy ne vouloir pas laisser.
SECOND SUISSE: Moy ly vouloir, moy.

[FIRST SWISS: My word! Me shleeping quite with
tchou.

MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC: Ah! That’s too much,
and you don’t say that kind of filth to a woman of
my status.

SECOND SWISS: Leave, you; is me that wants it
shleeping with her.

FIRST SWISS: Me no wanting leaving.

SECOND SWISS: Me wanting to her, me.]

With this scene, Moliére takes one final swipe at provincial
bunglers. He does not hesitate to place explicit language
in the mouths of these vulgar hayseeds — language that
would certainly be considered unacceptable if spoken by
Courtisans in proper French. The two begin to grapple with
Pourceaugnac and force him to call for help. The constable
-who comes and shoos the Swiss men away is Parisian and
therefore not fooled by the disguise. He immediately
recognizes Pourceaugnac and must be bribed not to take him
to jail. Pourceaugnac leaves the play as he entered it: he
hates the city and thinks Sbrigani, who actually designed

all of the Limousin's misfortunes, is "le seul honnéte homme

54

 

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que j'ai trouvé en cette ville” [the only honest man that I
found in this city] (Moliére 2: 371).

Much of Moliere's comedy exploits social stereotypes
for comic effect. Pourceaugnac is an amalgam of several
stereotypes. He represents the noblesse de robe whose
pretentions toward membership in the cultural elite are
shunned in the Court. His pretensions are accompanied by
the naivete of the uninitiated. Unlike Dandin, who knows
all too well that he is being tricked, Pourceaugnac knows
nothing of the plan to scare him away from the city, but
rather naively perceives himself as the victim of a corrupt
urban environment.

More than any of Moliére's comedies, MOnsieur de
Pourceaugnac ties language to the socially and
geographically defined dichotomies it exploits. The
portrayal of several different simulated regional languages
emphasizes the centrality of Court usage by creating the
image that these regional varieties are merely poorly
pronounced simplistic forms of French. Real speakers of
regional French (e.g., the two Suisses) are so mentally
deficient that they do not perceive obvious details in their
surroundings. Pourceaugnac's own French illustrates his
control of the language - he is well-educated after all —

but also his inability to grasp the aspects of social

55

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identity attached to language use. He talks and dresses
with equal ingenuousness, using gaudily colored clothing and
words that hit comically far above the target.
Pourceaugnac's (and Dandin's) legal profession gives
his provinciality and social status an added layer of
significance. The Crown's linguistic policy and debate
about language from the fifteenth through the seventeenth
century consists mostly of decrees concerning provincial
courts of law. Provincial law courts were slow to respond
to royal edicts outlawing the use of Latin in legal
procedures. Later decrees aim at the elimination of all
languages but French from legal processes. The ongoing
battle between the provinces and Paris for supremacy in the
courts must have resonated with the courtisan audience as a
backdrop to the provincial/Paris tension around which the
play centers. The centrality of dialect and language
perception in the play must have drawn force from the
linguistic nature of the courtroom disputes during this
period. .Mbnsieur de Pourceaugnac was written and perforemd
for the first time during one of the King’s (and thus the
Court’s) hunting trips in Chambord - a rural setting whose
immediacy in the minds of the King and Court must have
played a role in Moliere's decision to choose this subject

matter.

56

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Several of Moliére's comedies offer short displays of
the popular court perception of provincial or rural
stereotypes. Longer examples (such as Dandin and
Pourceaugnac) show how regional/provincial/rural
distinctions had begun to be interwoven with social and
professional status by the end of the seventeenth century.
This trend can also be seen in the literary form that began
to predominate as the eighteenth century approached - the
novel.

CHAPTER THREE: THE RISE OF THE NOVEL THE RURAL URBAN
DIQHOTOMY AND LANGUAGE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH
LITERATURE

In linguistic policy, the eighteenth century generally
continued the trends of the seventeenth. Occasionally,
decrees emerge (or re-emerge) indicating the ineffectiveness
of language policies in actual practice. The ordonnance of
1700 establishing French as the official language in
Rousillon was reaffirmed in 1753. A royal intendant in
Alsace complains in 1701 that French is barely used in the
courts despite royal decrees 30 years earlier. On October
21, 1737, Louis XV, frustrated at the seeming inablity of
Alsatians to learn French, orders that they all learn
German. A decree by Stanislaus of Poland that all

communication in the German-speaking communities of Lorraine

57

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will go equally unheeded, as will another decree in 1786
demanding that all public records in Alsace be written in
French. On the educational front, in 1729 plans are
submitted for French to be a subject of study in the
colleges. In 1740, the Académie elicits spelling reforms
from the grammarian Thoulier d’Olivet — the first in a
series of belated, ineffectual attempts to make orthography
approximate pronunciation.

William Ray (1994) sees Marivaux’s La Vie de.Marianne
and Le Paysan parvenu as belonging to a tradition in which
protagonists are constantly re-writing their personal
narrative to fit into a more general social narrative.
These two novels are both unfinished works written around
the same time.20 The title characters, “rather than creating
a fictional identity for themselves [...] engineer their
metamorphoses by repeatedly narrating their actual
experience, but they subtly alter and embellish it as their
self-image evolves and they become more firmly integrated
into the shared narrative” (Ray, 105). As the term
“metamorphosis” suggests, the protagonists in both novels
undergo a transformation. The metamorphosis of both
protagonists entails movement from a lower social class

toward entry and acceptance into a higher one.

58

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Le Paysan parvenu much more so than La Vie de Marianne
presents moving “up” socially as — initially at least - a
geographical movement. The first movement in the novel is
from the hero’s father’s home in Champagne to his master’s
Parisian house. Marianne’s acceptance into the aristocracy
is dependent on her behaving like the aristocrat she claims
possibly being — her parentage is uncertain. In Le Paysan
parvenu the title character Jacob’s origins are known and
his narrative presents itself as a potentially instructive
account of how he entered into a richer social class than
his peasant upbringing would have foretold. Le paysan
parvenu therefore portrays rural/urban differences central
to this study of the perception of dialects in literature.

Perhaps the largest obstacle for Jacob in creating his
new identity is language. One of the first things we learn
about the young Jacob is that he does not know how to write
when he arrives in Paris. His first amorous conquest begins
when he goes to Genevieve to ask her to write a letter for
him (Marivaux, 30). When she gives him money, his first
plans are to spend it on learning to write (38-39). Madame
de Ferval (his first mistress after marrying) begins
flirting with him in an office where they have gone so she
can write a letter for him. While Madame de Ferval

confesses her attraction to him and compliments him on

59

looking like a sophisticated city man, the two are engaged
in trying to sharpen a feather pen so she can write him a
letter. As their conversation moves more overtly toward
their feelings for each other, Jacob takes over the pen-
sharpening, which becomes a device for prolonging the
interview:
Pendant qu'elle parlait, j'essayais la plume qu
j’avais taillé; elle n’allait pas a ma fantaisie,
et j'y retouchais pour allonger un entretien qui
m’amusait beacoup, et dont je voulais voir la fin
[While she spoke, I tried the quill that I had
sharpened; it was not working exactly as I wanted,
and I made adjustments in order to lengthen an
interview that amused me greatly, and of which I
wished to see the outcome]. (Marivaux, 132)
It is at the moment that Jacob begins to reveal his more
than friendly feelings for Madame de Ferval that the pen is
finished. The pen becomes a metaphor for the gamble Jacob
takes by revealing his feelings. After several exchanges
that hinted towards the beginning of a romance, Jacob
prefaces his first revealing statement: “Cependant je ne
savais plus que faire de cette plume, il était temps de
l’avoir rendue bonne ou de la laisser la” [However, I did
not know what to do with that quill anymore, it was time to
have made it good, or leave it alone] (Marivaux, 132). The
two continue to intermingle writing and their nascent love

affair. She writes a letter for him as they continue their

conversation about love. She asks him if he writes legibly,

60

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creating a pretext for their next meeting — he is to come to
her apartement to copy some documents for her. Finally,
amorous intentions and writing are fused as the two part
ways:

[...] des que vous serez marié, venez m’en
informer ici ou je demeure; mon nom est au
bas du billet que j’ai écrit; mais ne venez
que le soir, je vous donnerai ces papiers que
vous copierez, et nous causerons sur les
moyens de vous rendre service dans la suite.
Allez mon cher enfant, soyez sage, j’ai de
bonnes intentions pour vous, dit-elle d'un
ton plus bas avec douceur, et en me tendant
la lettre d’une facon qui voulait dire: je
vous tends la main aussi; du moins je le
compris de méme, de sorte qu'en recevant le
billet, je baisais cette main qui paraissait
se présenter [...] [as soon as you are
married, come and inform me of it here where
I live; my name is at the bottom of the
letter that I wrote; but come only in the
evening, I will give you those papers that
you will copy, and we will discuss ways to
help you afterward. Now be careful my dear
child, I have good intentions toward you, she
said in a lower sweeter tone, and by holding
the letter out to me in a way that meant: I
am holding out my hand to you as well; at
least I understood it that way, so that while
receiving the letter, I kissed that hand that
seemed to present itself[...]] (Marivaux,
134)

The two elements that allow Jacob social mobility — the
attraction of rich older women, and the written word - are
encountered simultaneously. At their next meeting, the act

of writing bcomes synonymous with the sexual act, as Jacob

asks Madame de Ferval about the security of their secret

61

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meeting place in a distant neighborhood: “Eh! dites—moi, ma
bonne et chere dame, il n'y aura donc point, comme ici, de
femme de chambre qui nous écoute, et qui m’empéche d’avoir
les papiers [a copier]? [Hey! tell me, my good and dear
lady, so there will not at all be, like here, any
chambermaid who listens to us and prevents me from having
the papers [to copy]?] (Marivaux, 166). Learning to write
and the act of writing are priorities in Jacob’s social
climb. He understands the status that goes with an
understanding of the written language. Of course, even
without references linking writing to the mistresses that
promote his social ascendancy, the story of Jacob’s
transformation must on some level be the story of his
learning to write, since the narrated protagonist does not
know how to write at the beginning of the story, and the
narrating protagonist obviously does. In the carriage on
his way to Versailles to meet with a potential benefactor,
Jacob overhears his first lesson in writing style (Marivaux,
184-187).21

While immediately understanding the practical utility
of learning to write, Jacob also sees it as important for
Parisian perceptions of his mastery of the language. After

getting his fine new clothes and making a trip to

62

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Versailles, Jacob adds another luxurious layer to his new
appearance:
Sur les trois heures apresrmidi, vépres sonnerent;
ma femme y alla pendant que je lisais je ne sais
quel livre que je n’entendais pas trop, que je ne
me souciais pas trop d’entendre, et auquel je ne
m'amusais que pour imiter la contenance d'un
honnéte homme chez soi [At three in the afternoon,
vespers sounded; my wife went there while I read a
book - i know not which one - that I did not much
understand, that I did not much care to
understand, and that pleased me only by allowing
me to imitate the countenance of an upstanding man
at home]. (Marivaux, 226-227)
Educated people read, so to seem educated is to seem to
read. But Jacob's linguistic adjustment is not confined to
his ability to write or the appearance of reading. As we
saw above, he was quite able to use to his advantage the
social perception that country folk are naive. Jacob could
be seen as a manipulator of language possessing great skill
in using language to convey a desired image. Adams holds
this View:
Whether he is dealing with men or women, Jacob's
acute antennal responses guide him also in his use
of a style of speech which will project the image
of himself which he judges the most appropriate to
any particular occasion. (Adams, 380)
Adams continues by citing a series of instances where Jacob
uses rustic-style language and then another series where he

makes a “no less deliberate decision to speak correctly and

without affectation" (Adams 380). There is, however, an

63

important difference between the two types of episodes that
Adams mentions. Jacob’s use of his own country-style speech
is unforced — he simply makes no effort to suppress his
natural speech. This effortless choice differs from his
attitude when he chooses to speak Parisian French:

Jusqu’ici donc mes discours avaient toujours eu
une petite tournure champétre; mais il y avait
plus d’un mois que je m'en corrigeais assez bien,
quand je voulais y prendre garde [...] Il est
certain que je parlais meilleur francais quand je
voulais. J'avais déja acquis assez d'usage pour
cela, et je crus devoir m'appliquer a parler mieux
qu'a l'ordinaire. [So, until now my speech had
always had slight country ring to it; but I had
been able to correct myself quite well for more
than a month, when I wanted to be on guard [...]
It is certain that I spoke better French when I
wanted. I had already acquired enough experience
for that, and I believed it necessary to apply
myself to speaking better than ordinarily
(Marivaux, 90)

Je m’observai un peu sur le langage, soit dit en
passant. [We’ll just mention in passing that I
kept an eye on my language] (Marivaux, 123)

Comme je n’étais pas la avec des madames d’Alain
[femmes de basse classe], ni avec des femmes qui
m’aimassent, je m’observai beaucoup sur mon
langage, et tachai de ne rien dire qui sentit 1e
fils du fermier de campagne; de sorte que je
parlais sobrement [...] [Since I wasn't there with
Madames d'Alain [women of a lower class], nor with
women who may have loved me, I paid close
attention to my language, and tried to say nothing
that would sound like the son of the country
farmer; so that I spoke soberly [...]]
(Marivaux,177)

64

[Se parlant] Il faut prendre garde a vous,
monsieur de la Vallée, et tacher de parler bon
francais [...] que votre entretien réponde a votre
figure, qui est passable [[speaking to himself]
Watch yourself, Monsieur de la Vallée, and try to
speak good French [...] so that your conversation
corresponds to your face, which is passable]
(Marivaux, 236)
None of these passages portray Jacob as someone who slips
easily between the prestige variety and his own. Careful
self—observation and “trying" characterize Jacob's use of
more refined language. Significantly, all the episodes
where Jacob consciously uses his rural French precede those
where he tries to maintain a more cultivated French. Rather
than a simple binary choice between two language styles
depending on situation, the presentation of the
protagonist’s choice of speech style suggests an evolution
from one language style toward another. This evolution is
necessitated by Jacob’s will to ascend in the Parisian
hierarchy. At only one moment does Jacob completely forget
himself and speak using his rural “expressions naives.”
When he is wrongfully jailed for murder and in his
excitement he explains his misfortune to the investigating
officers who “furent obligés de se passer la main sur la
figure pour cachaient qu'ils souriaient [had to put their

hand on their face to hide that they were smiling]”

(Marivaux, 147).

65

 

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This section has shown Le Paysan parvenu as a fictional
account of the infiltration of Parisian society by a rural
peasant. We have agreed with William Ray's assessment that
much of Jacob’s success is grounded in his ability to
understand his audience and integrate his own narrative into
the collective social narrative — in short, he has the
exceptional ability to mold his story to make it acceptable
in the framework he desires. But more than simply
integrating himself into this new society, Jacob must to
some extent reject his prior culture, or at least devalue
it. He rejects the visual traits that identified him with
his rural roots. He devalues the language of his old
culture and hides his rural upbringing because both would
stigmatize him socially. His story supports the notion that
learning a new culture and a new language often entail the
rejection of native language and culture. For a peasant
coming to Paris in the eighteenth century and hoping to
succeed, the task at hand was tantamount to a change of
culture and a change of language, and so it was for Jacob to

become Le Paysan parvenu who narrates him.

66

PTER F UR: LITERATURE AND REGIONAL LANGUAGE AFTER THE

GREAT REVOLUTION
On January 14, 1790, the revolutionary government

issued its first linguistic decree: “Le pouvoir éxécutif
sera chargé de faire traduire les décrets de l'Assemblée
dans les différens idiomes et de les faire parvenir ainsi
traduits aux différentes provinces du Royaume [the executive
power shall be charged with getting the decrees of the
Assembly translated into the different languages and to send
them thus translated to the different provinces of the
Kingdom]” (Kibbee, 5). This decree shows the
multilingualism that thrived in France, as does the
distribution seven months later of the Abbé Grégoire’s
questionnaire.14 Responding to the question “Why is French
the international language," Rivarol's L'Uhiversalité de la
langue francaise (1783) valorizes the role of French in
Europe. But for Rivarol the "Universality" of French
derives from its suitability to all intellectual pursuits.
It does not mean that French is spoken universally. After
Gregoire received responses to his questionnaire — the first
dialectological survey in France — he understood that French
is anything but universal in this latter sense. When he
spoke to the Convention about the "Nécessité [. . .]

d'anéantir les patois [Necessity of wiping out dialects]"

67

(Gazier, 290), Gregoire started his address with a series of
direct quotes from Rivarol (though he wisely chose not to
credit the passionate defender of the monarchy) to
illustrate the intrinsic superiority of French, and then
asked the paradoxical question:

"[...] cet idiome, admis dans les transactions
politiques, usité dans plusieurs villes d'Allemagne,
d'Italie, des Pays Bas, dans une partie du pays de
Liege, du Luxembourg, de la Suisse, meme dans le Canada
et sur les bords du Mississippi, par quelle fatalité
est-i1 encore ignoré d'une trés- grande partie des
Francais? [This language, admitted in political
transactions, used in several cities in Germany, Italy,
the Netherlands, in part of the countries of Liege,
Luxembourg, Switzerland, even in Canada and along the
shores of the Mississippi, by what twist of fate is it
still unknown to a very large proportion of the
French?] (Gazier, 291).

In fact, Rivarol's (and by extension the ancien regime's)
notion of French as the language of perfect expression was
not disputed by the revolutionary governments. Rather, it
was incorporated into the republican ideology of the
Revolution, whose egalitarian doctrine, rather than
condemning the elitist linguistic views of the Court, wished
to universalize them. The dissolution of the Académie
Francaise on July 18, 1793 was a reaction to the old regime,
not to any perceived linguistic tyranny.15 French during

the Revolution would no longer be enforced simply as an

administrative and judicial language. It was promoted as

the primary tool of citizenship, and linguistic unity was

68

mace

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educ

‘

made a primary goal. The most important linguistic reforms
came about in education. French was the mandatory language
in the newly-created state-supported primary education
(October 21, 1793). A similar decree was made two years
later in October, 1795. The series of debates over the
French-only policy in schools that caused the second decree
attests not only to the strong resistance to the policy, but
also to the resolve of the Committee on Public Instruction
to see the law applied.16 The major outcome of the debates
about language instruction and policy during the revolution
was the centralization of the educational system and the
general acceptance that French would be the language of
education in France. The linguistic results of these
policies — the eventual marginalization of all languages
besides French - would be slow in coming. In 1794 Grégoire
reported that only three million (or about 10-12%) of the
French population spoke French as a first language. That
figure would increase only gradually over the next 100
years.

Little linguistic policy was debated in the Assemblée
in the years following the fall of Napoleon (Kibbee 5-6).
It seems the debate over what was to be the language of
France had been settled in the legal and legislative arenas.

The French-only policies established under the revolutionary

69

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and Napoleanic governments were not challenged under the
Restoration.17 Except for the “Loi Guizot” - a general
reformation of the education system that specifies French
again as the language of instruction — and three court
rulings concerning translation of documents and language use
in the French courts, no new linguistic legislation was
introduced between December, 1812 and March, 1850. During
this period, however, the movement toward universalization
of French and marginalization of regional languages was
gaining momentum. One rather visible example of this
movement is Brittany. As a regional language bearing none
of the resemblance to French found in Romance dialects,
Breton was an easy target and government officials devised
strategies for its eradication. Strategies were employed to
impoverish Breton and force communication in French:
students were punished for speaking Breton in schools,
public posting in Breton was discouraged, French was the
required language of business transactions, clergy performed
communion in French rather than Breton, and Breton was
eliminated from the goals of the educational system (see
Kibbee 7-8). Breton speakers reacted to these strategies by
the creation of organizations for preserving and creating in

the Breton language and culture.18

70

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Similarly, a literary movement arose in the latter half
of the nineteenth century for the revitalization and
preservation of Provencal — most notable in this movement
are Théodore Aubanel (1829-1886), Joseph Roumanille (1818-
1891) and Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914). Mistral, who won
the Nobel prize in literature in 1904, was perhaps the most
political of the group known as the félibrige — the
provencal name the group gave itself. But even the
immensely popular Mistral — who envisioned a kind of “Latin
Union” of Provence and Catalonia — never threw down the
gauntlet of regionalism in the political arena, preferring
to make his points through literature. In his later life,
his rhetoric had softened and his death in 1914
coincidentally also marked the beginning of the final major
event pushing French toward universality within the hexagon
- World War 1.

While the more widely-spoken dialects - e.g., Occitan,
Breton, Alsatian — held out against the French juggernaut
and remained at least languages of everyday communication
well into the twentieth century, the lesser-known dialects
spoken (but hardly written) in various (less and less)
isolated regions of France could hardly resist economic,
social and educational forces which relegated them all to

the equal status as patois.19 Because many dialects — such

71

“An
9V5;

as Franco—Provencal, or the dialectes d’oil (the
approximately 20 related Romance dialects of the northern
part of France) — bore a vague resemblance to French,
dialectologists and language policy-makers viewed them as
fragmented and irregular versions of French rather than the
whole linguistic systems with internal regional variations
that they were.20 There is good reason to believe that much
of the eradication of these “lesser” dialects was
consensual. Parents wishing for their children to succeed
often encouraged them to abandon their regional vernacular
in favor of standardized French ( see, e.g., Hélias for an
example in Brittany). Whether consensual or forced (or —
which is more likely — a combination of the two) language
loss often leads to nostalgia for the culture represented by
that language. By the end of the eighteenth century, French
was no longer threatened by extinction or dominance by
competing dialects. The political and military conflicts
between Paris and the Provinces helped solidify the
rural/urban polarization. The resolution of those conflicts
resulted in the Parisian centralization of nearly every
sphere of French public life, so that rural/urban
distinctions became essentially Paris/non—Paris ones by the
end of the First Empire.21 The Parisian view of dominated

rural dialects followed the two lines of thought suggested

72

 

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by Restif and Bernardin: On the one hand — as in Restif —
rural speakers were perceived as an under—educated,
dangerously naive social group, on the other hand — as in
Bernardin - rural language and its speakers represented the
irrecuperable loss of the pure and simple life brought on by
the complex ills of urbanization. In short, city dwellers
tended to look on rural dialect speakers with either haughty
disdain and scorn or with nostalgic condescension.

The pastoral novels of George Sand illustrate this
latter nostalgic View of rural life, combining that
nostalgia with social utopianism. Sand used peasant society
as a forum for exposing socialist ideals. She reveals her
dislike for realism in the opening to the first of her
pastoral novels, La Mare au diable, published in 1846. As
a vehicle of social transformation, the novel’s role is not
to expose society as it really is, but rather to paint it as
it could or should be (see preface to La Mare au diable,
12).

Sand's pastoral does not depict real peasant life, but
rather highlights the elements of rural living that she
feels are lacking from social and political interaction in
the urban world. She is critical of Laclos and Restif
because their educational novels show the reality of a

corrupt world and serve as a cautionary note to the naive.

73

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Sand contends that truly educational novels would provide
examples of a possible society rather than realistically
painting the elements of actual society that should be
avoided but that remain immutable.

The stories of Sand's four pastoral novels are set in
her natal region, Le Berry. Les Maitres sonneurs is a more
complex novel than the other pastoral novels, if only for
its length - more than double any of the other three. All
four novels share many traits, including an idealized
picture of peasant morality, an idyllic vision of peasant
life and a moral model for social revolution. The society
of Sand's peasants resembles a socialist utopia. Most of
the peasants happily labor long hours, and those that do not
love work seem strange and out of place (e.g., Joseph in Les
Maitres sonneurs). Sand’s good peasants tend to live
harmoniously with nature. Accordingly, they are rarely
capable of outward appearances that do not reflect their
inner feelings. Again, those that do dissimulate their true
feelings are usually punished — even when they play a
positive role in the overall story of a novel.22
Transparency and frankness of character go hand in hand with
a symbiotic relationship to nature. Natural surroundings
(as in much romantic literature) parallel the movement of

the story. In La Mare au diable the climactic scene where

74

Marie and Germain share timid confidences takes place
because of a natural event — a storm forces them to take
refuge in the woods — and the primeval setting facilitates
Germain's confession of love to Marie. In Les Maitres
sonneurs natural settings are used to mirror cultural
differences between the Bourbonnais and Berrichon characters
in the novel. The strange and unnatural setting of the
underground caverns of an ancient chateau near a cemetery
sets the stage for the treachery of the Pipers against
Joseph and the ensuing violence. In all the novels, rain or
stormy weather tends to accompany calamitous events, while
calm and happy times take place in equally calm weather.
Nature carries out most of the justice in the novels as
well. With the exception of the manslaughter in Les Maitres
sonneurs - an arguably justifiable and certainly accidental
killing for which the killer nonetheless greatly atones —
all deaths in the novels are of natural causes. In most
cases, these deaths neatly eliminate the most malevolent
characters in the novels.

The pastoral dream — the urbanite wishing to return to
an idealized rural past - includes the vision of a simple
relationship to one's surroundings. This dream, according
to Sand, can be followed historically “en rapport inverse de

la dépravation des moeurs,[in reverse proportion to the

75

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depravity of moors]” becoming more sentimental as the
society becomes more corrupt (Foreward to Francois le
champi, 213). Traditionally, then, pastoral served as a
sort of escapism to a simpler world.

Because of his simplicity, the peasant lives closer to
the source of all artistic creation, nature. This proximity
and naive acceptance of the world around him make the
peasant be an artist simply by living:

C'est une autre forme [d'art], mais elle parle
plus a mon ame que toutes celles de notre
civilization. Les chansons, les récits, les
contes rustiques, peignent en peu de mots ce que
notre littérature ne sait qu’amplifier et déguiser
[It is another form [of art], but it speaks more
to my soul than all those of our civilization.
Rustic songs, stories and tales paint in few words
what our literature knows only how to amplify and
disguise]. (Foreword to Francois 1e champi, 211)
This natural ability of primitive beings such as peasants to
live beautifully and artistically, without comprehending
beauty or art, extends to language. The linguistic gift of
the peasant is to understand and express the world’s
complexities in simple concrete terms. Modern urban artists
can never match the compact quality of the peasant's
language because their overly-sophisticated vision of the
world has caused their language to become muddled and

imprecise. The language difference between rural and urban

speakers creates a paradox for Sand, who — wishing to

76

capture the simple, unembellished speech of peasants — must
write in French if she is to have an audience:
C’est pour moi une cause de désespoir que d’étre
forcé d’écrire la langue de l’Académie, quand j’en
sais beaucoup mieux une autre qui est si
supérieure pour rendre tout un ordre d'émotions,
de sentiments et de pensées [It is for me a cause
of great despair to be forced to write the
language of the Académie, when I much better know
another which is so superior to render a whole
order of emotions, of feelings and of thoughts].
(Foreword to Francois le champi, 212)
But using French poses a more important problem than just
being unable to express the Berrichon world-view: putting
the French language in the mouths of these peasants may
portray them as more sophisticated than they really are. On
the other hand, using specific dialect in abundance would
have distracted readers away from the mirage of Sand’s
pastoral utopia.

After the bloody events of June 1848 and the somewhat
dissappointing outcome for the socialist author, she took
refuge for many of her remaining days in her native region
of Nohant — the setting for all four pastoral novels. They
therefore coincide with Sand’s personal nostalgia for her
more innocent youth as well as with a spatial and
intellectual movement away from the urban environment that

she grew to despise. They represent linguistic regression.

The myth of simple peasant language is the myth of language

77

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birth: the first users of language — like naive rural
speakers — must have spoken primarily in the here—and-now
of the concrete. The ideas of peasants have evolved beyond
that moment, but only so much as their society has.“ People
whose literature is primarily oral, whose labor is menial,
and whose education rarely goes beyond that needed to carry
out tasks in the fields and on the farms, these people
cannot be capable of elaborated language, because they do
not have elaborate thought. Sand shares a common view of
language complexity (“primitive” languages are “simple”,
“civilized” languages are “complex”) held by many of her
European contemporaries, but which linguists have since
demonstrated to be false. Sand laments that French — like
all “civilized languages” - has evolved beyond the primal
stage of concrete representation. Language purity has been
lost in the progress of the industrial revolution, and so
has the simplicity of the language. In her appendix to La
Mare au diable, where Sand illustrates Berrichon peasant
customs at the wedding of Germain and Marie, she states this
view about the notion of pure language:
Je te demande pardon, lecteur ami, de n’avoir pas
su la [l’histoire] traduire mieux; car c'est une ’
veritable traduction qu'il faut au langage antique
et naif des paysans de la contrée que je chante
(comme on disait jadis). Ces gens-la parlent trop
francais pour nous, et, depuis Rabelais et

Montaigne, 1e progrés de la langue nous ont fait
perdre bien des vieilles richesses. Il en est

78

ainsi de tous les progrés, il faut en prendre sa
partie. Mais c'est encore un plaisir d’entendre
ces idiotismes pittoresques régner encore sur le
vieux terroir du centre de la France[...] I ask
your forgiveness, reader friend, for not having
known how to translate this story well for you;
for it is truly a translation that is necessary
for the antique and naive language of the peasants
from the country that I sing (as they said in
olden times). The French these people speak is
too French for us, and, since Rabelais and
Montaigne, the progress of the language has made
us lose a good many old riches. Thus it is with
all progress, we must come to terms with it. But
it is still a pleasure to hear these picturesque
idiomatic expressions reigning in the old
territory of the center of France]. (MD, 131,
emphasis in the original)

Sand’s nostalgia for her native region clearly extends to
language. Political and technological progress is the cause
of language change. For Sand, the starting point for the
progression of language change is rooted in the language of
Rabelais and Montaigne, the two predominant canonical
literary figures of the sixteenth century. Since Sand
herself is an author, we might have expected her to place
the origins of her own literary language in that of two
renowned prose authors from the period marking the
beginnings of French as a prestige language. Her statement
also illustrates the role of literature in linguistic
perception. She seems to have no reservations in her leap
of logic between the “more French” French of the Berrichon
peasants and the language of Rabelais and Montaigne, even

though at other moments she (rightfully) portrays the

79

.tJ‘

peasant population as largely illiterate. Although no
samples of the Berrichon dialect from Sand’s period are
available, it seems unlikely that the dialect spoken there
resembled the French of Rabelais and Montaigne any more than
it resembled the French of George Sand — although many
lexical items in the dialect may have evoked an “older”
French because of their proximity to archaic expressions.
With literature emerging as the predominant art form in
French society, it seems natural for Sand to refer to
linguistic periods in terms of literary figures.23 This
reference shows how literature was becoming the popular
device for measuring and understanding linguistic change.
The overall rise in literacy made literature a common point
of reference and a record for understanding language
history.

Sand also supports the notion — increasingly popular
since the eighteenth century — that the purest French
resides in the past, rather than with a specific group of
speakers. She modifies this generally held perception by
attributing the purest French currently spoken to that of
regions with the least advanced civilization. This
criterion, according to Sand, eliminates the popularly
accepted home of pure French, la Touraine:

La Touraine a conservé un certain nombre de
locutions patriarcales. Mais la Touraine s’est

80

grandement civilisé avec et depuis la Renaissance.
Elle s’est couverte de Chateaux, de routes,
d’étrangers et de mouvement. Le Berry est resté
stationnaire, et je crois qu’aprés la Bretagne et
quelques provinces de l'extréme midi de la France,
c'est le pays le plus conservé qui se puisse
trouver a l’heure qu'il est [The Touraine has
conserved a certain number of patriarchal
expressions. But the Touraine has become greatly
civilized with and since the Renaissance. It has
been covered by Chateaux, roads, foreigners and
movement. The Berry has remained stationary, and
I believe that after Brittany and some provinces
in the extreme south of France, it is the most
conserved country that may be found at this time].
(La Mare au Diable, 131-132, emphasis in the
original).24
Although references to the purity of Touraine language date
back to the thirteenth century, it seems likely that this
perception gained real popularity only after the early
nineteenth—century nationwide establishment in schools of a
common French language curriculum. Sand privileges la
Touraine without any introductory arguments, as though she
were responding to popular received wisdom.

With the apparent equation between the old and the
“uncivilized” it is little wonder that Sand needed to defend
against the criticism that she was trying to “resscusciter
d'anciens tours de langage et des expressions vieillies
[revive outmoded turns of phrase and archaic expressions].”
(Letter to Eugene Lambert in MS, 58). Many of the peasant

expressions she used must have seemed like archaic French,

since she sought the nearest possible French equivalents to

81

Berrichon vocabulary, which often meant using standard
French words that had long since fallen out of common usage.
For example, she justifies using “Champi” for her title
instead of calling her novel “Francois l’enfant trouvé” by
pointing out that Montaigne had once used the word two and a
half centuries earlier. Because of the mismatches between
the simple language of rustics and the intricate French
language, Sand’s depictions are — as she herself admits —
sometimes unrealistic because their language is not lucid
enough, sometimes because it seems too sophisticated:
Si, malgré l’attention et la conscience que j'y
mettrai, tu trouves encore quelquefois que mon
narrateur voit trop clair ou trop trouble dans les
sujets qu’il aborde, ne t’en prends qu’a
l’impuissance de ma traduction. [If despite the
attention and conscience I will have applied, you
still find sometimes that my narrator sees too
clearly or too dimly]. (Letter to Eugene Lambert
in Les Maitres sonneurs, 58).
This problem presents itself most particularly in Les
Maitres sonneurs and Francois le champi where the narrator
is a peasant whose story Sand is simply translating verbatim
— Francois le champi even has moments in the narration where
the storyteller is interrupted by listeners. In the other
two novels, the implicit (or in the case of La.Mare au
diable, the explicit) narrator is Sand herself who re-tells

the story as it was told to her, but takes away the first-

person status of the original narrator. As narrator in La

82

Mare au diable,and La Petite Fadette, she has no pretention
of trying to write in the dialect of Berry. Nevertheless,
the characters in these novels still display idiosyncratic
speech styles. In her narration and in characters' speech
Sand occasionally introduces words or forms typical of the
Berrichon dialect. In the reported speech of characters
Sand equally often — though not regularly — inserts traits
common to working class speech not particularly Berrichon.
With working-class speech she occasionally intermingles
archaic language, synonymous for Sand — as we have seen -
with the rustic language of France's isolated interior. The
result is often an admixture of traits that creates a kind
of rustic exoticism by being at once familiar and uncommon
to the reader. A good example of this admixture occurs in
La.Mare au diable as Germain speculates on the notion —
suggested by La Mere Maurice — that Marie may be hiding her
love from him because she is poor and her generous instincts
tell her that Germain should marry someone with money:
[C]a serait bien sage et bien comme il faut de sa
part! Mais si elle est si raisonnable, je crains
bien que c'est a cause que je lui déplais. [That
would be really wise and as things must be on her
part. But if she is so reasonable, I really fear
.that it is because I displease her]. (MD, 125-
126, italics in the original)

The use of “ca” and the adjectivalization of the phrase

“comme il faut” are both traits of popular or working class

83

speech, as is the grammatical error of not employing the
subjunctive after the verb “craindre.” The expression “a
cause que” quite common throughout the novels was already an
archaic usage at the time Sand was writing.25 Without the
rural setting, Germain’s speech could sometimes be mistaken
for Parisian working class speech. The same is true with
the peasant in La Petite Fadette who comments on the title
character's change of appearance and demeanor from tom-
boyish to womanlike:
Dieu veuille, dit la mere Courtillet, car c'est
vilain qu'une fille ait l’air d’un chevau échappé;
mais j’en espere aussi de cette Fadette, je l’ai
rencontrée devant z’hier, et au lieu qu'elle se
mettait toujours derriere moi a contrefaire ma
boiterie, elle m'a dit bonjour et demandé mon
portement avec beaucoup d'honnéteté [God willing,
said mother Courtillet, for it is sinful that a
girl look like an runaway horse; but I have hope
for that Fadette, I met her the day in front of
yes’day, and instead of that she always used to
get behind me and mock my limp, she said hello to
me and asked my health very politely] (PF, 101)
It is not clear why this peasant woman and others like her
who appear episodically in the novels have such
idiosyncratic speech compared to the other characters. Nor
is there patterned usage of Berrichon speech in the language
of any single character in Sand’s pastoral novels. Many
archaic expressions and constructions recur, but language

specific to the Berrichon dialect occurs irregularly,

sprinkled occasionally into the narrative to add exotic

84

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flavor. Sand’s pastoral characters speak mostly in standard
French, often in uninterrupted, coherent paragraph-length
pieces of discourse.

Sand also creates the effect of rural speech by the
juxtaposition of proverb-like wisdom with assessment of a
concurrent situation. The children growing up with Francois
in Francois 1e champi always let him go first when they
played at something dangerous, because of the luck
attributed by tradition to country waifs:

Celui-la, disaienteils, n'attrapera jamais de mal,
parce qu’il est champi. Froment de semence craint
la vimére du temps; mais folle graine ne périt
point [”That one”, they would say, “will never
have bad luck, because he is a foundling. Planted
wheat fears weather’s scourge; but wild seeds
perish not]. (Francois le champi, 230)
The maxim adds color if not content. The superstition about
the luck of champis is already made clear in the preceding
paragraph and reiterated by the children in their first
sentence above. The proverb also relates the superstition
to something in the natural surroundings of the peasant
children. This correlation between sentiments or beliefs
and the natural world is often a feature of Sand’s peasant

speech. Germain in La.Mare au diable explains what will be

the consequence if his love for Marie remains unrequited:

85

— Toute chose a son terme, mere Maurice: quand le
cheval est trop chargé, il tombe; et quand le
boeuf n'a rien a manger il meurt [Everything has
an end Mother Maurice: when the horse is too
laden, he falls; and when the bull has nothing to
eat, he dies]. (La Mare au diable, 123)
In her portrayals of Berrichon peasant speech, Sand more
often turns to this device — showing the peasants' simple
wisdom in their ability to spontaneously produce a kind of
mini-fable whose lesson pertains to their real-life
situation — than she does to inserting dialect features.
The proverb—like speech of Sand's peasants parallels
the same type of speech patterned in Marivaux's narrator.
But rather than evolving toward a more complex world-view as
does Jacob, Sand's peasants invert the paradigm of the
educational novel by portraying simplicity and naivete as
the goal, and the complexity of self-representation in
society something from which to evolve. Archaic language
and the occasional dialect item add an atmosphere of
exoticism while the proximity of the Berrichon to Paris
keeps the social model closer to home.
Although Sand paints a positive picture of the lives of
peasants, it is questionable whether her pastoral had a
different effect on Parisian perceptions of the rural

peasantry than did the beatific arcadian portrayals of

previous centuries. Sand’s peasants do occasionally

86

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Sand’ 5 p

 

 

 

represent thinly-veiled criticism of political and social
corruption in Paris. The way that Sand’s peasants solve the
problems they face, however, continues to paint rural
society as a paradise of simplicity where common decency and
respect prevail. Sentiments and emotions — legible on the
face and in the actions of every member of society — have
the force of law. Reality and appearance are of the same
order, so deception becomes impossible. All of this
perfection is tightly bound to peasant society’s closeness
to nature and the direct link of labor to happiness -
material and spiritual. Despite her rural connections,
Sand’s portrayal of the peasantry is essentially urban. Her
image of rusticity mirrors the growing urban nostalgia for a
pristine countryside. The tone of this nostalgic vision —
of the city-dweller whose culture is well-developed complex
or, in a word, “civilized” - is almost parental. The
peasants simple lives have simple problems with simple
solutions, and the wisdom of their problem solving resembles
the naive wisdom of children. Sand’s pastoral novels
reinforce a positivist parallel between the individual's
mental and biological development and the evolution of
culture. The culture of the Berrichon peasantry has
blissfully stagnated, for the moment outside the reach of

modern civilization.

87

peasant

savor of

 

 

As noted above, the same stagnation is evident in
peasant language. But if Sand pays tribute to the special
savor of this dying language, she does so entirely in French
and for the benefit of Parisians. Sand clarifies her view
of peasant language in her story-telling formula in Francois
le champi where her companion exhorts her to speak as if she
had

[...]a ta droite un Parisien parlant la langue
moderne et a ta gauche un paysan devant lequel tu
ne voudrais pas dire une phrase, un mot ou il ne
pourrait pas pénétrer. Ainsi tu dois parler
clairement pour le Parisien, naivement pour le
paysan. [on your right a Parisian speaking the
modern language and on your left a peasant before
whom you would not like to speak one sentence or
word that he could not grasp. You must thus speak
clearly for the Parisian and naively for the
peasant]. (FC, 217)
The language of Sand’s peasants is the converse of Moliere's
peasant language in.MOnsieur de Pourceaugnac. Moliére
sprinkled quasi-dialect with French words to ensure general
comprehension by the real Parisian audience. Sand sprinkles
modern French with quasi-dialect — archaic words and
occasional Berrichon lexicon - to ensure the comprehension
of an imaginary peasant audience. Both portrayals of
peasant language stem from and add to the same basic
perception: everyone within French territory (and especially

in the northern dialect regions) speaks French, with

incidental and abnormal variation. Sand attributes that

88

variation to the lack of linguistic evolution accompanying a
fortuitous lack of social evolution. Although Sand's stated
purpose is to validate a peasant lifestyle that is
dissappearing, her vision of peasant life and language
nonetheless contributes to a general perception placing
rural people on a lower plane intellectually and thus socio-
culturally. She claims to value the expressiveness of the
Berrichon dialect — “La vraie langue [the real language]”
(cited in La Petite Fadette — p. IV) over the sterility of
Parisian French, yet it is emblematic of her ambivalence
toward this claim that the three most complex characters in
all of her pastoral novels — Joset, Brulette and Tiennet in
Les.Maitres sonneurs— are also the only ones that boast of
having learned to read and write standard French.

Honoré de Balzac, Sand's contemporary, shared her
interest in peasant society. Balzac wrote several novels
placed in the French countryside — e.g., Les Chouans (1829)
Le Médecin de campagne (1833), Le Curé de village (1839-
1841) — where peasants played an important role. Regarding
peasants in these novels, however, “on ne les connait guére
que par le biais de quelques rencontres et de quelques
aventures ou devenirs individuels [are only known by means
(of some meetings and individual adventures or destinies].”

(Pierre Barbéris in the préface to Les Paysans, 23-4)

89

where s

J
(I)
'1
DJ
'1
r?

 

Balzac's portrayal of peasants and peasant language is, on
the surface, much less positive than Sand’s. Balzac felt
that accurate depiction, rather than embellishment, was the
primary goal of the author. In this Balzac stands against
Sand’s position in the prefaces to her pastoral novels,
where she states on several occasions that the mission of
her art is to present idealized models for social change.
Balzac's vision of the peasantry is less flattering
than Sand’s because — as both Balzac and Sand hold in
separate letters - it is more realistic. The same realism
leads to a more patterned approach in the portrayal of
provincial and peasant language. Instead of random regional
vocabulary, reported speech by provincial characters is
identified by regularly recurring phonetic and grammatical
alterations. In La Maison Nucingen (1837) Balzac portrays
accent imitation. Talking to Finot and Couture, Bixiou
reports a conversation between the Alsatian Nucingen and a
character named du Tillet. Balzac’s character seizes on
certain traits of the accent and regularizes them (my own
translation attempts to follow the same patterns):
Hé pien! .Ma ponne ami, dit Nucingen, location est
‘pelle bire ebiser Malfina: fous serez brodecdir
teu zette baufre vamile han plires, visse aurez
eine vamile, ine indériére; fous drouferez eine
mison doute mondée, et Malfina cerdes esd eine
frai dressor [Ah yez! .Mine goot vriend, said

Nucingen, zee oggazion is right to vool Malfina:
jou vill pe brodector far ziss boor grying vamili.

90

consonar.
the pass

‘ i
6". “Y‘-
bale p“‘:

 

 

Jou Vill haf eine vamili, eine vay inzide; JOu
vil vind eine houze all reaty for jou, and.Malfina
zertainly ist eine real dtreassure] (La Comédie
humaine, 358)
The accent imitation contains two major regular phonetic
alterations: (l) the reversal of voiced and unvoiced
consonants (e.g., /z/ —> /s/, /f/ -> /v/, etc.) (2) the
reduction of the vowels /e/, /u/, /y/ and /z/ to /i/. In
the passage above, these two rules are each broken once: in
the phrase “fous serez”. This one break in the regularity
points toward the constraints in Balzac’s (or rather his
character's) dialect imitation: he wishes to maintain an
appearance of exoticism, while keeping the text decipherable
for the reader. The reader can decode much of the text
through Balzac’s use of spelling conventions: he retains the
un-pronounced “2” at the end of verbs and helps the reader
and the feminine “e” at in “mondée [montée]” to clarify that
it is modifying “mison” which can then only be interpreted
as “maison”, and the un-pronounced “s" at the end of “fous”,
to clarify that this word represents “vous.” If he had
followed the phonetic rules of the passage, Balzac would
have written “fous serez” as “fous zerez.” This formulation
would risk confusing the reader, however, who might
understand the “2" as the product of an elision between

“fous” and some following verb that begins with a vowel —

91

to avc

a word
one the

if not

 

 

possibly “irez,” the future of the verb “to go”. In order
to avoid this misunderstanding, Balzac simply left the verb
in its standard form. Balzac re—worked this passage so many
times that even the editors of the thorough Editions de la
Pléiade version of La.Maison Nucingen found “Le détail de
ces transformations trop complexe pour étre reproduit
intégralement [the detail of these transformations too
complex to be integrally reproduced]“ (La Comédie HUmaine,
1278). These numerous changes, which often meant replacing
a word that would remain the same in the German accent by
one that would be altered, resulted in striking regularity,
if not complete linguistic accuracy.26

Balzac does accurately portray the sociolinguistic
situation in France during the 18303. Most battles between
regional languages and French had been decided by this time
in favor of French, especially and most importantly among
members of the ruling class - the bourgeoisie. If the the
majority of the large peasant working class still didn’t
speak French, decisions about schooling, the language of
law, and the language of commerce were being made that would
change the linguistic landscape among the lower classes over
the next 100 years - leading to the virtual elimination of
most of the dialects they were speaking. By the

Restauration, the bourgeoisie of Paris and in the provinces

92

had rejected the validity of regional languages and adopted
the philosophy of the Abbé Gregoire — the wholesale
elimination of regional dialects and languages. Nucingen is
such a provincial bourgeois who tries to speak French, but
whose inability to speak like a Parisian still makes him at
best an outsider and at worst a target for ridicule. There
is no grammatical divergence from the Parisian norm in
Nucingen’s speech. If his sentences were rendered without
phonetic alteration, they would seem like standard French
sentences. The phonetic deformation still makes the printed
version look quite exotic, and at first glance (like many
non-standard language varieties) indecipherable. Balzac’s
Nucingen portrays linguistic variation as purely phonetic —
sharing all of standard French’s lexical and syntactic
traits.

Nucingen has the accent of an upper—class speaker in
the provinces. La Maison Nucingen is not meant to portray
the lives of working-class or peasant characters. Les
Paysans (begun in 1844, published for the first time in its
entirety posthumously in 1855) is Balzac’s only novel in
which peasants are the “véritables agents de l'histoire
[real agents of the story]”(Pierre Barbéris in the preface
to Les Paysans, 24). This novel is a further demonstration

of Balzac’s interest in portraying regional speech styles.

93

The story takes place in Burgundy and involves an intricate
conspiracy against an army general named Montcornet who
takes ownership of a country estate called les Aigues.
Gaubertin, a former superintendant of les Aigues fired by
Montcornet for larceny, manipulates the peasants of the
region into believing they are victims of Montcornet’s will
to seize power like an old-order aristocrat.

Balzac’s audience (like Sand’s) is essentially Parisian
and upper class. Balzac’s vision of rural people represents
one of two prevailing urban images concerning the status and
worth of working-class country—dwellers — images that were
emerging as urban areas were growing27 On one side of the
coin was conviction that industrialization and modernization
were causing an irretrievable loss from the French
countryside: the loss of culturally valuable languages as
well as a specific morality and innumerable customs,
practices and rituals unique to the French provinces. This
view was Sand’s, and although she further elaborated it into
a plan for social transformation, her basic feelings of
nostalgia and loss were shared by many of her
contemporaries. The Balzacian view regards rural people as
simply another self-interested group on the overall
political and economic landscape. The loss or

transformation of that class of people is to be expected and

94

- given the somewhat negative picture Balzac paints of

peasants — to be desired.

Les Paysans portrays the clash between the rural

peasant and the Parisian political system that attempts,

with little success, to dominate rural areas. The narrator

characterizes the rule of law in France as a two-tiered

system:

Des qu’une ville se trouve au-dessous d’un certain
chiffre de population, les moyens administratifs
ne sont plus les memes. Il est environ cent
villes en France on les lois jouent dans toute
leur vigeur, ou l'intelligence des citoyens
s’éléve jusqu’au probléme d’intérét général ou
d’avenir que la loi veut résoudre; mais dans le
reste de la France, on l'on ne comprend que les
jouissances immédiates, l’on s'y soustrait a tout
ce qui peut les atteindre. Aussi, dans la moitié
de la France environ, rencontre-t-on une force
d'inertie qui déjoue toute action légale,
administrative et gouvernementale [As soon as the
population of a city falls below a certain number,
the administrative procedures are no longer the
same. There are about one hundred cities in
France where the laws are operative in full force,
where the intelligence of citizens rises to the
questions of general interest or of future
concerns that the law tries to resolve; but in the
rest of France, where they understand only
immediate gratification, they elude all that could
reach them. So, in about half of France, you meet
a force of inertia that undoes all legal,
administrative or governmental action]. (Les
Paysans, 197)

Rurality and isolation for Balzac's peasants have an effect

exactly opposite to the moral courage and social perfection

that Sand’s peasants display. Being closer to nature does

95

not allow them to listen more closely to their hearts in
arriving at morally upright decisions. Nature's influence
makes peasants more like animals, and more likely to respond
instinctively in favor of self-preservation.28 But the
lawlessness of peasants is also directly linked to language.
It is the mayors of cantons who “font des sacs a raisins
[make bags for grapes]” with copies of the Bulletin des Lois
and the mayors of small communities that “ne savent ni lire
ni écrire [know neither how to read nor write]” who are a
constant source of resistance to France’s centralization - a
force “contre laquelle on déclame tant, comme on déclame en
France contre tout ce qui est grand, utile et fort [against
which people rail, as they rail in France against all that
is great, useful and strong]” (les Paysans, 197-198).
General literacy would at least be a step toward justice in
French society, since those who can read the law stand some
chance of understanding it. At least one of Balzac’s
bourgeois characters, to whom he attributes barely more
intelligence or moral courage than his peasants, sees
literacy of the peasant population as a threat to his own
status: “Si les paysans savaient lire et écrire, que
deviendrions-nous?, dit Langlumé naivement [If peasants knew
how to read and write, what would become of us, said

Langlumé naively] (Les Paysans, 186). Perhaps Langlumé's

96

statement is naive because he misunderstands the important
role language could play in civilizing the French
countryside. It may also be naive because it suggests that
somehow literacy would endow peasants with other traits that
might make them indistinguishable from other classes of
society. Literacy would certainly not eliminate country-
dwellers’ penchant to act primarily in the interest of self—
preservation, nor would it suddenly bestow them with the
urbanite's refined sense of beauty. Acoording to Balzac,
the peasants’ undeveloped sense of the aesthetic is visible
in their language, whose outward appearance conforms to
norms less subtle than those of Parisian society:
La plaisanterie du paysan et de l’ouvrier est trés
attique, elle consiste a dire toute la pensée en
la grossissant par une expression grotesque. On
n’agit pas autrement dans les salons. La finesse
de l'esprit y remplace le pittoresque de la
grossiereté, voila toute la difference [The
pleasantry of peasants and workers is highly
nuanced, and consists of saying an entire thought
by enlarging it with a grotesque expression. We
act no differently in the salons, where the whole

difference is that sublety of mind replaces the
picturesque nature of crudeness]. (Les Paysans

109)
Balzac uses a concrete comparison with language to explain
the nature of peasant language. He does not value the
peasant’s language as a mode of expression worthy of
preservation, but rather as a different means for expressing

essentially the same material as standard French. The

97

peasant resorts to concrete exaggeration for humorous
effect, while Parisians can base humor on finer points of
language.

While neither as elaborate nor as regular, Balzac's
approach to representing Burgundian peasant speech is
similar to his portrayal of Alsatian speech in La Maison
NUCingen — his alterations are primarily phonetic. He
intermittently removes or simplifies consonants or consonant
clusters, most frequently eliminating the “l” and “r” from
common interrogatives and pronouns — “quelque” and “qu’est-
ce que” both become “quéque”; “quel” is written “qué”;
“votre” becomes “vot’”; “plus” becomes “pus”; etc. Along
with the phonetic modifications, Balzac inserts an
occasional word or expression, italicized to indicate that
they are lexical items characteristic of the regional
setting. He also regulary simplifies the relative pronouns
“qui” and “que” to “qu’” before vowels. Vowels pronounced
as a rule in standard French are often omitted from much of
Balzac’s Burgundian. In many words containing the standard
french “e caduc” (/e/), the letter “e” is omitted. In other
instances Balzac idiosyncratically inverts or otherwise
modifies the standard phonological pattern by which this
phoneme is pronounced or eliminated, or he eliminates what

would normally be a closed syllable /8/ or an open syllable

98

/e/, treating them like /e/. Examples of these
manipulations: “cette” becomes “ste”; “relevé” becomes
“erlevé”; “de” becomes “ed”; “que” becomes “équ”; etc.

None of these alterations — the consonant cluster reduction,
the lexical insertion, the manipulation of /e/ - occur
regularly with every peasant speaker. One could conclude
that Balzac was less rigorous than with Nucingen in his
attention to detail when constructing this provincial
speech.

Other explanations are possible, however, for the lack
of regularity in Balzac's Burgundian language
representation. First, the Burgundian accent may have
seemed less marked to Balzac (and his Parisian audience)
than the Alsatian. Despite Balzac’s own reasons for
choosing Burgundy as the site for Les Paysans, his Touraine
roots certainly made the Burgundian dialect seem closer to
his own language and hence more easily decipherable. He may
have perceived less need with Burgundian speech than with
Alsatien to emphasize “foreign-ness.” A second reason for
the lack of consistency in the Burgundian peasants' speech
is that — unlike in La Maison Nucingen - where only one
speaker is represented — Balzac portrays the speech of
several different Burgundian peasants in Les Paysans. There

is a clear differentiation between the speech styles of at

99

least two different Burgundian speakers — the father
Fourchon and his grandson, Mouche.

One fairly lengthy scene concentrates on the
interaction between Mouche and the rich inhabitants of
Montcornet’s chateau. Mouche — whose sole aim in visiting
the Montcornets is to extract charity — uses a sly
linguistic strategy. His first rule of interaction is a
telling variation on the theme of the naivete of peasant
children:

La politique du petit gars consistait a paraitre
ne rien comprendre a ce qu’on disait quand on
avait raison contre lui [The policy of the little
fellow consisted of appearing to understand
nothing of what was said when someone had put him
in the wrong].
Mouche is a “child of the field” like Sand’s Francois. But
any resemblance to the ideal behavior of the champi stops
there. Mouche’s speech more regularly eliminates vowels
than does his grandfather—guardian’s. Mouche uses far fewer
regionally marked lexical items than his grandfather. Two
of Mouche’s utterances that Balzac italicizes could well be
in the vocabulary of any working-class speaker: he tells of
his father never having married his mother “avec les
papiers” (124) and of the advantage of not being on the

government’s “papiers” (126). Two of Mouche’s other words

seem rather arbitrarily italicized, since they mark

100

phonological traits that go without italics through the rest
of the text: “pus” for “plus” and “m’s’” for “mes” (125-
126). In Mouche’s speech the only word inserted in italics
that seems to represent an actual lexical regionalism is “el
journiau” for “le journal” (126). Completing the list of
italicized word in Mouche’s speech is his attempt to sound
out the letters in “quotidienne” to demonstrate his reading
ability: “cu—o-ssi—dienne” (126). Balzac irregularly
highlights non-standard speech, with no discernable logic
for determining which words he highlights and which he
leaves in regular type.

At two moments, Mouche’s speech breaks away from its
normal non-standard patterns and becomes an articulate,
fluent example of standard French. Both of these moments
seem designed to appeal to the emotions of the countess who
has shown a penchant for helping the under-privileged. The
first moment, set off by an elipsis, comes after the child
explains that allowing his cows to graze on the count's land
allows him to drink a small amount of milk to help ease his

hunger which is exarcebated by beatings at the hands of his

101

grandfather. In a seemingly miraculous change of register,

Mouche utters:
Monseigneur est-i1 donc si pauvre qu’il ne puisse
me laisser boire un peu de son herbe [Monseigneur
is then so poor that he cannot let me drink a
little of his grass]?” (Les Paysans, 125)
The change of style, surrounded by so much non-standard
speech, seems almost like a theatrical aside for the benefit
of a specific audience. Mouche learns who this audience is
from the reaction of the countess, who responds with the
sought-after pity. The next time the boy enters into this
register, he is not surprisingly addressing the countess
again — while feigning sobs in reaction to the jokes of the
men mocking his inability to read correctly. This time,
when he answers her question concerning whether he has
really trapped an exotic bird — a claim his other
interlocutors have disputed — he does so with eloquence and
expressions reminiscent of Sand's Francois speaking to
Madeleine:
Oui, Madame, aussi vrai que vous étes la plus
belle femme que j'aie vue, et que je verrai
jamais, dit l'enfant en essuyant ses larmes [Yes
Madame, as true as you being the most beautiful
woman I have seen and that I will ever see, said
the child while wiping away his tears]. (Les
Paysans, 126)

Mouche displays an ability to switch registers as

conveniently as self-interest would dictate. The same

102

ability seems less available to his grandfather and guardian
Fourchon.

Irregular italicization continues in a long series of
speeches by Fourchon. But although the highlighting of
certain words in Fourchon’s speech also follows no logic —
indeed within the text the same word will be italicized
once, not italicized at the next occurrence, then later
italicized again — it is certainly much more common overall
than in Mouche’s speech. The non-standard patterns in
Fourchon’s speech do not follow those in Mouche’s speech.
Fourchon, like Mouche, eliminates many consonant clusters
present in standard French. Unlike Mouche, however, he also
seems to regularly change the quality of certain vowels.
While this difference in quality — as with the other non-
standard features Balzac writes in — does not strictly
follow any pattern, the most common transformation is from
standard /8/ or /e/ to /a/: “vertus” becomes “vartus”;
“terre” is written “tarre”; “Sous—préfet” is “Souparfait”;
“respirons” becomes “raspirons” etc.

Through the differences between the speech styles of
Fourchon and his grandson, Balzac portrays changes in the
Burgundian dialect over two generations. The more frequent
italicizations in Fourchon’s speech suggest that he has had

less exposure to standard French than his grandson has. The

103

closer proximity of Mouche's vowel system to standard French
suggests a generational evolution toward standard French and
away from Burgundian norms. Most of the vowel contraction
and consonant reduction in Mouche’s language, and even his
italicized lexical items can be found in Parisian (and other
urban) working—class sociolects and are not specific to
Burgundy’s dialect. While Mouche claims to be able to read
and write French, Fourchon indicates that his first language
is not French:
Je sais si peu le francais que je vous les [les
francs] demanderai, si vous voulez, en
bourguignon, pourvu que je les aie, ca m'est égal,
je parlerai latin, latinus, latina, latinum! [I
know so little French that I will ask you for the
money, if you like, in Burgundian, provided that I
get it, it makes no difference to me, I'll speak
Latin, latinus, latina, latinum!] (Les Paysans,
130)
Linguistically, and culturally, Fourchon and Mouche
represent the transformation of culturally varying provinces
into one socio-cultural whole. Fourchon is the pre-
revolutionary peasant whose language and mind belong to a
less centralized series of culturally diverse regions.
Mouche is part of the France of 1823 (the year the novel is
set): the 34 years since the Revolution have seen the
completion of a centuries—old trend - the centralization of

finance, education and cultural production in Paris. The

Burgundy of Les Paysans is not une province but part of la

104

‘province - a Parisian construction imposed on (and accepted
by?) the nation as a whole.

This construction is where the works of Balzac and Sand
converge. Although the two authors approach peasants with
widely different value judgments — one, in the romantic
spirit of Paul et Virginie, idealizing them as possible
models for a new urban ethic; the other, in the spirit of Le
Paysan perverti, seeing them as a social group corrupted by
an all-engulfing system of bourgeois liberalism — they each
frame their judgments in linguistically and culturally
Parisian terms, despite both having strong childhood ties in
essentially the same rural region of France.29 Their
treatments of rural language in the regions they write about
give an air of inevitability to the eventual dominance of
French and dissappearance of rural dialects. Peasant
characters are accordingly resigned to this fate. Sand’s
protagonists learn to read and write in French and
characters who speak different dialects — the mule-drivers
in Les Maitres sonneurs — use French as a lingua franca,
and are at their most sinister when they speak in their own
dialect. The generational evolution portrayed in Balzac’s
Burgundian speakers shows language loss as an objective
reality, and an inevitable result working-class desire to

rise in the society. Standard French works as both a

105

potential equalizer for peasants seeking status and a
bourgeois defensive weapon, barring access to their ranks.
CONCLUSION TO PART ONE

This part of the dissertation has historically outlined
the image of regional dialects in French literature up until
the middle of the nineteenth century. The works, chosen
because they contain explicit portrayals and representations
of regional language, can be seen as traces of the
sociolinguistic perception of their authors and to some
extent of their Parisian audiences. All of these works were
either immensely popular at the time of their writing (Les
Contes Rustiques, Mbnsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le Paysan
perverti), were written by authors whose works, by virtue of
their reputation, have as a whole become part of the
legitimated literary canon (Les Paysans), or both
(Montaigne, Rabelais, Marivaux, Sand’s pastoral novels).
The end of this overview coincides with a point in the
history of French language standardization where the
establishment of French as the prestige language throughout
the French territory had become so firmly established as to
be considered a fact of life (see Weber, 1976). The
survivalist motivations of sixteenth-century authors had
gradually been eliminated, to the point where legitimated

French- language authors like George Sand could point out

106

the superiority of regional language in certain domains,
knowing full well that those languages could no longer pose
any threat to French language dominance. Of course the more
common stance — that French was in all ways superior to the
various patois spoken across the French countryside — was
reinforced in literary texts throughout the remainder of the
nineteenth century. Zola and Flaubert occasionally
describe patois negatively and occasionally insert dialect
words into narration, to add the impression that a
description or narrative is faithful to reality. This
practice of inserting regional dialect into narration —
Balzac does this in Les Paysans as well — is added evidence
of the linguistic security of French-language authors.
Contrary to the common prescriptivist view that borrowing
words or phrases from other languages poses a threat to the
survival of French, this very borrowing is perhaps the
greatest indicator of the societal strength of that
language. No external threat to the language is taken very
seriously. Further enumeration of instances in which
regional dialects are denigrated would add little content to
the story of the general evolution of regional-language
perception that this section of the dissertation has told.
Telling the story of regionalist literary movements

would also be an interesting yet superfluous addition to

107

this historical overview. Regionalist literature is
essentially an attempt to revive the past. As such, it is
trapped (like much of today's post-colonial literature)
between the Scylla of writing in the language of the
conquerer and the Charibdos of having only a minute
readership. This was the same dilemma faced by Sand when
she wrote for her dual audience. Even though she claimed to
be writing for both the Berrichon peasant and the Parisian,
clearly the Berrichon lost the battle. The greater part of
accommodation went toward the Parisian, since the story was
told in Parisian standard French.

In short, the groundwork for most present-day Parisian
perceptions of regional French had been largely laid before
1900. By 1850, the language perception conveyed in literary
works had lost the coherence of the preceding periods.
Certainly, some works since 1850 have reinforced the
attitudes and perceptions we have seen in this part of the
dissertation. Flaubert, Zola, Barbey D’Aurevilly and Hugo
all displayed conscious perceptions of non-prestige
varieties, but these perceptions were increasingly seen
through a social rather than regional lense, and non—
standard varieties were less than formerly an object of
derision, more an object of study to achieve realistic

effect. In the twentieth century, Prescriptivists would

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continue to harken back to days of linguistic perfection,
and authors — many belonging to the same ranks — would
vilify socially unacceptable language. Other authors,
however, were becoming increasingly aware of the injustices
created by rigid prescriptive norms. Louis Aragon’s Les
Cloches de Bale and Proust's monumental A La Recherche du
temps perdu ridicule the stuffy normative language of the
privileged classes much as earlier works mocked non-prestige
language. Raymond Queneau bemoaned the distance that had
gradually emerged between the written and spoken forms of
French, and in Zazie dans le métro he uses alternative
orthography to highlight this distance. Marcel Pagnol wrote
regionalist literature that recovers the prestige once
associated with Provence, although he does so in French,
with little recourse to regional language features. These
many currents in the literature of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries show the artistic side of
literature liberating itself from its role in maintaining
linguistic norms. They do not indicate, however, that all
literary authors abandoned all association with prescriptive
norms. Popular authors such as Abel Hermant and Maurice
Leblanc, more widely read during their lifetimes than were
their contemporaries Proust, Queneau or Aragon, kept well

within (or helped write) the literary conventions formulated

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by grammarians. The once taut alliance between literary
norms and linguistic norms had loosened considerably (but
not entirely broken) over the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Because of this newly ambiguous status of
literature, and because the literature that does treat
marginalized language now tends to view it on a social
rather than geographical axis, treating individual literary
works’ views of regional language as representative of most
literature from a given period becomes even more problematic
than with earlier periods. Many literary figures had
reached the same conclusion as would linguists and
dialectologists in years to come: that no one linguistic
system can better represent truth or reality than another,
and that all linguistic systems are therefore equal. Other
bodies controlling linguistic policy would accordingly begin
to ease the rigidity of language norms. The ministry of
education would begin to loosen the reins of prescriptivism,
especially in cases where rules were arbitrarily form-based
(see Grévisse, 1978). Literature began to explore more
marginal forms of the French language at the same time that
it was assuming a less central role in French artistic life
(see Nettelbeck). But while relativism in the linguistic
sciences and in literature began to prevail over the course

of the twentieth century, it remains to be seen to what

110

extent that relativism has taken hold among non-linguist
speakers of French. Some authors and governmental
prescriptivists may have softened their stance, but how
clear-cut are questions of good vs. bad language to members

of the general public?

111

EAR! TWO: Perceptual Dialectolggy: Present-dag Parisian
‘Vigws of Begional Language variation
INTRODUCTION

During the twentieth century, economic interdependence
of the different provinces, mass media, and an increasingly
mobile population have caused the near-elimination of most
dialects within France. Among groups speaking languages
other than French "la trés large majorité [...] n'exprime
aucune volonté politique a travers leur usage [express no
political will through their use]" (Bonnemason, 45)”. What
remains today of most French regional languages is an
abundance of stylistic, phonetic and lexical traits that
have been incorporated into a number of varieties of
regional French.31 Beginning with the publication of the
Atlas Linguistique de la France (1902-1920), the scholarly
work done to classify and describe these regional varieties
(and remaining dialects) is perhaps more abundant than
literary and journalistic portrayals of them. Guenier et
al. looked at French speakers attitudes toward the /e/ vs.
/8/ distinction among various social classes in Paris. They
found that speakers from the lower strata neither performed,
perceived nor reported that they made the distinction,

whereas those of higher socio-economic strata did not

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regularly make the distinction, but reacted to it and
significantly over-reported their own performance of it.
Other scholars(Weber 1976, Lodge 1993,1994) have given a
historical perspective to language attitudes - showing how
Parisian French evolved as a dialect and the gradual process
by which it attained prestige at the expense of competing
dialects. Little has been done, however, to assess
contemporary European French speakers' perceptions of
regional varieties of their language.

Language perception studies have their origin in early
work on subjective dialect boundaries. In 1944, Weijnen
reported findings from his dialectology question list in
which respondents were asked to tell in which areas speakers
spoke the same dialect, and where the dialect was
“definitely different.” (Preston, 1989: 4). His
interpretation of the data from these respondents generated
a dialect perception map, showing regions where perceptions
were shared (Preston, 1989, 4-6). In the mid- to late
fifties two dialectologists focusing on Japan, Mase and
Grootaers showed that strong perceptions of linguistic
difference persisted long after earlier political and
cultural boundaries had been obscured. By asking
respondents to name a series of villages where language

became incrementally harder to understand, Grootaers and

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Mase found that the subjective dialect boundaries of their
respondents matched old feudal boundaries and had no
correlation with the modern Japanese prefectures. Though
their work suggested a promising path for dialectology
research, Grootaers is unconvinced of the usefulness of his
data, and “sees the only function of perceptual dialectology
as supportive of production dialect findings.” (Preston
1989, 12).

Dialectologists' bias toward studying linguistic
production rather than language perception was continued
later by sociolinguists. According to Labov (Language in
Society, 1972: 113), the ;3ast reliable information about
language was that gathered when respondents were overtly
quescioned about language. However, Labov sees the
definition of a speech community not “as a group of speakers
who all use the same forms” but rather as a “group who share
the same norms in regard to language.” (Labov,
Sociolinguistic Patterns, 1972: 158). To reconcile these
two views Labov (Sociolinguistic Patterns, 146-148) uses
methods that attempt to determine speakers' attitudes toward
language without asking explicitly about language. Speakers
are exposed to utterances that vary in certain ways, and
then asked questions relating to the social status or

mobility of the person performing the utterance.

114

This method allows us to determine much about the
underlying, subconscious judgements pertaining to language
performance. They do not, however, supply a complete
picture: they omit respondents’ conscious perceptions based
on the assumption that these perceptions are invalid. The
earlier dialectologists’ methods helped them to understand
their respondents’ explicit mental picture of linguistic
geography, but because these methods were aimed primarily at
setting the groundwork for production dialectology, they are
sketchy and incomplete in the information they gather, and
they are subject to sociolinguists’ usual criticism of
dialectology: that they surveyed only older male respondents
in the regions they surveyed.

Preston (1989) combines sociolinguistic methods for
data collection with the concept of perceptual dialectology.
He also borrows perceptual mapping techniques from cultural
geographers of the 19605 and 705. In the studies he cites
(Preston, 1989: 13—19), respondents are asked to draw maps
of their city or neighborhood. These tasks gave researchers
insight into how factors such as social (and geographical)
mobility play a role in peoples’ perception of the space
around them. Preston undertakes similar studies in which he

has respondents (in this case residents of Hawaii) draw

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perceived linguistic regions onto a map of the United States
(Preston, 1989: 25-49).

Preston also borrows another technique from cultural
geographers who created maps based on respondent ratings of
the desirability of residency in various regions of the
United States (see Preston, 1989: 19—23). Preston adapted
these studies to determine the desirability of language from
various regions of the U.S. Giving respondents from
Southern Indiana a list of the fifty states, New York City
and Washington D.C., Preston asked them to rank these places
based on the correctness of the English spoken there
(Preston 1989: 52-70). In a similar study, Preston
collected ratings of the pleasantness of speech from the
same list (Preston 1989: 71-83). In both studies he found a
coherent picture of perceptions of regional American
English. These perceptions were partly explicable by the
linguistic production in the regions and the social stigma
attached to some and not others. The geographical location
of the respondents themselves also accounted for certain
findings. For example, the Bloomington Indiana residents
rated the state of Kentucky (only about an hour’s drive
away) in the lowest category for correctness and their own
state in the highest. Preston accounts for this anomaly by

noting that the respondents live nearly directly on the

116

boundary between two well-known production areas - one
stigmatized (the middle southern) and one prestigious (the
north central). This degree of differentiation between two
states so close to each other may be accounted for by
respondents wishing to show that they were not speakers of
the stigmatized dialect (Preston 1989: 55).

This part of the dissertation examines the explicit
language views of French non-linguists in an attempt to
discover to what extent Parisian language perceptions
present in the literature we examined also exist in the
mentality of modern-day Parisians - especially given recent
trends in government and literature to re-assert the
cultural value of regional and other non-standard language
varieties. Using techniques outlined in Preston (1989) and
adapting them to the French linguistic community, we shall
uncover the views of speakers in an environment where there
are still strong prescriptivist views alongside a wide array
of variation depending on social class and geographical
location. This study reveals the complex views of its
Parisian respondents as they reconcile the contradiction
between linguistic diversity and prescriptive norms. This
empirical study will give us the opportunity to verify or

refute the lasting strength of the regional language

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perceptions whose traces we have noted in our literary
survey.

After a series of education laws preferring French as
the language of instruction culminated in the Lois Ferry
(1881-1886), the legislative battle against dialects within
France was mostly won. The former made French the national
language of instruction and the latter series of laws
established free state—run schools, required attendance for
ages 6-13, and greatly weakened the educational role of the
last large institution in France that had continued to use
local dialects — the Catholic Church. Much linguistic
legislation from 1900-1945 dealt specifically with the
language problem of Alsace-Lorraine. The decrees passed
between the World Wars concerning this region showcase the
link between nationalism and language. Acts in 1919, 1928
and 1930 require the use of French in public forums in
Alsace-Lorraine, continued a long series of language—control
laws in the region - laws whose continual repetition are the
best indicator of their ineffectiveness. The enforcement of
these laws could not have been made easy by 49 years of
German rule in the territory, but that period interrupted
roughly five hundred years of French control, during which
similar laws were equally ineffective. In a speech before

the National Assembly on December 2, 1924, Eugene Muller, a

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deputy from Alsace pointed out the absurdity (and the
injustice) of trying to outlaw a popular language:

Chaque peuple a droit a sa langue, c’est un droit
naturel, et aucune raison d’Etat ne saurait l’en
priver. [...] Ce droit implique l’obligation de ne
pas anémier une langue populaire, de ne pas la
priver de sa force, de sa vie la plus intime et de
sa puissance d’action, en lui refusant le concours
de l’école. Il faut que cette langue puisse
devenir, a coté de la langue nationale, dont on ne
saurait accentuer l’importance et la nécessité, un
véritable instrument de la culture, tant du point
de vue économique que du point de vue
intellectuel, moral et religieux [Every people has
a right to its language, this is a natural right,
and no reason of State would be able to take it
away. [...] This right implies the obligation to
not weaken a popular language, to not remove its
force and its power to act, by refusing it the
support of the schools. It is necessary that this
language be able to become, alongside the national
language, whose importance and necessity we cannot
emphasize enough, a true instrument of culture, as
much economically as intellectually, morally and
religiously]. (Kibbee, 9)

Muller’s plea was out of step with his political colleagues,.
who continued to pass and enforce language policy that more
than verged on the ridiculous: on February 8, 1935 the
French government cited a French law from 1881 forbidding
foreign language publication as a reason to shut down Arabic
publications in Algeria!

Also during the period between the two World Wars,
speakers of dialects began to form politically active

organizations. Using the success of Catalan in Spain as an

inspiration, Occitan scholars banded together to create a

119

unified Occitan linguistic system and dictionary adaptable
to all the various regional forms of the dialect. A similar
movement took place in Brittany (Bonnemason, 40). In 1951
the Loi Deixonne allowed the teaching of regional languages
— specifically Occitan, Basque, Breton and Catalan — in
public schools. Alsatian (1952), Corsican, Flemish and
Lorrain (1974) were added to the list of regional languages
covered under the law.32 In 1970 the option to do a
baccalauréat in any one of these languages was introduced.
Years and years of repression of regional languages,
however, will not be immediately reversed, and it seems
unlikely that regional languages will make a comeback based
on this legislation. In the period that many pro-dialect
policies were developing, French courts rejected appeals by
Breton citizens to give their children Breton names (1962,
1965, 1980 — Kibbee, 9-11), and the Pompidou government
created the “Haut Comité pour la défense et l’expansion de
la langue francaise” (1976).

The creation of this committee and the 1975 Loi Bas—
Lauriol announced the beginning of a shift toward
protectionism in French linguistic legislation. Bas-Lauriol
essentially made it illegal to use languages other than
French on consumer products. All enforcement of Bas-Lauriol

was in response to English on product packaging. A law

120

similar to Bas-Lauriol, the Loi Toubon was passed in 1994.
In 1995 and 1996, 39 different infractions against Toubon
were punished with a total of 240,000FF (about $50,000) in
fines. Although many French people ridiculed the
reactionary Toubon law, it is indicative of a renewed
perception that French is in danger of dying or being
relegated to a status secondary to English.

Contradictory forces at work in the legislative arena—
prescriptivism and permissiveness, French-only laws
alongside rehabilitation of regional languages — have had
parallels in other domains in French society. In
literature, Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s voyage au bout de la
nuit attracted critical attention by using a combination of
literary and working-class language styles. Much of the
criticism paradoxically praised the ugliness of his language
(see Derval). Marcel Pagnol’s plays and films focused on
Provence and introduced regionalist literature into the
mainstream — while employing little (no?) Occitan in his
works. Raymond Queneau and Georges Pérec experimented with
formal manipulation in novels and poetry and called into
question the wide rift that had developed between written
and spoken forms of French. Marguerite Duras and Alain
Robbe-Grillet moved toward experimentation with genre as

well, both of them insisting on the close relationship of

121

form to content and applying their ideas to the novel and
the cinema. The popularity of detective novels seemed to
increase at the same rate as the language used in them
became non-standard. Detective novelist Frédéric Dard,
well-known by his pseudonym San-Antonio, has become so
popular through his manipulation and invention using non—
standard language that he is probably the most-read French
author alive today. The relationship between literature and
linguistic norms has become ambiguous in the twentieth
century. Canonical literature continues to be taught in
schools and used as models for standard French. Recent
literature, however, has often attempted to distance itself
from its literary precursors.

It would be difficult to gauge the perceptions of
regional French portrayed in twentieth-century French
literature due only to the growing ambiguity of that
literature’s relationship to linguistic norms. To
complicate matters, what in Parisian perceptions were once
considered regional - and therefore ethnic and cultural —
distinctions, are now viewed less geographically and more
sociologically. The re-introduction of the French regions
in 1972 was motivated by the perception that certain socio—
economic policy considerations were best made on a scale

larger than the individual departments would allow. In very

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few cases do these administrative divisions match any
historical cultural boundaries. The urbanization of the
French population led to a generalized urban/rural dichotomy
replacing a once multi-cultural view of the hexagon. This
transformation from cultural to social status is visible
already in Balzac’s treatment of the peasantry and is echoed
in works like Germinal where Zola’s characters’ northern
dialects resemble Parisian working-class sociolects of

characters in L’Assomoir.

CHAPTER ONE: THE STUDY
This section will outline the make-up of the test sample,
and describe the tasks respondents were asked to perform.
Section one: The Test Group

The test group is comprised of 75 respondents, all born
in the Parisian Region (Ile-de—France), or living there from
a very young age (since at least the age of 10) and
currently living there. These speakers are diVided into
groups according to sex (44 female, 32 male), age (40
respondents were age 18-25, 18 were 30—45, and 18 were 55 or
older) and socioeconomic status (27 respondents were
"working class", the rest were "middle class")”. Table 1
below shows the composition of the test group according to

these factors.

123

This table clearly illustrates some unforeseen
difficulties in the data collection: It was more difficult
than expected to gain access to respondents of the two
higher age groups, and the expected difficulties with
finding working class respondents were encountered. The
original strategy for finding respondents was to approach
people in public facilities used by citizens from all
backgrounds (e.g. hospitals, universities, senior citizen
clubs, social services). Lengthy administrative procedures
(or flat out denial) were often obstacles to gaining access
to senior citizens’ homes and hospital waiting areas.
Because of these obstacles, the researcher was often forced
to use the somewhat haphazard approach of entering
restaurants and cafés with the hope of finding people that
met three very limiting criteria which are (in order of
decreasing probability): 1) the necessary age and socio-
economic requirements 2) willingness to participate in the
study and 3) being native to the Parisian region. Paris was
chosen as the area to perform this study because of its
historical place in the formation of the standard. Similar
studies in other regions of France will yield interesting
results and should be pursued. This third requirement was
easily met in the younger group, because the researcher was

able to go to universities in the Paris area to seek

124

respondents. Since university education is state-funded in
France, and the quality of universities perceived to be
relatively homogeneous, students generally choose to attend
the university closest to their family home. Since they are
younger the probability is greater that this family home is
located in the same general vicinity as their birthplace.
However, in the city of Paris and the surrounding suburbs a
great many professionals and workers who belong to the “30-
45" age group are relatively newly arrived in the area.
Many possible respondents from this age group have moved to
the suburbs, less expensive for people who live there and
less accessible for the researcher because crowded public
spaces are less common. While the population of
metropolitan Paris (Paris and suburbs combined) has been
increasing steadily since the middle of the nineteenth
century, the population of the city Paris itself (not
including the suburbs) has been decreasing since it reached
its peak in 1921 (Dictionnaire encyclopédique Larousse—
1979). These demographic trends have created a Paris
largely populated by “Non-Parisians” at least as defined
above for the present study.

Since the authentic “Parisian” (Paris-born) population
of Paris is aging, it would seem at first glance that the

“55 and older” age group would be more easily accessible.

125

It is true that there are a great many Clubs de troisiéme
age, in Paris. Unfortunately, it was only after having
arranged interviews at one of these clubs that the
researcher learned, from the very club director who had
granted him permission to do interviews in her club, that it
would also be necessary to get a letter of authorization
from another higher—ranking official in order to carry out
these interviews. This permission, though not particularly
difficult to obtain, required a two-week waiting period.
Unfortunately, the researcher was unaware of this waiting
period until after arrival in Paris. With approximately
four weeks to gather data, it became necessary to seek older
respondents in less obvious places.

The notoriously difficult task of finding working class
respondents for linguistic studies is aggravated in Paris
where the cost of living has pushed many of them to the
distant suburbs. In addition, the majority of the working
class within the Parisian region is immigrant, if not from a
different nation at least from a distant province.

Table 2 shows the composition of the test group by
respondent. While some comments made in the taped
interviews and on the perceptual maps suggest that age may
influence certain general linguistic perceptions, chi-square

analysis revealed that none of the factors (age, sex, or

126

socioeconomic status) proved statistically significant for
the present study. Results of this study will therefore be
discussed in terms of the group as a whole, without regard
to these variables. Since three of the working class groups
have too few respondents to ensure the reliability of the
chi-square analyses (at least five per cell is generally
desirable), future studies should consider the question of
the influence of these variables still open for exploration.
Future studies should also consider using more refined
socio—economic divisions, including for example second-
generation Parisians from North and West Africa.
Section two: The Tasks
Perceptual Mapping

Respondents were given a map of France with only the
following detail: the cities of Paris, Lille, Cherbourg,
Rouen, Reims, Metz, Strasbourg, Dijon, Lyon, Brest,
Bordeaux, Bayonne, Toulouse, Marseille, Nice, Orleans,
Nantes, Tours, and Geneva; the Pyrenees, Alps and Massif
Central mountain ranges; The Rhone, Seine, Rhine, Loire, and
Garonne rivers; the borders of France, and the names of the
surrounding waters. Fieldworkers asked respondents to
circle and identify in writing any regions "where people

have a particular way of speaking."

127

The Rating Tasks

Respondents were asked to rate 24 different regions
including Francophone Belgium and Switzerland according to
three different criteria: degree of difference, correctness
and pleasantness.

The task of making a list of regions for respondents to
rate was more complicated than one might initially suspect.
It was impossible simply to name the 22 administrative
regions, since these do not always correspond with
historical regions, nor even remotely to dialect boundaries.
Map 1 shows the current French administrative boundaries.
There are 96 "départements" (not counting the four overseas
départements), and 22 "régions administratives" in France.
To complicate matters, there are also 30 "anciennes regions"
whose names often partially or fully correspond to names of
départements (e.g. Maine, Savoie). Of course, some of the
old regions and current administrative regions also
correspond (Alsace, Bretagne, Picardie), though some in name
only, their geographical position having changed
substantially, so that the new region covers more, less, or
different territory than its older namesake (Bourgogne,
Franche-Comté).

To complicate matters, Map 2 reveals the major dialect

boundaries in France. The names of these language variety

128

areas correspond in various ways to other regional names:
some to the names of départements (e.g. Jura), some to old
regions (e.g. Lyonnais) and still others to modern
administrative regions (Auvergne). The task of choosing a
set of regional names to include on the questionnaires was
complicated. The regional list needed to meet three
criteria 1) include all the territory of France; 2) include
names that the respondents would recognize and be able to
associate with a language variety; 3) not include regions
that respondents may be incapable of rating because they
perceive the region as being home to two or more varieties
that differ substantially from one another; and 4) avoid
where possible regional names that would immediately provoke
strong linguistic reactions based on linguistic content in
the name itself. As an example of this last criterion, the
name "pays basques" would be unacceptable, because of the
affinity in French of language names and modifiers of
nationality. To facilitate the task of meeting all these
criteria, pre—study interviews with non-linguist first-
language speakers of French were conducted in Bloomington,
Indiana. Respondents were asked to give a list of regional
names where they felt a distinct variety of French was
spoken. They were then asked to react to various regional

names based on the way they thought people there speak

129

French. From these interviews a list was generated mixing
current administrative regions with traditional regional
names that still hold meaning to respondents. The resulting
list, to be refined in future studies, is (in the order they
appear on the questionnaire): Nord (North), Picardie
(Picardy), Normandie (Normandy), lle de France, Champagne,
Bretagne (Brittany), Touraine, Centre, Franche-Comté,
Bourgogne (Burgundy), Lorraine, Alsace, Poitou-Charentes,
Auvergne, Limousin, Massif Central, Lyonnais, Rhéne-Alpes,
Jura, Gascogne, Langue d'Oc, Provence, Belgique (Belgium),
and Suisse Romande (Francophone Switzerland). It will be
noticed that in this list some regions geographically
overlap. One apparent overlap is Rhone-Alpes/Lyonnais.
"Lyonnais" corresponds to a large metropolitan area, but
also to an actual variety of French. "Rhéne-Alpes"
corresponds to an administrative division, and to several
varieties of French. It was hoped that this division might
shed light on how large urban areas affect the linguistic
perceptions of the Parisian respondents. As will be seen,
Lyonnais did score significantly closer to the Parisian
region than did Rhone-Alpes in the degree of difference
task, although in other tasks the two regions were grouped
together by respondents. The other pairing that overlaps

geographically is Touraine/Centre. This region is

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traditionally identified with the mythical norm, free from
dialectical distortions and therefore superior. It was
hoped that this pairing would show whether this
identification was linked primarily to the geographical
location of the mythical norm, or rather to the name
"Tours." The statistical results show Touraine

significantly differentiated from Centre on all tasks.

Degree of difference rating

Respondents were asked to rate the 24 regions on a
scale of 1 to 4 as follows: "1 si vous pensez que le
francais parlé dans cette région ressemble a celui que vous
parlez. 2 s'il y a une ressemblance, mais moins forte. 3
si le francais parlé dans cette région ne ressemble guere a
celui que vous parlez. 4 si le francais parlé dans cette
région vous est incomprehensible [1 if you think that the
French in this region resembles your own; 2 if there is a
resemblance, but not as strong; 3 if the French spoken in
this region scarcely resembles your own; 4 if the French
spoken in this region is incomprehensible to you]."
Correctness rating

Respondents were asked to rate the correctness of the
French spoken in the 24 regions on a scale from 1 to 7. l =

"On parle un francais dans cette région qui n'est pas dun

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tout correct [they speak a French in this region that is not
at all correct]."; 7 = "On parle un francais dans cette
région qui est tout a fait correct [They speak a French in
this region that is completely correct]."
Pleasantness rating

Respondents were asked to rate the pleasantness of the
French spoken in each of the 24 regions on a scale from one
to seven, with wording very similar to that on the
correctness rating task, replacing the word "correct" with
"agréable a entendre [pleasant to hear]."
Taped Interviews

Each respondent was interviewed on cassette at two
stages: (1) immediately following the completion of the
perceptual mapping stage and (2) immediately following the
three rating tasks. During each interview, respondents were
asked to give further detail about the regions they had
mapped. They were also asked to comment on how they had
labelled the various regions. In the final interview, the
field worker attempted to elicit any possible linguistic
detail about regional varieties. The detail elicited by
these follow-up questions included commentary about phonetic
and lexical traits, as well as imitations, stereotypes and

caricatures of regional varieties.

132

CHAPTER TWO: THE RESULTS

Section 1: Perceptual Mapping
Same Extreme Cases

The mapping task revealed striking discrepancies in the
range of detail that the various respondents perceptual maps
contained. While some respondents left virtually no part of
the map blank, others drew a single line across the middle
of the map, circling two or three regions above and below.
The most regions indicated by any one respondent was 31 by
respondent 56.34 The least detailed map was drawn by
respondent 49 who began by drawing a line down the center of
the Brittany Peninsula. He then drew a circle around an
area north of the Massif Central, called it the “Limousin”
and wrote “parle le patois, 5 a 6 dialectes— [speak patois 5
to 6 dialects-]”. Finally he abandoned the task altogether,
writing at the bottom of the map, “Je ne me prononce pas.
11 y a trop de dialectes en France (chaque région emploie
son propre dialecte) [I can’t commit myself, there are too
many dialects in France (each region has its own dialect)].”
While the results on these two maps were quite different,
they come from a perception that the two respondents seem to
share, and which was expressed by many others during the
taped interviews: Many respondents believe that France is

home to an infinite variety of dialects, which change

133

continuously as one moves through the country. While there
were no significant statistical outcomes related to the age
variable in any of the rating phases, it is probably not
mere coincidence that the two respondents referred to above
as well as all others referring to the uncountable number of
dialects in France belong to one of the two older age
groups. In fact, no one under 40 expressed this view.
Although the respondents in this study are Parisian, the
demographic situation in Paris suggests that it is extremely
unlikely that the parents of respondents from these age
groups were also born in Paris and it is almost certain that
their grand-parents were not. It is quite likely that the
parents of these respondents spoke a local dialect with
their own parents. And they probably grew up in a
linguistic environment where variation from village to
village was indeed the norm. It seems probable that such a
perception could be passed on as other linguistic items are,
maintaining its force in the second generation, due to the
first-hand accounts and experience of the first, but losing
its relevance to the third generation.
The CempositeiMap

Extreme cases such as the very detailed and the very
empty maps discussed above were much the exception. In

fact, of the remaining 73 respondents only 4 did not

134

demarcate a number of regions outside the range of 4 to 12.
The average number of regions designated was 10. The median
number was 7. Map 3 is a composite map of all respondents'
demarcations.

The map is shaded on a grey scale, with darker areas
being those indicated by more respondents. A different
shade was used to represent each 10% increment, based on the
75 respondents, with white for the lowest, and black for the
highest density. Each area also contains a label specifying
the exact number of respondents who named that area. Many
respondents made only small circles around city names,
stating that they identified certain regional varieties with
the names of cities. Cities that were circled in this way
by more than one respondent are also circled on the
composite map, and the number of respondents who circled a
given city is combined with the surrounding regional total.

Certain regions may have been combined by some
respondents, while other respondents may have separated the
same region into two areas. One clear example of such
contrasts is the Alsace and Lorraine region(s). 35
respondents drew Alsace as a region, while only 14 drew in
Lorraine. To complicate matters, 20 respondents drew a
border around both Alsace and Lorraine, naming it as one

region. If we add the times that the regions were grouped

135

to the times they were named separately, then the total
number of respondents indicating Alsace is 55. The total
for Lorraine is 34. Although simply shading these regions
would show the large gap between the number of respondents
naming each region, it would mask an important detail.
While many respondents named Alsace without naming Lorraine
as well (an obvious fact given the different totals), no
respondent indicated Lorraine without also drawing in
Alsace. This means that on no respondent's perceptual map
is there a reference to Lorraine without one to Alsace as
well, whether the two are marked separately or combined into
one region. In the labeling of the two regions, Lorraine
and its adjectival form are used a total of three times,
whereas Alsace or its adjectival form occur 16 times.- When
two regions are represented both together and separately,
each separately-named region is shown with the color
representing the total frequency: the score of the
“referent” region when it was the only region of the two
delineated on the map (in this case 35), added to the number
of times when the “non-referent region” was the only one of
the two delineated (in this case zero), added to the number
of times the two regions were named together (in this case,
20). A dotted rather than solid line separating the two

regions indicates that.they were regularly named together.

136

Within each region is placed a small round patch of color
representing the number of times the region was delineated
separately from its “mate,” with the exact number of these
occurrences given within this patch.

An initial glance at the composite map shows that the
more influential perception among these respondents was that
of border regions and regions where languages other than
French are spoken. The only border regions that received
relatively little attention in the mapping phase are those
areas outside France where French is spoken. This omission
probably depends on the strong perceptual boundary that the
international borders represent, rather than on a neutral
view of the way people in Belgium and Switzerland speak. In
fact, later stages of the study will show that the attitude
of these respondents toward Belgian and Swiss French
speakers is among the strongest. We shall return to this
composite map to discuss how it reflects the statistical
results of the other phases and the major perceptual
groupings of regions revealed by this study.

Section 2: Correctness Ratings

A look at the rank order presented in Table 3, column 1
reveals that the perception of correctness by these Parisian
respondents is not a function simply of the geographical

proximity to Paris of the region in question. The darkest

137

regions on the composite map, those in general found nearest
the border regions, are represented by the bottom six in the
rank order: North, Provence, Lorraine, Alsace, Switzerland,
Belgium. Nearer at hand as well are the Auvergne and
Brittany regions, which round out the bottom third in the
rank order. Except for the Auvergne, all these regions
contain large groups who speak a first language other than
French (Flemish [in the North and Belgium], Provencal, the
Lorrain dialect, the Alsatien dialect, German and Breton).
These certainly are not the only dialects or regional
languages spoken in France. The composite map and this rank
order combined, however, seem to indicate that they are the
most powerful perceptually, at least in their relation to
the norm perceived by our Parisian respondents. Figure 1
converts regional correctness scores to a Euclidean plot, as
performed by a multidimensional scaling statistical function
Multi-dimensional scaling analyses basic data that are
dissimilarities, or distance-like. In this case, the scores
for the various regions have first been converted into
euclidean plots. Multi-dimensional scaling models the
"dimensions" of these converted scores, allowing us to
visualize along two axes (rather than the single axis
provided by simply comparing means) the likeness or

dissimilarity of the variables. The regions are grouped

138

here into five clusters by a K-means cluster analysis. K-
means cluster analysis systematically compares the means of
different variables and then places variables into clusters
according to the similarity of the data sets. The
researcher can specify the number of clusters desired. The
K—means function will create as few as two clusters, or as
many clusters as there are variables, according to the
researcher's needs. Variables that are members of one
cluster may shift to another when the number of clusters
specified changes. The more statistically similar the
members of a cluster are the more that cluster remains
stable through several changes in total number of clusters.
The multi-dimensional scaling chart allows us the dimensions
needed to circle the clusters created by K-means cluster
analysis.

This visual representation of the regional scores is
not surprising, given the rank order in table 1. The
regions with the highest scores, lle de France and Touraine,
are the farthest left along the X axis, and the bottom 8
regions are on the opposite end.

The K-means groupings reinforce our suspicion that the
presence of a prominent second language in a region strongly
influenced the correctness ratings. The two groupings

farthest to the right each contain three regions with a

139

well-known linguistic minority: Brittany, Provence, Lorraine
and Alsace, Switzerland, Belgium. Notably, two of the
regions from the bottom eight in the rankings have been
grouped with regions that are their geographical neighbors,
even though they are clearly not neighbors in the rank
order: Auvergne is number 18, Limousin 12, North is 19,
Picardy 11. This grouping by the cluster analysis is
probably the result of a great many respondents' rating the
paired regions identically. Since the regions on the
questionnaire were arranged somewhat geographically, the two
pairs (North/Picardie and Auvergne/Limousin) appear
consecutively. Many respondents may have instinctively
rated these regions with one another because of their
geographical proximity and because they perceived no
differences among speakers from these regions as a whole.
Still, if the regions were rated alike by so many, why
did enough respondents chose to rate Auvergne and North so
low that they would fall six and seven places respectively
in the rank order? Auvergne was rated a three, four or five
by 69.4% of respondents. Respondents giving these ratings
to Limousin numbered a similar 66.1%. Limousin received
about 7% fewer ratings of one and two than Auvergne (3.4% to
10.2%), and about 10% more ratings of six and seven (30.5%

to 20.4%). We find a similar Situation in the numbers for

140

North and Picardy, with ratings of three, four and five
nearly identical (58.2% and 55.9% respectively), a
discrepancy of 13 points in ratings of six and seven (23.7%
to 37.2%), and 10 points in ratings of one and two (16.9% to
6.8%).

During the taped interviews, several respondents
pointed toward the reason for the discrepancy in ratings
between Auvergne and Limousin. Many Parisians afford
special status to Auvergnat speakers because of a movement
of immigration from Auvergne to Paris in the middle of this
century. This group of immigrants was particularly visible
in Paris because many of them became proprietors of
restaurants and cafés. Since this movement was perceived to
be specifically from Auvergne, some respondents reflected
the special Parisian status of Auvergnat immigrants in their
correctness ratings. That this reflection was overall
negative is not surprising: such is often the reaction of a
human group toward perceived "outsiders."

The case of the discrepancy between North and Picardy
is understandable in spatial terms. As map 3 shows the
region "Nord" is one of the most marked on the perceptual
maps. Conspicuously absent from nearly all of the
perceptual maps are delineations that include Picardy. This

lacuna probably results from a psychological need to create

141

a wide boundary between the Parisian region and the North.
Indeed, one respondent from the suburbs remarked that she
commuted from Picardy to work every morning! Surely a place
so close to Paris could not resist the standardization
process that has spread out from Paris for a millennium!
Because the name Picardy contains the historical name
generally given to northern dialects (Picard), the gap
visible on the perceptual maps between North and Picardy is
closed considerably in the correctness ratings. The
absence of a visual aid showing the proximity of Picardy to
Paris made respondents hesitate to differentiate them. Thus
the two regions are grouped together in the K-means cluster
analysis. Nonetheless, as we have seen, enough respondents
to affect the final numbers realized how close Picardy is to
Paris.

Finally, note in the K-means cluster analysis the
grouping of Ile de France and Touraine. Numbers one and two
on the correctness rank order represent at least as strong
a statistical group as any of the more marked regions from
the bottom of the same rank order. In fact, as figure 2
shows, when we force the K-means analysis to reduce the
number of groups to four, only the Ile de France/Touraine

cluster remains intact.

142

The tenacity of this two—region group suggests that
perhaps the strongest perception of all among these Parisian
respondents is that of the norm. We shall return to this
topic as we view the results of the other tasks.

Section 3: Degree of Difference Ratings

The mean rankings in Table 3 show us that the Degree of
difference ratings are close to the correctness ratings.
Only five of the 24 regions change more than two places in
rank, while 14 do not shift, or shift by only one place. No
region shifts by more than four places. The five shifts of
three and four places can be seen as primarily a north-south
geographical alignment. This slight change in alignment
from the correctness rankings coincides with a well-known
dialect division stretching across France approximately at
the level the Dordogne river in the west, Clermont-Ferrand
in the center, and Grenoble on the east. We therefore see
Lyonnais, generally considered "the north of the south"
slipping three places away from Paris. The southern regions
of Gascogne and Langue d'Oc slip four and three places
respectively, whereas Brittany and North, both clearly
situated in the north, climb three and four places
respectively. Even three of the four regions that move only
two places relative to the correctness task follow this

trend: Rhone-Alpes loses two places, Burgundy and Picardy

143

gain two. Chart 2 gives a visual image of the similarities
between the correctness and degree of difference tasks by
plotting the rank order of the two tasks by region. The
pattern of correctness and degree of difference ratings
shadowing each other so closely is likely to be common in
studies undertaken so near the center of the norm. The
opposote may well be found in studies that survey regions
farther removed (geographically or perceptually) from the
center of the norm.

Figure 3 shows the multi-dimensional scaling and K-
means cluster analysis results of the degree of difference
ratings. Given the similar rank order of means, it is not
surprising that the Euclidean plot is also quite similar to
the correctness plot. The clusters in Figure 3 have several
distinct differences from the correctness clusters. First,
with the exception of the Touraine in the "home cluster"
with Ile de France and Champagne, and the grouping together
of Switzerland and Belgium, all clusters contain
geographically contiguous regions. This is far from true of
the correctness groupings, where such a claim can be made
this evidence alone is not sufficient to let us reach any
conclusions, this difference in the groupings for the for
only one group in either figure 1 or figure 2. Although two

ratings suggests that spatial organization of regions may

144

play a greater role in the degree of difference task than
it does in the correctness task.

The identical first-place rankings of the respondents'
own region (Ile de France) in the correctness and degree of
difference tasks suggest that the respondents feel much
linguistic security. That is, these respondents are secure
in their belief that the variety of French they speak is the
most universally acceptable. This finding is reinforced by
the cluster analysis in both tasks, which groups Ile de
France with Touraine, the mythical center of standard
French, as taught in public school books since at least the
nineteenth century. In fact references to the Touraine as
the home to "pure French" date back as far as the middle
ages (Lodge, 1993).

Finally of note in the cluster analysis of the degree
of difference ratings is that Brittany has been placed alone
as a separate cluster. It is likely that this separation
arises from the ambiguous linguistic position of Brittany in
the perception of the respondents. During the interview
stage, many respondents expressed the view that French
speakers in Brittany spoke French perfectly well, but they
were also cautious to add that "quand ils parlent leur
patois, on ne comprend rien [when they speak their dialect

you can’t understand anything]." Since the view of French

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in Brittany, and the View of Breton represent the two
extremes in the rating for this task (l=exactly like the
respondents' speech, 4=totally incomprehensible), it is not
surprising that Brittany was statistically set apart from
other regions. It would have been difficult to recognize
the statistical uniqueness of Brittany without the K-means
cluster analysis, since the range of responses is so narrow
for this task. A mere analysis of frequencies does not

reveal this uniqueness.

Section 4: Pleasantness Ratings

. Table 3 clearly shows that the rank order largely
maintained from the correctness to the degree of difference
task undergoes a considerable realignment for the
pleasantness task. The average difference in rank order per
region between correctness and degree of difference ratings
is 1.58. This average rises to 4.16 when comparing
correctness and pleasantness rankings. The regions whose
pleasantness rank orders are most dramatically different
from their correctness scores are the southernmost regions:
Gascogne (correctness rank 14, pleasantness 6), Langue d'Oc
(correctness 16, pleasantness 4) and Provence (correctness
20, pleasantness 1). By the same token, five of the regions

rated in the top 12 for correctness drop to the bottom 12

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for pleasantness (Normandie, Poitou-Charentes, Franche-
Comté, Picardy and Limousin).

Constant for these respondents is the status of the Ile
de France/Touraine grouping which, while giving way to
Provence for first rank in pleasantness, does so only
barely, as these regions slide to the second and third
ranks. The K—means groupings of the pleasantness ratings
in Figure 4, however, show that the "home group" is
statistically separate from the southern regions. It is
apparent from this separation that the pleasantness these
respondents perceive in their own speech differs from that
associated with the southern regions.

Whatever mathematically caused the statistical division
of these two groups, we will see below that the qualitative
data clearly support such a separation. Like Brittany in
figure 4, the North has been put into a group alone for this
task.

This classification may again (as with Brittany in the
degree of difference clusters) be the result of the
ambiguity caused by proximity with the Ile de France (where
the speech is considered very pleasant), and aregional
dialect which according to most of the qualitative data is
considered unpleasant. In Figure 5, where the regions are

forced into four clusters, North groups with its

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geographical neighbor Picardy. Massif Central is also
pushed in with its geographical neighbor Auvergne. The
inclusion of these two regions with the perennial "foreign"
regions of Alsace, Lorraine, Belgium and Switzerland is
perhaps understandable in terms of a urban/rural
distinction. The Massif Central and Auvergne are two
regions typically referred to by Parisians (and by these
respondents) as remote and backward. This distinction is
detectable in the quantitative analysis only for the
pleasantness task. The qualitative data reveal an
urban/rural dichotomy more salient than the statistics alone
would suggest. This new configuration also pushes our
Touraine and Ile de France into the larger, more central
cluster. Pleasantness is less salient in the perception of
these regions than is correctness. Also in the transition
from five to four clusters, we also see that the southern
group (Gascogne, Langue d'Oc and Provence) remains intact,
much like the home group in the correctness clusters. In
summary, the statistical outlay of the pleasantness ratings
shows a favorable perception of the southern regions. The
great shift in rank order and groupings between the
pleasantness and correctness ratings (in contrast with the
considerably smaller shift between the degree of difference

and correctness ratings) demonstrates that perceptions of

148

pleasantness are quite independent from perceptions of
correctness. The exception to this finding may be in the
regions on the extremely high and low ends of the
correctness task, where movement in rank order was minimal.
Four of the bottom five in the pleasantness task are also in
the bottom five in the correctness task, and the top two in
the correctness task are numbers two and three in
pleasantness. It is safe to say that for these respondents,
extremely incorrect speech is by its nature unpleasant,
whereas the most correct language cannot fail to be pleasant
as well. The different rank orders in the pleasantness and
correctness tasks are illustrated in chart 3. The marked
difference in the two tasks for the three southern regions
(Gascogne, Langue d'Oc and Provence) demonstrates the
ambivalence of the Parisian respondents regarding these
regions. It also foreshadows what the taped interviews bear
out: The southern regions are the object of a strong
linguistic caricature combining a high degree of
pleasantness with a low cognitive capacity. Such a pattern
may serve in future studies as an indicator of a caricature

modeling respondent perception.

149

Section 5: Bringing it all together: The Taped Interviews

and Map Labels

Responses and imitations during the taped interviews as well
as written labels and commentary on the perceptual maps more
fully explain the trends indicated in the composite map and
in the statistical results of the rating phases. The
section will cover the most salient regions on the composite
map, starting with the areas of least frequency and ending
with those that received the most attention during the
mapping phase.
Burgundy, Anvergne,iMassif Central, Savoie/Jura and
Normandy: The "Rural" Regions

Looking at map 3, we see that the number of times these
regions were designated on perceptual maps range from 7
(Auvergne) to 15 (Normandy). Based on geographical
distribution alone it seems unlikely that perceptions of
these regions would hold much in common outside the similar
number of occurrences. Certain evidence, however, indicates
parallels in respondents' linguistic characterizations of
these regions: the taped interviews, including imitations
of these regional varieties, and labels on the perceptual
map, link all these regions on the composite map to a notion
of rurality. Apart from labeling these areas with the

geographical name (by far the most common practice for all

150

regions), the following labels, suggestive of a “rural
language" stereotype, occur on the perceptual maps:
“accent rural” (twice) [rural accent]; “accent
rural - pas beaucoup d’articulation” [rural accent
- not much articulation]; “langage de la terre”
[language of the land]; “utilise un vocabulaire
plus limité” [uses a more limited vocabulary];
“campagnard” [country];
Other map labels describe the speech in these regions.
Again, the descriptions are common to all these regions.
They focus on two items: the slowness of the speech, and the
rolled /r/. Imitations of any of the “rural regions”
(Burgundy/Franche-comté, Massif Central, and Normandy) had
consistent features, most notably: a rolled /r/,
diphthongization and/or elongation of certain syllables, a

\\

closed, back a”, very close to /O/, and use of some
agricultural reference in the imitation. The most common
phrase used in imitations of all these regions was “On va
traire la vache /ov0tr81r10voj'/ [we’re going to milk the
cow].” Some of the phonetic traits of these imitations
characterize the varieties in some of these regions.
Bourguignon and Auvergnat (or Massif Central) French show
some diphthongization. There is a characteristic
elongation of penultimate syllables in Norman French. The
similarity of imitations of these different regional

varieties may be evidence that respondents possess a

generalized caricature of a rural variety. While

151

respondent opinions may vary as to which particular region
is most representative of this variety, the caricature
itself seems to remain fairly consistent. In fact,
according to their comments urbanization is seen by many
respondents as the primary factor in linguistic
standardization. A number of subjects hesitated to outline
linguistic regions, because for them it was "plutot une
question ville/campagne.' [more a city/country
distinction]." In addition to this frequent comment, many
respondents circled only cities to delineate linguistic
regions, indicating a belief that regional accents were
identified through their principal cities. Some respondents
went as far as to complain that some important linguistic
landmark cities were missing (e.g. Clermont-Ferrand).
Although the contention that cities are centers for
linguistic varieties may seem to contradict the notion that
urbanization is a catalyst for linguistic standardization,
it does put urban centers in a position of linguistic
dominance over the surrounding rural areas. According to
this view, a variety cannot originate in a rural setting.
Such a view could lead to the notion of a homogeneous rural
variety that would vary only according to the proximity of
urban centers. Burgundy, Massif Central, and Normandy, in

this case, lend themselves well to identification with a

152

rural variety, because relatively few large urban centers
are located there. Normandy does have Caen and Le Havre,
both with metropolitan populations of more than 200,000, but
both of these cities are maritime, situated on the periphery
of Normandy, leaving a largely rural interior. The Massif
Central, in the southern portion of Auvergne, has no urban
centers of more than 100,000, and in Burgundy, only Dijon
(145,000) passes the 100,000 mark. The relatively small
number of urban centers in these regions, their distance
from any of the more marked border regions, and the lack of
a large minority language all combine to make them
candidates for perceptual centers of a generalized rural
variety.

The mountain regions are treated similarly. The Massif
Central region was seen primarily as a rural region and not
as a mountainous region, and the Pyréneées were largely
untouched. Two areas close to the Alps, however, were
delineated with some frequency. The Jura/Savoie region and
the border region surrounding Geneva received very similar
labels. As with the rural regions, many references were
made to the'slowness of the language, with the modifiers
such as "lent" (slow) and "trainant" (dragging) the most

frequent of non-geographical name labels.

153

Considering the evolving dichotomy from a multi-
cultural view of regions toward a more dichotomous
rural/urban social distinction, the grouping together of so
many regions into seemingly one kind of perception is not
suprising. These regions are often labeled similarly to
other more marked regions. The major difference between
these regions and other ones receiving more attention is the
presence of a well-known dialect. The best way to
categorize these regions might be to call them “unmarked
rural” regions, since they certainly have a status to these
Parisian as “other,” but that otherness cannot be related to
a specific linguistic style. A similar parallel could be
drawn between Balzac’s treatment of Nucingen, whose language
style was distinctly related to the Germanic qualities of
Alsatian French, and his treatment of the Burgindian
peasants, whose language is best characterized as
essentially standard French inconsistently intruded upon by
some unquantifiable yet clearly rural language traits.
Brittany

Given the presence of a well-known non-romance dialect
it should come as no great surprise that Western Brittany
should be marked by a significant number of respondents. In
fact, as the composite map shows, the Breton linguistic

minority weighs heavily in the perception of these

154

respondents. Of the 28 who delineated the region, none drew
the region as covering more than the western half of the
Breton peninsula. Of these 28 respondents, 24 gave labels
to the region. Nineteen of the 24 labels contained “breton”
or “celte” (one of these 19 also mentioned a “mongol”
influence) in their descriptions. One label refers to the
“culture anglaise [English cultureJ", undoubtedly connecting
the “breton” culture to the nearby “brittaniques”.
Characterizations of the variety itself include the
following: “113 coupent les syllabes” [They cut syllables];
“difficile a caractériser” [difficult to characterize]; and
“indéfinissable” [undefinable]. To explain the grouping of
Brittany in the correctness ratings above, we noted that
nearly all mentions of Brittany contained a reference to
either 1) a totally different language or 2) a perfectly
goodFrench being spoken. The proximity of the Touraine to
the eastern part of the Breton peninsula probably explains
the second of these two descriptions. The first description
reflects the residual influence of a language with few
speakers today, but that was virtually the only one spoken
in the countryside of Western Brittany at the turn of the

century (see Hélias).

155

Paris

Although 30 respondents delineated Paris on the
perceptual mapping task, it is difficult to characterize
what precisely is the perception of a Parisian variety, or
what its relationship might be to the perceived standard. A
glance at the labels given to Paris by those who outlined it
are varied in quality.

Of the 22 respondents labelling the region, 13 referred
to a specific Parisian accent or variety: “accent parisien”
(5 respondents); “titi parisien” (5 respondents); “région
parisienne”; “parigot”; “accent pointu ou parigot”.
“Parigot” and "titi Parisien" refer to a specific variety
associated with the Parisian working class. The following
written labels35 express the view that Paris is
linguistically mixed territory, and/or including special
varieties exclusive to the suburban areas:

1) "banlieue, verlan" [suburbs, verlan slang].

2) "dans Paris: accent parisien, banlieue parisienne:

accents différents du a la présence des étrangers

(exemple: arabe)" [in Paris: Parisian accent, Parisian

suburbs: different accents due to the presence of

foreigners (e.g. Arab)]

3) "mélange de tous" [mixture of everything].

4) "Panama" [cosmopolitan, or worldly].

An equal number of respondents used descriptive labels on

perceptual maps for the Parisian variety (and/or its

speakers):

156

on fait trainer la derniére syllabe [they drag the last

syllable]; plus Vite [faster]; accent assez sec, avec

beaucoup de “heu” [dry accent, with many "euhs"];

accent parisien - ton arrogant, parler lent [Parisian

accent - arrogant tone, slow speech.]
Only one speaker made reference to Paris as the center for
"le plus pur" [the purest] language. This seems a small
proportion when we consider the statistical results of the
rating tasks, which rate Paris the highest in terms of
correctness, and very near the top for pleasantness, while
consistently grouping Paris with the mythical home of the
norm, Touraine. How is it that the same respondents who so
rate their own region on the one hand, can label it with
such "non-standard" traits on the other?

Data from the interview stage help clarify this
somewhat muddled picture. Many respondents were quick to
explain that they circled Paris on the map to indicate that
a specific variety or varieties exist there. These
respondents were clarifying that they were complying with
the instructions for the mapping task, namely "circling any
linguistically relevant area." Although they did indeed
circle Paris, either due to a perception of suburban
language innovation (e.g. verlan, a sort of syllable-
reversing talk widely used by immigrants, and which has made

many recent additions to the spoken lexicon), or to their

perception of the presence of a "Parigot" or "Titi Parisien"

157

variety, they subsequently stated that they themselves were
not speakers of these varieties.

Perhaps most telling about the status of the Parigot or
Titi variety are the imitations of them by five different
respondents. One respondent could imitate the variety only
when she was saying the word "Parigot" itself. The other
four imitations used the same line by the actress Arletty
from the classic 1938 film, "Hotel du Nord." The line,
apparently quite famous, begins with the actress nearly
shouting the words, "Atmosphere! Atmosphere!" Clearly these
respondents have little or no contact with the variety they
claim is spoken in their own city if they can conjure only
this image to describe it. Still, Parigot or Titi Parisien
remains a linguistic reference point for many respondents.
This reference point may not be strong enough overall to
influence ratings in tasks asking about correctness, for
example, but it still obviously plays a role in the mental
linguistic map that many Parisians carry in their minds.

The Southwest

The southwestern corner of France on the composite map
visually presents the most confusing picture of any section.
This muddled perspective is echoed in the statistical
results: Gascogne and Langue d'Oc, the regions roughly

corresponding with this area of the map, fall in with the

158

largest central K-means group in the correctness task; in
the pleasantness task, however, they come together with
Provence to form a southern block of highly rated regions.
These three also stay in the same K-means group in the
degree of difference task. The clutter in the southwest
indicates a convergence of many influencing factors:
presence of strong historical dialects, large urban centers
and emerging economies.

To understand the mixed statistics on this area of
France, and the muddled picture accompanying it on the
composite map, let us first turn to the urban areas. Their
reputations may in part account for this region not
belonging more solidly to a "southern" perception.
Bordeaux, Toulouse and Bayonne all geographically belong to
southern France. Each has a specific quality that may cause
many respondents to give it special status.

Bordeaux possesses a long literary heritage, including
Montaigne and Montesquieu. Such a reputation explains why
respondents may have rated this region higher in
correctness. Its literary heritage connects Bordeaux to the
literary capitol, Paris, that most correct of all regions.
The status of Toulouse as a center of technology is another
possible reason for an ambiguous linguistic definition of

this region. The Toulouse that is home to the French

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aerospace industry stands against the traditional (and
especially Parisian) view of the southern part of the
hexagon as a backward agrarian society. Finally, Bayonne is
identified with the nearby Basque population.

Of the 93 different designations (some respondents made
more than one) made in this region, 60 are exclusively
placed around one of these latter two cities (Bayonne=29,
Toulouse=31). Another 19 designate the Bordeaux region
separately. 20 of the remaining designations are various
combinations of the three cities. Eight of these
respondents delineated all three city areas as one
linguistic region, using widely varying labels to designate
the region.' The other twelve outlined some combination of
two of the three city areas. Finally, four respondents
designate areas in the southwest of France that contain no
cities, three circling the Pyrénées, and one more outlining
an area between Bordeaux and Bayonne, but including neither.

Many remarks by respondents, both on maps and in
interviews, indicate an uncertainty about how they should
characterize this region: Should they view it as a part of
the area where southern varieties are spoken, or should it
be included in that area of France that has more or less
succumbed to standardization? Of those who held the former

position (that southwesterners speak a southern variety)

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about half depicted this region as having "le meme accent
qu'a Marseille [the same accent as in Marseille]." This
comment was made especially in relation to Toulouse,
although an equal number believed that Toulouse has its own
particular variety. Apart from the clear designation of the
area surrounding Bayonne (12 of the 15 respondents labelling
this area use the word basque) it seems that the southwest
is a region that, among Parisians, is currently undergoing a
shift in perception. That shift is perhaps best summarized
in the following commentary (by respondent 47) on the
region:
Le seul vrai [accent] qui reste, qui est tres reconnu,
qui... qu’on peut reconnaitre facilement [...]c’est
l’accent du sud, de... qui vont... on pourrait presque
dire sous la Loire, mais bon, a l’ouest, c’est, comme
c’est plus... euh ... comment dirai-je ... c’est plus
“parisiennisé” quoi, plus euh, Européenisé a la
parisienne, quoi... [The only real (accent) that is
widely recognized, that, that one can easily recognize
(...) is the accent of the south, of... that go... one
could almost say below the Loire, but not quite, in the
west, it’s, since it’s more... um... how should I say?
it’s more “Parisianized”, um, more, um,
Europeanized in a Parisian way.]
While a shift in perception may be taking place, the
southwest should still be considered a region that weighs
strongly in the perception of these respondents. Even

though they are not in strong agreement as to how to

delineate the boundaries in this area, the total of 93

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designations of this area on the perceptual map is still the
most of any area on the map.

The North

More densely outlined and more clearly delineated than any
single part of the Southwestern region is le Nord. In all,
44 respondents delineated this area surrounding the city of
Lille. Many labels (17) simply named the variety of this
area by the geographical location (e.g. “l'accent du nord”).
The second most common label (seven respondents) was the
word “Chtimi”, or a variant thereof (“Chti, schtimi, etc.).
One respondent explained the name for the variety by saying
that “Chti” is the regional patois word for “petit”. In
fac: the word “Ch’timi” is formulated from three Picard
forms: Ch (definite article), ti (second person singular
stressed pronoun, French equivalent “toi”), and mi (first
person stressed pronoun, French equivalent “moi”). The word
designates not only the regional patois, but the regional
inhabitants as well (Larousse — Dictionnaire de la langue
francaise, p. 344). The following were used to portray the
regional variety: “fort” [strong] (2), “dur” [hard], “lent”
[slow] (2), “lentement” [slowly], “trainant” [dragging],
“bas” [low], “lourd” [heavy]. Intonation may influence
these judgments. The intonation pattern in Northern and

Picard French is descending from the beginning, with a

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slight rise before a phrase-final drop. When compared to
the flat or slightly rising intonation of declarative
utterances in a standard French segment, it is not
surprising that this variety is considered “low” or “heavy”.

Despite the proximity of the region to the Belgian
border, only three respondents mention the regional variety
as being under any Belgian influence: “belge”; “accent trés
proche des belges”; “belge un peu.” In the rating phases
of the study Belgium and Switzerland are the two most
stigmatized regions, yet on the mapping phase a relatively
small number of respondents (17) delineated any part of
Switzerland as a linguistic region, and the number circling
Belgium (5) is among the smallest in the study. It is quite
probable, given these varying results, that the perceptual
boundary represented by an international border was so
strong that respondents were reluctant to cross it on the
mapping phase.

Taped interviews show strong negative comments about
the regional variety in the North as well. The following
comment (by respondent 69) typifies those made about the
North:

Dans le nord, ils parlent tres mal. Ils parlent méme

pas bien le francais de toute facon. Ils parlent

ch’timi. Je sais pas comment le définir. On le
reconnait mais, bon, le définir... Euh... [ca

ressemble] peut-étre a de l’allemand ou meme pas. Du
belge, ca ressemble a du belge. [In the north they

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speak very poorly. They don’t even speak French
properly, anyway. They speak Ch'timi. I don’t know
how to define it. It is recognizable but, well, to
define it... um... (it’s similar) maybe to German, or
not even. Belgian, it’s similar to Belgian.]
As suggested above in the discussion of the statistical
plots for correctness ratings, Picardy seems to have been
separated from the North not from linguistic evidence, but
because respondents may have felt the need to have an area
separating what they perceived to be a very non—standard
variety (that of the North) from their own speech (clearly
identified in the statistics with the standard). This
suggestion receives support from the total absence of
reference to Picardy either in interviews or in map labels.
Picardy also inevitably shares certain political interests
with the Parisian region, which it borders to the south. As
also stated above, many people residing in Picardy may work
in Paris or its suburbs, and so may have more interest in
the political and financial well-being of the capitol than
those living closer to the northern industrial center of
Lille. In fact the industrial and mining workers of this
northernmost corner of France have made it a stronghold for
more leftist political parties. The region, therefore, has
historically shown itself in defiant opposition to the often

conservative Parisian political elite. The largely working

class population and its fairly consistent political posture

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may be major extra-linguistic factors playing a role in the
stigmatized status of this region in Parisian perception.

This relationship of a linguistic perception to a
region constantly defiant of Paris is reminiscent of the
sixteenth and seventeenth-century references by Rabelais and
Moliere to Limousin lawyers. The parlements in certain
provinces were constantly trying to usurp Parisian authority
by asserting the autonomy of their judicial decisions. Much
of the linguistic legislation of that period was a product
of the tension between the Crown and the parlements. The
perception in literature of lawyers from faraway regions —
Dandin, l’écolier limousin, Pourceaugnac - as presumptuous,
overambitious outsiders fits in well with this power
struggle.

Alsace and Lorraine

Certainly extra-linguistic factors in the perception of
this clearly historically charged region cannot be ignored.
Alsace and most of Lorraine as a territorial possession
changed hands from France to Germany in 1871, Germany to
France in 1918, France to Germany in 1940“, and finally
Germany to France in 1945. While the region was often named
after Alsace (13 labels), and seldom after Lorraine (3
labels), labels more numerous than either referred to its

“German-ness.” A total of 19 labels included either the

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adjective “allemand(e)” or “germanique.” These labels were
often accompanied by other adjectives that seem more a
description of character than of linguistic performance:
“strict; rigoureux [strict, rigorous]; dur [hard].”
Adjectives describing phonological traits refer to
choppiness, slowness and, again, to German-ness: “tranché
(cut); saccadé (jerky); lent (slow); prononciation
allemande; consonance allemande; prononciation germanique.“
No descriptive terms are positive in the labeling of these
areas, and some are clearly negative: “Plouc (hick);
vulgaire.” Finally, one respondent refers to Luxembourg,
one states that the speakers of the region are often
bilingual, and still another says that the way people in the
region speak “ressemble un peu au québecois”. Taped
interviews echo these labels. Many of the comments on the
taped interviews also foretell the statistical results of
the other three stages. Clearly the perceived proximity of
Alsatien French to German, combined with the existence of a
large group of speakers of the Alsatien dialect, has led to
a high degree of difference rating. The contention by many
'respondents that Alsatiens are incomprehensible and use
“their own expressions” led to analogously low correctness
ratings. The follow-up interviews found respondents

forthcoming about their dislike of the Alsatien way of

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speaking as well. These comments were, not surprisingly,
backed by statistical results in the pleasantness rating
phase. Comments made about the Alsace variety were in
direct contrast to those about the southern varieties.
Where the latter were “sing-songy”, “flowing", and “warm”,
the former were “choppy”, “jerky” “cold, and “hard”. It is
reasonable to assume that such opposite comments would lead
to opposite rating results.

An analysis of the phonological traits of the this
variety reveals why a speaker of standardized French may
qualify it as jerky or choppy. Alsatien French (like
American English, for example) is stress-timed and the speed
of articulation depends on the number of syllables in each
word. Standard French is syllable-timed. For example, a
word of more than three syllables in Alsatien French would
have alternating strong and weak stress with a weak accent
placed on the last syllable. Standard French would stress
only the final syllable of a word group, with even stress of
all other syllables in a word group. The intonation system
of Alsatien French is more elongated and rising in beginning
and continuation positions. It has a slight rise and
comparatively sharp drop in phrase-final position, as well.
The more elongated intonation may also explain why some of

the respondents described the variety as slow.

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As shown by the discrepancy in numbers of designations
on the perceptual maps between the two regions, there seems
a preponderance of evidence that Alsace is a far more
important referent in the identifying of this linguistic
region than is Lorraine. Many factors may be responsible
for this difference in status. The capital of Alsace,
Strasbourg, is much larger than the two large urban areas in
Lorraine, Nancy and Metz, combined. It is therefore likely
that Strasbourg receives considerably more media and
business attention. Perhaps more importantly, Alsace is one
of the few regions of France whose modern administrative
borders nearly match its traditional regional borders. It
has therefore been able to maintain a certain regional
ethnic identity as many of the administrative regions have
not. In summary, even though only about one-third the size
of Lorraine, and with considerably less population, Alsace
has the ingredients necessary to be perceived as a
particular linguistic (and cultural) entity: (1) A border
with another powerful historical rival nation, Germany
(Lorraine partially borders Germany, but about half of its
northern border touches Belgium and Luxembourg, and its
eastern border is entirely conterminous with Alsace). (2) A
large and powerful urban center as its capital. (3)

Longstanding traditional borders. It was the same cultural

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coherence that allowed Balzac to create such a studied
caricature of the French spoken in this region.

Provence

Since Provence was rated at the top in the pleasantness
task, yet near the bottom in the correctness task, it should
come as no surprise that it is the single area that received
the most designations on the perceptual maps. In fact,
labels seem to indicate that the region surrounding
Marseille and Nice is for many the center of southern
speech: 14 respondents labeled the region with a general
term for “the south” (Midi, sud). Eleven respondents use a
form of the word “Provence”, with two of these making
reference to the Provencal dialect, one calling it a
disappearing language, one citing it as the major influence
for the regional variety of French. Two other respondents
refer to Italian as the external influence that gives the
regional variety its distinctive traits. Seven respondents
labeled this region on the map with phonological attributes
of the variety:

1. “Chantant [singing]” (Two respondents).

2. “Accent chantant de Marseille [Singing accent of

Marseille]”

3. “Accent chantant proche de l’Italie [Singing accent

close to Italy]”

4. “Entrainant [Dragging]”

5. “Ils font rebondir les mots et trainer les

syllabes. [They make words bounce and syllables drag].”
6. “ Accentuation vive [lively inflection]”

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The following labels were used to evaluate the regional

accent as well:

accent populaire; rigolo [funny]; chaleureux [warm];
trés fort [very strong]; Pagnol [Movie director,
Marcel, who made popular films set in the region]; oh
pochere! [imitation of an expression often associated
with the region, rough translation: “poor baby!”
(sarcastic)]

Contributing to the region’s strong showing on the
perceptual maps may be the popularity of Provence as a
vacation spot. Many of the labels for the variety associate
it with warmth and an. The follow-up interviews reinforce
this perception. The following statements are a sampling of
those where ”arious respondents stress the relationship
between the weather of the region and the way the people
speak there. The taped response of respondent 53 typifies
comments made:

On se dit: “Ah le midi de la France, les gens, euh,
l'accent, c’est chantant, c’est le soleil, etc.” [...]
Mais on identifie toujours un accent on bien un langage
a l’atmosphére qu’il y fait, au paysage qu’il y a, et
c'est vrai que le sud est bien plus joli que le nord,
et donc bon, ca explique aussi, les... les résultats.
[You say to yourself, “Ah the south of France, the
people, um, the accent, it’s singing, it’s the sun,
etc.” (...) But an accent or-a language is always-
identified by the atmosphere that surrounds it, by the
countryside there is, and it’s true that the south is
much more pretty than the north, and that explains the,
the results.”

170

These comments not only reflect a perceptual connection
between the weather in Provence and the Provencal accent,
but also show a willingness to relate climate conditions to
language variety in general.

Finally, the taped interviews indicated the strength of
the linguistic caricature of this region, because it was the
Provencal variety of French that the most respondents
readily imitated. While the accuracy of the imitations has
not been technically assessed, it is safe to say that
respondents who did the imitations concentrated on
transforming the nasal vowels of Parisian French into velar
nasal consonants, the systematic pronunciation (rather than
omission) of the schwa or “unstable e” /e/, and changing of
/r/ from a “back r” to a “front r”. Notable during these
imitations was that nearly all respondents chose to use
profanity in their imitations. Respondent 65 almost refused
to imitate, making the following comment:

11 y a aussi un accent ...Et tout de suite, on en vient

a des mots grossiers des qu’on parle [...avec cet

accent]. Ils disent “putain” tous les mots, a toutes

les phrases ils disent “putain”... [There is also an
accent ...and right away we come to dirty words as soon
as we speak (...with that accent). They say "putain"

("goddam," "fucking, " lit. " whore") at every word, in

every sentence they say “putain.””]

Such linking of Provencal French to socially marked language

.implies a judgment on speakers of the variety as well.

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Respondents use language they would otherwise find
unacceptable with a stranger (the interviewer) only when
imitating this variety. This represents an interesting
parallel with Provence's vacation-spot reputation.
Respondents consider Provence somewhere a Parisian might go
to forget social and professional obligations. Apparently
this forgetfulness is extended to language use: the above
speaker is the only one who hesitated before using "dirty
words", the other imitators had no misgivings about it, as
l.ng as they were just doing an imitation.

Several respondents who did not use profanity in these
imitations evoked the actor Fernandel, an actor born in
Marseille, and chiefly recognized for his comic roles in
films during the 305 and 405. Such a reference is
comparable to those of the actress Arletty in relation to
the Parisian accent, as discussed above.

In all the rating tasks, Provence is at one extreme of
the statistical results, either highest or lowest. It is
also the single most delineated region on the perceptual
map, and the most referred to and imitated language variety
in the interview stage. In other words, whether respondents
are asked to discuss it specifically in relation to other
regions (as in the rating tasks) or if they bring it up on

their own in a discussion of the linguistic environment of

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France, it is clearly the most marked region in this study,
in so much as markedness is an attribute of difference.

This dual perception of Provence can be compared to
Sand’s idyllic picture of peasant life. Although Provence
is one of the earlier regions to be tied to the French Crown
(1481), the economic development of the region has been
slower than most of France since the beginning of
industrialization. As late as the 19603 - when tourism in
the region began transforming from profitable commerce into
mega-industry - Provence’s economy remained almost entirely
agrarian. Many of the more common manifestations of the
modern world — running water in homes, telephone lines, etc.
— arrived in Provence only after the tourist industry
burgeoned. Since Provence was a late-comer to many aspects
of modernization ~ just like the Berry of George Sand’s time
- the perception of linguistic “pleasantness” in Provence
may be tied to a more general perception that the region has

\\

remained unspoiled” by the progress of industry. Pagnol’s
popularization of the region’s rustic quality in film has
undoubtedly reinforced this perception. On the other hand,
the perception of language correctness remains linked to the
presence of a historically prestigious dialect, and the

second largest French city (Marseille) as the center of that

dialect. It is also interesting to note that Provence,

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unlike any other Occitan-speaking region was originally
colonized by the Greeks, who also founded the city that is
now Marseille in the seventh century B.C. — another example
of a very old boundary that still shows a residual effect on
perceptions today.

The Strength of the Norm

While Provence displays a strong markedness because of
its perceived difference from Parisian French, two regions
in the rating tasks show a peiception that is even stronger,
at least statistically: Ile de France and Touraine, or the
"home group." The statistical strength of the perception of
these two regions is manifest in the consistency of the k-
means analysis: in the correctness and pleasantness ratings
tasks these two cluster together consistently when the k-
means function is asked for six, five or four clusters and
Champagne (sharing a boundary with the Ile-de-France
administrative region) is the only region to be grouped with
them in the degree of difference ratings.

The common perception of Tours and the Loire valley as
the cradle of standard French is confirmed by the labels
given to these areas on the perceptual map. The following
is an inventory of all labels given by the 18 respondents
(11 around Tours and 7 others very nearby) that outlined a

region on this part of the map:

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'"Touraine (2 respondents); Touraine, le meilleur
francais [the best French]; francais pur (2
respondents)[pUre French]; francais + [le plus] pur

[the purest French]; en principe: francais pur

[normallyz pure french]; sans accent (2 respondents)

[no accent]; le langage a l’origine du francais

national [language at the origin of national French];

Peu d’accent [little accent]; accent tourangeot; Berri;

Berry (2 respondents); Loiret."

These last five respondents are the only ones who indicate
the existence of a non-standard variety in these regions.
Four of these last five are represented on map 3 by a small
circle to the northeast of Tours. The name "Berry" refers
to a feudal Duchy, whose sovereigns occasionally played
important roles in royal politics during the middle ages.
This was also the name of one of the provinces before the
Revolution. Clearly most of the remaining labels in this
area are consistent with the notion of Tours as the center
of standardness.

Without the Touraine and Berry delineations, map 3
would have a wide section of blank space on all sides of the
Loire River. Obviously, the great majority (more than 80%)
of individual maps indeed show this wide empty area.
Respondents were asked to comment on what these spaces
represent linguistically. Their responses were quite
similar to the labels given for the Touraine:

"Pas d'accent (5 respondents) [no accent]; Pas d'accent

spécifique [no specific accent]; plat, parisien, pas
d'accent parce que c'est mon accent [flat, Parisian, no

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accent because it's my accent]; accent neutre [neutral
accelt]; on ne peut pas entendre l'accent [the accent
can't be heard]; un accent mais bon, comme nous, hein?
[they have an accent but, well, like us, you know?];
pareil qu'a Paris [same as in Paris]; ils parlent comme
moi [they speak like me]; le meilleur francais [the .
best French]; C'est le centre de la France ou on parle
le meilleur francais [It's the center of France where
they speak the best French]; Les espaces blancs sont
comme Paris [the blank spaces are like Paris];
unitaire, accent pas prononcé [unitary, the accent is
not marked]; léger accent [slight accent]; un accent
moins tranché [a less defined accent]; pas d'accent
trés marqué [no really marked accent]; un accent moins
marqué [a less marked accent]; Je ne connais pas bien
cette région (6 respondents) [I'm not very familiar
with this region]; un peu tout pareil [pretty much all
the same]; un continuum d'accents [a continuum of
accents]; C'est la campagne [it's the country]; C'est
les paysans, ils roulent les 'r' [It's country people,
they roll their 'r']."

The majority of these respondents see this region as the
center for the French linguistic norm. This view may be
more conscious (respondents saying the French is "best"
there) or less so (those saying the speakers in the region
have "no accent"), but it is beyond doubt among the
strongest perceptions held by these respondents. The
combined strength of the statistical results and the large
number of respondents identifying Paris and the Loire region
with the standard in interviews and on maps easily put it on
even footing with Provence as a force in the linguistic
perception of these respondents.

The blank places on the maps are also the blind-spot in

literary manifestations of linguistic perceptions. Authors

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who assert the Parisian norm as the best or most pure form
of French do so tacitly, just as respondents left the map
blank. Writing in the Parisian standard, as the authors we
examine did, creates an image of this language as an a
priori condition upon which variation takes place. Treating
norms as objective realities rather than positions to argue

from is the most silent and strongest type of adherence.

CHAPTER THREE: Characterizing the norm

Section 1: Descriptions of the standard

Close study of the interview comments on the region
identified with the linguistic norm in chapter one reveals a
mostly negative definition of the norm. Descriptive terms
mostly indicate what the accent of the region is not, rather
than what it is. Labels that mark a lack of accent are also
present on the perceptual maps, although they are
outnumbered by labels including the modifier pur. The
choice of pur highlights the abstract quality of the norm.
The following dictionary definitions (Petit Robert, 1992)
of pur reveal why the norm may have such status:

Sans mélange [without mixture]; Qui ne doit rien a

l'expérience [owing nothing to experience]; Qui

s'interdit toute preoccupation étrangere a sa nature
spécifique [that which allows itself no preoccupations
foreign to its specific nature]; Sans défaut d'ordre

moral, sans corruption, sans tache [without moral
fault, without corruption, without stain]. (p.1567)

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Of course applying any of these definitions to a living
language reveals the absurdity of the notion of language
purity. The same French educational system that identifies
Tours as the center for the norm also teaches that French
was derived from the contact of Latin with Germanic and
Celtic languages. This fact alone eliminates the
possibility that there could be a French “sans mélange ou
preoccupation étrangere a sa nature spécifique.” The
practicality of language excludes the possibility of a
language “qui ne doit rien a l'expérience.” Arguments of
moral superiority or unblemished linguistic conduct of
Touraine speakers and speech could be easily dismissed with
surreptitiously recorded conversations of Touraine speakers.
Recordings would not, however, eliminate or explain the myth
and how speakers perceive it.

The strong presence of royalty and aristocracy in
Touraine is well known. This information alone, however,
does not explain why the perceptual center for the norm
would be historically displaced from Paris. Lodge (1993)
suggests further historical and political grounds for the
establishment of the Touraine as center for the norm. The
fifteenth and sixteenth century Parisian elite may have
wished to distance the linguistic point of reference from

the Parisian working class which they both loathed and

178

feared. The choice of the region southwest of Paris was
political as well: members of the Parisian elite wished to
dissociate themselves from political rival speakers of the
northern Picard dialects. Such political factors and a lack
of convincing evidence linking upper-class Parisian and the
regional dialect of Touraine lead to the conclusion that
this choice was not arbitrary, but that it had little to do
with language (see Lodge, 1993, 167-69).

Aside from historico-political reasons and the
perpetuation of the Touraine myth in French education, many
spatial factors could explain the persistence of Tours as
the perceptual center for the norm. If we look again at the
composite perceptual map, we can see how Tours remains a
prime location for "uncorrupted" and "unmixed" language.

The corrupting influence of large urban centers is far
removed. Tours is at about an equal distance from Lyons,
Bordeaux and Paris. It is far enough west to be immune from
German or Burgundian influence, yet far enough east to
escape contamination from Breton.38 It is clearly too far
south to fall under the sway of the northern dialects, yet
well north of the strong perceptual boundary of the southern
Occitan dialects. Tours also lies in the Loire river
valley, well-known for its historical connections to French

royalty, and as the center of activity for Joan of Arc,

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considered the savior of the French nation and a symbol of
the French national spirit. As a middle-sized city, it is
free from stigma as a "rural" area without being too
"urban." Apart from well established vineyards, Touraine as
a whole is not regarded as an agricultural region with the
stature of Normandy or Burgundy, so it has escaped the
agricultural reputation of the "rural" regions discussed in
chapter above. In short, much like the negatively defined
linguistic norm and the adjective pur, Touraine can be
spatially defined by its unmarkedness — by what it is not
rather than by what it is. It is neither north nor south,
neither east nor west, neither rural nor urban, neither
agricultural nor industrial, etc...

The valorization of an (imaginary) unmarked form of the
language over other forms is common in standardized
languages. We can agree that the norm "ne recouvre aucune
réalité empirique et ne pourrait étre décrit par des
enquétes empiriques aussi bien menées et rigoureusement
planifiées qu'elles fussent [fits no empirical reality and
could not be described by empirical studies, as well
conducted and rigorously planned as they might be]" and that
such an ideal, constructed norm "est le propre de toute
norme [is the distinctive feature of all norms]" (Valdman,

221). What is unique to the findings of the present study

180

is the perceptual strength that the norm shows. While
empirically non-existent,39 perceptually it seems the norm

is a palpable entity. Contrary to the present study,
linguistic perception studies in other speech communities
have generally shown the largest perceptual weight falling
on marked varieties. The firm strength of the norm in
French linguistic perception must have important
psychological outcomes. Since the norm is definable only by

” speakers in

its difference from actual performance,
general must possess a negative image of the way they
themselves speak even though (as with the Parisian
respondents of the present study) they have high linguistic
security in relation to speakers from other regions. To
the common devaluation of regional and social varieties as
deviants from the norm, French society has added that of the
vernacular in general:
The vernacular is associated, in the lay-person's mind
at least, with low-status groups in society and with
ignorance and laziness: whereas use of the vernacular
comes effortlessly (by definition), skill in
manipulating the language varieties required for formal
discourse can only be acquired through a considerable
period of training. (Lodge 1994, 62)
This statement defines what is perhaps the most
prevalent view of what constitutes language expertise in

French society: the ability accurately to construct formal

discourse. The most formal variety of language (again by

181

definition) is written. Of course the privileging of
written language and the stigmatization of spoken language
are not unique to France. The results of the present study,
however, indicate a continuing (at least tacit) acceptance
of traditional linguistic hierarchies that find their
authority increasingly challenged in many other speech
communities.

First-language instruction in French schools
(especially in reference to writing) stresses the
impossibility of attaining complete correctness. A formula
well-known to French students exemplifies French perception
of their linguistic norm. In a grading system where 20 is a
perfect score, "20 est réservé pour dieu, 19 pour le
professeur [20 is reserved for God, 19 for the teacher]."
Although this formula is true for all subject matters, it
refers specifically to tasks that involve writing. It is
perceived as possible (albeit difficult) to attain perfect
scores for tasks involving only mathematical equations or
proofs, for example.

In summary, language expertise (or the perception of
it) can be characterized as the ability to manipulate the
written norm to near perfection. .Since the norm itself is
only a perceptual (and not empirical) reality, any actual

linguistic performance that meets the standards of the norm

182

is impossible. Even though it has no basis in empirical
reality, the norm is arguably the strongest single
linguistic perception in French society. We will now
examine what at first glance are perplexing results from the
rating phases of the present study.
Section 2: The correctness phase - dissenters

As made clear above and in chapter one, the norm
represents an extremely strong perception for the
respondents of this study. 18 respondents (24%), however,
excluded themselves from the statistical data of correctness
ratings, because they either 1) refused to rate any of the
regions based on correctness; or 2) chose to give all
regions an equal rating for correctness. Given the
statistical strength accorded the norm, this inability to
rate the regions was surprising. When seen in other studies
(e.g. Hartley, to appear) such refusal indicated a challenge
to the notion of correctness. The refusals in the present
study, if based on notions of equality among linguistic
varieties ("all varieties are of equal correctness"), would
represent a strong counter-current to the statistical
results of those who did choose to do the task, as well as
the labels and layout of the perceptual maps which seem to

back up those statistics.

183

There is no consistency of gender, age or socioeconomic
status within the group of abstainers, so these factors
could shed no light on their unwillingness to diffentiate
between the regions on the basis of correctness.41 Except
two who also abstained from the pleasantness rating phase,
these particular respondents displayed no idiosyncratic
behavior in the mapping or other rating phases. Most of
them account for their reluctance to perform the correctness
rating task in the taped interview phase. Their statements
in taped interviews reveal their awareness of the norm.42

Respondents' comments show that their reluctance to
perform the correctness task stems not from a disagreement
with the concept of correctness, but rather from a flaw in
the design of the task. Correctness for these respondents
is a matter not of regional but of social distinction.43

Respondents do not dispute the presence or validity of
a linguistic norm. The regions as criteria for correctness
judgments lead them to give homogeneous ratings. For these
respondents each region presumably has a fairly even
distribution of correct and incorrect speakers. According
to respondents’ comments it would be a mistake to consider
the perception of the norm less strong in these respondents
than in those who performed the correctness ratings without

hesitation.

184

Some respondents expressed reluctance to rate the
various regions because they did not want to seem
discriminatory. Again, none of their comments specifically
deny the notion of a norm. The statements by respondents 12
and 72, "le francais est correct" and "c'est toujours du
francais" seem to express a kind of intrinsic correctness in
French, regardless of how it is spoken. Regional varieties
represent variations of an underlying consistent system.
Respondents 2 and 4 reveal their view that no one speaks in
the norm — respondent 2 stating that people in other regions
make "no more mistakes" than Parisians, respondent 4 finding
it "fortunate" that no one speaks completely correctly.

Many of these respondents gave all regions a mark below
seven to signify that no one speaks correctly.

Two respondents stated that correct speech cannot be
evaluated because it is no longer present. Correct French
should be associated with the past. Respondent 32 implies
the primacy of written forms by associating correctness with
the pronunciation of "all the letters." Respondent 65
echoes the sentiment of the eighteenth century grammarians
who "increasingly turned away from current usage" (Lodge
1993, 181) to anchor the norm in an idealized linguistic
past. It is not necessary to seek out the writings of

eighteenth century grammarians to find such a nostalgic View

185

of the norm, however. In his 1991 introduction to Rivarol's
L'Uhiversalité de la langue francaise Jean Dutourd (member
of the Académie since 1978) writes:

"[Le] 18e siécle fut l'age d'or de la grammaire. Les
illettrés eux—mémes respectaient la concordance des
temps. Les pécheurs de la Grenouillére n'hésitaient
pas a employer l'imparfait du subjonctif quand il le
fallait. Qui ferait montre aujourd'hui d'un tel
courage? Les salons (mais sait-on, aujourd'hui, ce que
pouvait représenter un salon?) ne le cédaient en rien
aux marchands de bois de la paroisse du Gros-Caillou:
on parlait encore mieux chez les Polignac et les
Montremart [The 18th century was the golden age of
grammar. Even illiterates respected tense agreement.
The fishermen of la Grenouillere did not hesitate to
use the imperfect subjunctive when necessary. Who
would display such courage today? The salons (but is
it known today what a salon could represent?) were no
better than the wood sellers of the Gros-Caillou
parish: they spoke even better in the houses of
Polignac and Montremart]" (Rivarol, 12-13).

Although they may not conform to the needs of the rating
task, the views expressed by the nostalgic respondents
support the statistical results showing a strong perception
of the norm. In fact, of the entire group of abstainers
from the correctness task, only one (respondent 30)
intellectually challenges the notion of correctness in
linguistic performance. The same respondent's statement
about the pleasantness task hints that her hesitation
relates to epistemological issues rather than to questions

of the existence or authority of the linguistic norm. She

seems most concerned about making seemingly objective

186

ratings based on her own (highly subjective) experiential

knowledge:

Respondent 30: "J'ai eu un probleme [pour le mot

'agréable'] parce que c'est la meme chose que le mot

'correct' — c'est trés subjectif et un peu péjoratif

[...] et en effet on a un petit peu du mal a s'avancer

parce qu'on devrait pas paraitre discriminatoire mais

bon, c'est vrai qu'il y a des accents qui
subjectivement me paraissent moins chantant et moins
agréables que d'autres [I had a problem [with the word

'pleasant'] because it's the same as the word 'correct'

— it's very subjective and a little pejorative [...]

and I have a little trouble pursuing this topic because

we shouldn't appear discriminatory but anyway, it's

true that there are accents that subjectively seem to

me less singing and less pleasant than others]."
The respondent's hedging (i.e. the reiterations of the
subjective nature of her judgments: trés subjectif;
subjectivement me paraissent) indicates uneasiness with the
scientific appearance of the study, which she perceives as a
mismatch to her purely subjective responses. Such hedging
was common among respondents.

The insecurity of many respondents might arise not from
mistrust of their own linguistic perceptions — the common
reference to their own experience as authoritative indicates
confidence in accounts of linguistic performance - but from
a traditional French view that devalues knowledge based on
experience in favor of knowledge obtained through analysis,
systematization and codification. Because it is socially

and culturally legitimated this latter type of knowledge

maintains a higher truth value. In the case of language,

187

legitimacy lies largely with formulators and codifiers of
the norm. Linguists have energetically attempted to dispel
ideologies that privilege one language or variety over
others. It appears that these efforts have been at best
marginally successful if their influence over the
respondents of the present study is any indication. Such
attempts at deconstructing traditional epistemological
hierarchies are present in other fields of human study. The
linguistic perceptions and judgments of these respondents
often imply issues that reach through the realm of the
regional into the social.
CONCLUSION TO PART TWO

In this chapter, I have attempted to show how the
different phases of this study complement each other in
creating a clearer picture of the linguistic perceptions of
a set of respondents. The mapping phase allows us to take a
first look at how subjects react to geographical, space with
as few leading questions as possible. Although the map used
in this phase had very little detail, the results suggest
that the inclusion of so many cities may have led
respondents to outline areas they may otherwise have not.
Future dialect perception studies on France should strongly
consider eliminating most or all cities from the perceptual

map given to respondents. Despite this shortcoming, the

3

188

perceptual mapping phase did provide information that would
not have been readable in the statistics of the rating
phases alone. The best example of information invisible in
the statistics, yet easily discernible on the composite
perceptual map, is the confused picture of the southwestern
corner of France.

The rating phases, on the other hand, allowed us to see
results that might have been masked in the perceptual
mapping phase. By naming specific regions on the
questionnaire, the rating tasks directed respondents'
thought toward questions that they had perhaps not
consciously considered before. The clearest example of
results in the ratings that may have been unnoticed in the
mapping is the extremely strong perception of the Parisian
and Touraine norm. The rating tasks highlighted important
results that would have been missed by simply assuming that
blank or sparsely marked spaces on the perceptual map
indicated a lack of clear linguistic perception.

Finally, the taped interviews helped steer the
researcher toward answers to difficult questions raised in
the statistical outlays and on the perceptual maps.
Examples of such clarification are the comments by
respondents about the North and Brittany, that reflected the

ambiguous position of these regions in the minds of many

189

respondents. Respondents' uncertainty about the status of
these regions is not observable in the mapping and rating
phases.

The information provided in this chapter represents
only a small part of the issues that the qualitative and
quantitative data raise. Questions about folk definitions
of linguistic terms (patois, dialecte, parler), and the
trefusal of certain respondents to perform certain tasks
(most specifically the correctness task) are not addressed
in this chapter. Other issues, such as the rural/urban
animosity displayed in many respondents, are alluded to only
briefly. Subsequent chapters will look more deeply into
some of these questions as we begin to relate this study to
a wider cultural picture.

Given the strength of some linguistic perceptions
(e.g., the norm, the caricaturized southern, rural and
Parisian varieties), it seems likely that linguistic
perception plays a strong role in linguistic performance.
If widely held perceptions stigmatize certain varieties,
Speakers are likely to recognize such overt markedness by
adjustments either toward or away from these varieties.
Many linguists (e.g., Gumperz 1972) have investigated the
influence of ingroup and outgroup identification in the

language variation. Discoveries about linguistic perception

190

made in most studies have been considered secondary to
questions of social status and the linguistic performance
that accompanies it. Speakers who shift styles based on
situation or ingroup solidarity do so based not only on the
desire to "fit in" with situation or group, but also on the
perception that a certain speech style will help accomplish
that goal. Motivation and perception go hand in hand.

Given the universality of linguistic perception (i.e.,
everyone has some perceptions about who uses what language
where) few if any linguistic events take place without
consideration of participants' views of language. Any study
concerned with language use could profit from knowledge of
language perception patterns. Sociolinguists studying
specific variables or literary critics studying the artistic
use of language style can gain valuable insight from
awareness of language perception and its manifestations.

By the same token, to make our study useful to a larger
audience, we should seek to relate linguistic perception
studies such as this one to other fields. The numerous
questions raised and the answers (fully or partially)
produced by simple analysis of the data here attest not only
to the richness of such data, but also to the necessity for
further investigation into linguistic perception and how it

mirrors social outlooks and constructions. It is evident

191

that one's linguistic perception is not simply the
linguistic component of an overall world view, but also the
vehicle through which many other prides and prejudices are

expressed.

CONCLUSION
Linguistic perception and linguistic expertise

We saw in part two that many respondents were able to
describe specific characteristics or global traits of
regional varieties with some accuracy. Such descriptors as
"saccadé [jerky]" can be attributed to specific differences
between the respondents' variety and the variety they are
describing. In such cases the linguist can explain the
source of these perceptions by a simple comparative analysis
of the respondent's variety and the variety assessed. The
linguist's task is translation. By explaining the
respondent's description in scientific terms the linguist
can either legitimate or discredit it.

Labov (1975) claims that folk-linguistic knowledge
cannot be valid because non-linguists lack the linguistic
terminology needed for accurate description. Such a
statement implies that knowledge of expert terminology is
one factor that separates expertise from non-expertise, at

least in language study. It also highlights the dichotomy

192

between these two types of knowledge. This dichotomy is
common to most fields of knowledge. Labov’s statement is
questionable because it simultaneously privileges the study
of language as object and discounts the important role of
meta-linguistic knowledge (however lacking in terminology it
might be) in speakers’ judgments of others' linguistic
performance.44 It also discounts the unique value of a
lifetime of direct observation, at least of one’s own
dialect.

The essential elements distinguishing non-expert
knowledge from expert knowledge are systemization and
specialization. Systems of knowledge, according to at least
one definition, are separate from everyday understanding:

Systems of knowledge dictate thinking and action

concerned with the nature of the world and are limited

to this subject only. Habitual actions, customary
actions, and other ordinary day-to-day activities do
not usually call up questions about the nature of the
world or require explanations of connections in the
world and are not subjects of concern for systems of

knowledge (Willer, 17).

Regular contact with language is not sufficient (nor even
necessary, by this definition!) to constitute systematic
knowledge of language. Linguistic perception based on daily
contact with language is not only ineligible for

consideration as expertise, it does not even qualify as a

system of knowledge. The expert/non—expert dichotomy also

193

relies on the specialization of individuals in a particular
field requiring technical knowledge not available to the lay
person without specific training. To be socially validated,
specialization or expert status must be recognized by the
scientific or intellectual establishment bearing the
authority to bestow legitimacy (see Sassower).

The establishment of a field of expertise identified
with the French language dates to the original commission of
the Académie.45 Of course other areas that could be equated
with this expertise have emerged since 1635: philology and
linguistic geography in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries and more recently, fields of theoretical and
applied linguistics. The prescriptions of the Académie,
however, remain the most recognized single linguistic
authority in France today, even though many of their current
pronouncements are popularly recognized as reactionary and
arbitrary.46

The societal impact of the expert/non-expert
distinction is bound to be much greater on language than on
other disciplines, since everyone uses language. It may be
reasonable to speak of expertise and authority in applied
nuclear physics or auto mechanics since these fields require
Specialized training and understanding that few people

obtain. Such specialists are justified in giving expert

194

instructions or advice relating to their respective fields.
Everyone, however, acquires language. An individual's grasp
of language may be more automatic and complex than any other
understanding obtained during a lifetime. No field of study
where expertise is socially sanctioned has such a large
number of highly skilled and knowledgeable non-experts.
Labov's remark paraphrased above could lead us to conclude
that much expertise in "non-language" fields is only a
refinement of linguistic skills in the expert's area. What
results from the expert/non-expert dichotomy regarding
language? Certainly language as a field is not immune to
"the myth of expertise" (Sassower, 64). The strong
perception of the linguistic norm (as codified by the
Académie) makes it appear that linguistic authority is
socially legitimated. Such acceptance of expertise "has an
immediate pragmatic consequence since it suggests that only
experts can and should make decisions about their specialty,
and that only experts in the same field may judge each
other's decisions. [... Non-experts] seem unqualified to be
external reviewers of the decisions of experts, for they do
not possess the specialized knowledge that qualifies experts
to make certainty claims." (Sassower, 65). This
consequence is less influential on daily human activity when

considered from the standpoint of nuclear physics which has

195

as few practitioners as experts. Language is a field,
however, where the numbers of practitioners far outweigh
those with expert status, and where expert status is
conferred to many and varying practitioners of language.
Many professionals— lawyers, psychologists, politicians —
owe their professional status to their expertise in
language. Literature is the most palpable manifestation,
however, of language as expertise and expertise as language.
Attributing to literature the authority of expertise in
language is another way of pointing out its role as a
receptacle for and creator of linguistic perceptions.
Whoever were the perceived authorities for the
respondents in the study outlined in chapter one, most
respondents made it clear during the rating phases that they
themselves were non-experts. Some respondents remarked that
they did not know the correct answers on the rating phases,
but that they would do their best. Some felt it important
to point out that they were giving only their opinion and
that their responses should not be considered factual.
Others wrote comments on the rating sheets explaining that
if they did not know the answer they would mark 4 for the
region in question. Many of the verbal disclaimers are

purely anecdotal evidence because they were made as asides

196

to the researcher while rating tasks were being performed
and the tape recorder was off.

Respondents occasionally stated their own expert
status. When they did so, the authority invoked was
invariably their own experience. If they had visited a
region, or had relatives that spoke with the variety of that
region, they were more at ease in describing the variety in
question. On the questionnaires, respondents were asked to
mark the regions from the rating lists that they had visited
for one week or more. During the design of the research
project this information seemed important for correlating
amount of detail offered with time spent in regions.
Because only two respondents marked fewer than eight of the
24 regions used in the study, no specific correlation could
be made: with so many regions marked, it was impossible to
determine (unless the respondent stated so specifically)
whether or not detail offered was a direct result of
experience in a given region. Future studies should not
only elicit which regions have been visited for a given
period (the "one week or more" requirement was admittedly
arbitrary), but also ask respondents to name specific
regions with which they have greater familiarity.

Despite the shortcomings of the project design, we can

make one general observation about respondents' self-

197

assessment of expertise. Respondents considered themselves
experts only in descriptive tasks (the mapping phase and
follow-up interviews). They frequently deferred expertise
during prescriptive tasks (rating phases). The prescriptive
character of language expertise revealed by this observation
suggests that it is not only authoritative (as with most
expertise) but also authoritarian. In most sciences
expertise is as much experience as it is education. We tend
to trust the judgments of a doctor of medicine with 20 years
of experience more than we would those of a young intern
just out of medical school. In the case of language we can
all claim virtually equal amounts of experience on the
whole, especially in speaking and listening. Expertise in
language requires valorization of certain linguistic
experiences/styles over others. Western societies commonly
privilege reading and writing over speaking and listening.
(Language) Perception and (social) knowledge

Many socially sanctioned institutions of knowledge
privilege objective theoretical knowledge over
experientially or perceptually based knowledge. At least
one sociologist, in a study aimed at determining the roots
of social knowledge shows a similar bias in her own method:

This work is theoretical; the theory and facts for it

are clearly distinguished. Theory provides generality

without ambiguity of empirical generalization because
it is rationally constructed to be exact. Theory thus

198

makes exact differentiation between phenomena possible.
But, even more importantly, theory provides an
objectivity not possible when analysis is made solely

on the basis of our perceptions. [...] The use of
formal theory makes objectivity at least possible.
(Willer, 8)

Willer's intention is to eliminate the researcher's biases
in formulating a theory of the social determination of
knowledge. Her study design unwittingly privileges one
definition of social knowledge over others because she
chooses one of the objects of her study (a socially
legitimated theoretical mode of inquiry) as her primary tool
for understanding socially determined modes of knowledge.
She thus undermines her project from the outset. In studies
that involve human behavior it is however unlikely that such
biases can be avoided entirely.

While subjectivity in research with human subjects
cannot be entirely eliminated, researchers undertaking
empirical studies of human behavior have directly addressed
the questionable status of objectivity. In his work on
Japanese dialectology, Grootaers realized that
dialectologists who claimed to base linguistic boundaries on
the performance of speakers often used their own cultural
perceptions as starting points for dialect investigations
(see Grootaers, 1959). Grootaers addresses his concern

about researcher bias in the only way possible: he allows

199

speakers of the language to identify dialect boundaries.

The reasoning behind his decision is simple: since dialect
boundaries must be subjective, they should at least reflect
the perceptions of the speaking subjects, rather than those
of the researcher. Labov (1972) discusses what he calls the
"observer's paradox" in sociolinguistic studies: by
eliciting targeted linguistic items the researcher
necessarily draws the subject's attention to her/his
linguistic behavior, thus spoiling the authenticity of the
very object of the study - speech taking place in its
natural environment."7 Robinson (1975) voices concern that
sociolinguistic studies whether diachronic or synchronic may
overlook several layers of social reality in reporting
results. He argues for multiple methodologies to account
for divergence between objective and phenomenological
realities.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has also been
preoccupied with the precariousness of claims to
objectivity. His work La Distinction parallels dialect
perception studies because it examines social perceptions —
specifically those created by ownership and knowledge of
artistic goods. Language style clearly fits into such a
discussion since like artistic consumption it can be (at

least perceptually) recognized as a marker of social status.

200

Like language style, a culturally defined object such as
"taste" viewed in relationship with social distinctions is
too easily perceived as unambiguous. Bourdieu cautions us
against relying on the self-evidence of social phenomena:
Mais on n'en finit pas avec les évidences: c'est
l'interrogation meme qu'il faut interroger — c'est-a-
dire le rapport a la culture qu'elle privilégie
tacitement - afin d'établir si une modification du
contenu et de la forme de l'interrogation ne suffirait
pas a determiner une transformation des relations
observées [But we never finish with obviousness: it is
the investigation itself that must be investigated -
that is the relationship that it tacitly privileges -
in order to establish whether a modification of the
content and form of the investigation would not suffice
for determining a transformation of the observed
relationships]. (Bourdieu 10)
In order to eliminate subjectivity as much as possible from
social analysis, we must recognize its necessary place in
the framework of our investigations, and avoid the "false
polarization of 'subjective' versus 'objective'." (Robbins,
128)

Taking his own advice in his analysis of the social
role of works of art, Bourdieu found that understanding the
social significance of works of art meant not only focusing
on producer, production and product in the realm of art, but
also (and perhaps more so) on the messages of social
identity that guide their consumption. The social

distinction that accompanies ownership (in the proprietary

and intellectual senses) is capital in the market of social

201

penmpfibn. This distinction is not only a product of

aesflumic appreciation, but also one of its (tacit or

explicit) goals .

The status of the art work as a sign of social

disthmmion is paralleled in language code and style

swiUflung. Milroy (1980) demonstrates the relationship of

laxnmge style to models of social networking. Gumperz and

(1982) show how language functions

Hymes (1972) and Gumperz

as marker of in-group status or solidarity. Bourdieu

perceives a similar relationship between socially
established language hierarchies and the system of artistic
consumption that clearly demarcates social distinctions.
Social equality is characterized in language as opposite or

even the enemy of autonomous artistic production and refined

consumption of cultural objects. Bourdieu notes the

complicity of legitimated language in the perpetuation of

social difference:

Chi pourrait ainsi évoquer toute la charge sociale du

.langage légitime et, par exemple, les systemes de
xnaleurs éthiques et esthétiques qui sont déposés, préts
dans les

ea fonctionner, de maniére quasi automatique,
cxyuples d'adjectifs antagonistes ou la logique meme du
ljnngage savant dont toute la valeur reside dans un
écmirt, c'est-a-dire dans la distance par rapport aux
nwuiiéres de parler simples et communes [One could thus
evnoke the entire social duty of legitimate language
arud, for example, the systems of ethical and aesthetic
venlues that are set down, ready to function, in an
alJnost automatic way, in pairs of antagonistic
actjectives where the very logic of learned language
'wTuose entire value lies in a disparity, that is in the

202

 

distance relative to simple and common ways of

speaking]. (p. 250)
.According to this point of view language is both symbol
representing the distance between and differentiation of
social classes and the system that creates and perpetuates
“these differences and separation. Bourdieu's position on
the role of language echoes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in
both its weak (language represents social and psychological
reality) and strong (language creates social and
psychological reality) versions. He claims that the
modifiers forming oppositional couples as part of the
"appareillage conceptuel du jugement de gout [conceptual
machinery of taste judgments]" are extremely weak, making
them perfect for the expression of that which is
undefinable, namely taste. The separateness of elite social
classes from the masses is most often implied rather than
explicit in oppositions present in the language system "—
puisqu'il s'agit de systeme des évidences et des présupposés
admis comme allant de soi [since this is a system of
obviousness and presupposition admitted as self—evident]"
(Bourdieu, 548). Multiple meanings and substitutability of
oppositional couples reinforce the imprecision and
consequently the effectiveness of the social definition of

taste. Imprecision allows definition of social limits to

203

 

 

remain implicit because it obscures the value judgment
attached to terms defining social borders by including the
possibility of value neutral opposites. That social
boundaries are implicit makes them difficult to oppose
because their appearance of self-evidence makes resistance
seem irrational. Actual social limits are reinforced by the
appearance of neutrality which validates them as objective:

Les limites objectives [des divisions sociales]

deviennent sens des limites, anticipation pratique des

limites objectives acquise par l'expérience des limites
objectives, sense of one's place qui porte a s'exclure

(biens, personnes, lieux, etc.) de ce dont on est exclu

[Objective limits [of social divisions] become a sense

of limits, a practical anticipation of the objective

limits acquired by experiencing objective limits, a

sense of one's place that leads us to exclude ourselves

from (goods, people, places, etc.) those things which

we are excluded from] (549).

The social order is maintained by the experience of members
of the society because it takes on "toutes les apparences de
la nécessité objective [all the appearances of objective
necessity]" (550).

Applying Bourdieu's vision of the formation and
maintenance of social boundaries to respondents of the
present study, we begin to understand the position of the
linguistic norm within a larger framework. Respondents in
Udis study clearly sense the existence of a linguistic norm.

'fiiey consistently described the norm negatively, choosing to

say what it is not, rather than what it is. Acknowledgments

204

 

of the otherness of the linguistic norm often accompanied
these negative descriptions. Standard language was placed
by respondents at a distance physically (in the Touraine),
temporally (in the more or less distant past) and socially
(in other social classes, among the more learned, etc.) and
accordingly seldom referred to in the here and now. The
overall characterization of the norm by these respondents
therefore parallels Bourdieu's conception of the realization
of social borders. They perceive the norm as implicit or
self—evident (hence the largely negative definitions) and
when they defined it positively, modifiers (e.g., "pure")
implied opposites (e.g., "tainted, corrupt") that condemn
language usage outside the norm but also maintain
imprecision because of other less value—laden opposites
(e.g., "practical, mixed"). Finally, the large majority of
respondents explicitly excluded themselves from access to
the norm because of their own sense of limits — their
implicit understanding that they reside on the opposite side
of a social boundary from those who speak or write standard

French.

205

 

NOTES

1. While grade-school textbooks and cultural lore often make
Tours the standard-bearer of the linguistic norm (the
mythical “pure” language standard) the economic, artistic,
political and social supremacy of Paris makes it the center
for the “real” or “performance” norm.

2. These concepts are first introduced by Fishman and later
summarized in Fasold, 1984, pp. 3-5

3.'H’ and ‘L’ stand for “high” and “low” language. They are
intended as value-neutral terms useful in describing a
diglossic situation. As the political strength of Paris
grew, the francien dialect gradually evolved to replace
Latin as the H dialect.

4. Lodge (1993 and 1994) represents a notable exception to
this general tendency.

5. A couple examples from English: the re-introduction of
the pronunciation of /t/ in “often” and the hypercorrective
use of the subject pronoun “I” in prepositional phrases. A
French example: the widespread (and prescriptively
incorrect) use of the subjunctive mood after the conjunction
“aprés que”, by analogy with its use after “avant que” —
conjunctions that require the subjunctive are a favorite
staple of French prescriptivist grammarians.

6. Although the purpose of this chapter is not to give a
social history of French — such histories have been written
- we occasionally refer to important historical moments in
linguistic policy or social trends to highlight the
environment in which were written the literary works being

treated.
7. See Montaigne, 662.
8. Rabelais, 232-3.

9. La Petite Fadette, Les Maitres sonneurs, Francois le
champi, and La Mare au diable.

10. Caput (p. 116) shows an indice de notoréité which gives
a seat-by-seat list of celebrity occupants in the Académie
up tc>1977. Of the 55 historical celebrities named 28 are
known as literary figures. The other 27 are divided among
jpolitical figures (9), scientists (6),

206

philosophers/theologists (5) ,

grammarians/philologists (3)
and historians (2).

ll. IJisdain for the Académie within France is not universal.
The Académie has responded to a changing literary landscape
by'iJuducting several authors from North Africa and the
Carribean. The Académie’s (and literature’s) influence in
starumardization of French is mostly symbolic, with little
(affect on actual performance. In practice, implementation
of thnistry of Education policies, both within France and
abroad - heavy—handed methods used to force children away
from using their native language in schools — probably had
tine greatest impact in the establishment of a powerful
linguistic norm. The distinction between Ministry of
education policy and the linguistic edicts of the Académie
is not always clear. For example Grévisse’s Le francais
correct: guide pratique (1973), a manual used and often
referred to by teachers in the French school system,
contains complete accounts of the Académie’s stance on each
specific grammatical item — citing it as one among various
authorities. It reports the latest policy of the Ministry
of Education in an appendix, outside the main body of the
text. Whatever the case, the focus here is not so much what
causes changes in language performance, but rather how those
changes are legitimated through such bodies as the Académie
and the literary community. Caput’s assessment of the

status of the Académie certainly exaggerates public
sentiment for the body.

12. The reader approaches reading a legitimated novel
matter what the modalities of the legitimation) from a
different standpoint than reading a newspaper article or a
non-legitimated form of fiction — comic strips or detective
fiction, for example. The perceptual framework surrounding
written material in general — given the superior status of
writing — is laden with expectations that are not present
in judgments of speech. These expectations are amplified
when the material has been (socially, individually) dubbed
literature. Understanding these expectations requires
placing linguistic perception within the framework of
modalities that shape discourse and allow us to analyse it.
This kind of detailed study lies outside the scope of the
present study. To explain fully the portrayal and
characterization of non—standard language and speakers in
literature will nonetheless require occasional references to
the presumed readership or audience of a given work.

(no

207

 

13. For example, phonetically, standard /8/ becomes /a/; the
nasal vowel corresponding to /8/ also becomes nasalised /a/;
/n/ often becomes /p/ particularly in word initial position
the /l/ in 'quelque' is dropped; /r/ is often dropped.
Grammatically, standard third-person plural ending '-ent'
becomes '-ont' ; first person singular and plural are often
the same, etc.

14. “Une série de questions relatives aux patois et aux
moeurs des gens de la campagne [a series of questions
relative to the dialects and habits of country people]”
(Kibbee, 5).

15. Partially filling the gap for the Académie during the
Revolution and First Empire years was the Académie
Grammaticale, which was founded in 1807 and met 83 times
before its dissolution in 1811.

16. The French-only policy in primary education surfaced no
less than five times in the Assemblée as a subject of debate
or amendment during the two-year period between the decrees.
Debate concerning French as mandatory in public documents
was also fairly common during this period.

17. This maintenance of Napoleanic policies is not
surprising. Louis XVIII’s Charter - his constitutional
document defining the Bourbon Restoration - was a moderate
document designed to assimilate many Napoleonic and
revolutionary changes.

18. The Association Bretonne was founded in 1829,
suppressed, and then re-founded in 1834. The Académie
Bardique was founded in 1855.

19. The name patois itself derives from “pate”, referring to
the muck in which medieval peasants lived, as opposed to the
cleaner French speaking nobles who went about on horses.

20. The Name “Franco-Provencal” effectively illustrates the
“non-language” status of this language - rather than being a
system in its own right, it is labelled as a mixture of two
more prominent languages. Franco-Provencal has been a
language separate from the dialectes d’oil and Occitan since
the time of Charlemagne (742-814). The region in which
Franco-Provencal is spoken is surrounded by more well-known
language regions. It also crosses three national
boundaries, Switzerland, France and Italy. The Oil/Oc
distinction was so generally accepted that dialectologists

208

 

 

did not recognize Franco-Provencal as a coherent linguistic
system - seeing the region rather as a chaotic series of
unrelated romance dialects - until well into the twentieth
century.

21. The only real challenge to Paris as the dominating urban
center during the revolutionary years came in 1793 when
Lyon protested against the extreme nature of the Revolution.
Revolutionary troops took over the city while Parisian
decrees went as far as to remove Lyon’s name and call it
“commune affranchie.” Although Lyon was re-established
under Napoleon, its economic and political might had been
crippled to the point that it would never again mount a
serious challenge to that of Paris.

22. For example Marie in La Mare au diable must withstand
poor treatment by a lecherous employer after she gives in to
the social convention of age difference and does not reveal
her true feelings to Germain in the woods. Brulette and
Thérence in Les Maitres sonneurseach do a kind of atonement
for hiding (and having) their feelings of vanity and
jealousy. Madeleine's husband in Francois le champi lies
when he sends Francois away, claiming that Madeleine is
attracted to Francois when in fact it is his mistress la
Sévére who had made advances. He is punished by his lie
coming true — after his death. Madeleine hides the truth
from Francois — both about the her husband’s given pretext
for sending him away, and consequently the truth behind the
pretext - and is punished by Francois’ shame and departure
when she does finally tell him the truth.

23. For a discussion of the centrality of literature in the
French artistic world, see Nettelbeck.

24. The mention of a “patriarchal” quality in language
preserved in the Touraine evokes interesting parallels
between the structure of Sandian rural society - the fathers
have almost dictatorial authority in La Mare au diable, La
Petite Fadette and especially Les Maitres sonneurswhere ’
Huriel’s father “le grand-bficheux” is regarded as a sort of
monarch - and the ancien régime. Sand is a socialist, but
the society she idealizes as a catalyst for social change
often resembles that of an enlightened monarchy.

25. Some other archaisms employed in all four novels: emmi

(for “parmi”); mémement (for “meme” and “de meme”);
souvenance (for “des souvenirs” and “la mémoire”). Sand

209

 

also regularly uses non-archaic words in an archaic sense —
e.g, brave to mean “clean and properly dressed”; ennui to
designate severe duress, in concrete or spiritual terms.

26. The question of accuracy in Nucingen’s accent cannot be
resolved, unless it is by saying that his language
represents a possible idiolect of a bourgeois from Alsace.
Since such speakers were second-language speakers of French,
it is reasonable to assume a large array of variation among
them.

27. This growth of urban population was gradual. By the end
of the nineteenth century, 57.5% of the French population
was still rural. Nonetheless the population’s urbanization
progressed and accelerated throughout the nineteenth
century, even while the overall population remained fairly
constant (Cobban, 156).

28. Zola also compares peasant behavior to animal instinct
in La Terre (see, e.g., in Oeuvres Completes, Ed. M. le
Blond, Paris, Bernouard, 1929, pp. 186-187).

29. Sand’s childhood home of Nohant is about 40 miles from
Blzac’s native Tours.

30. The militant Basque population in the southwest is a
notable exception. Most of the violence on behalf of the
Basque cause, however, takes place in Spanish territory.

31. The distinction between a dialect and a “variety” of
regional French is admittedly vague. The distinction hinges
on comprehensibility. Speakers of two different dialects
cannot without considerable difficulty understand each
other. Speakers of different varieties of the same language
(or dialect) encounter few difficulties understanding one
another, although they can distinguish phonological,
syntactic and lexiCal differences in the speech of the
other. In this study, “language” and “dialect” are used
interchageably, and “French” is meant to designate not only
the Parisian standard, but all of the regional varieties of
French.

32. Still today notably absent from this list is Creole of
any kind.

33. The original model for this study called for three
socio—economic groups: working class, middle class, and
upper middle class. Some of the upper middle class
respondent groups had fewer than five members, however, so

210

 

it was decided that the two middle class groups would be
combined in this pilot study. Socio-economic status was
determined by the following: 1) profession of respondent's
parents 2) respondent's profession and education; 3)
respondent's preferred daily newspaper; 4) respondents
favorite author. Numbers one and two were the most
important for deciding socio-economic status. Three and
four were used along with respondent birthplace and present
living situation in cases where profession and education did
not offer sufficient grounds for socio-economic
classification.

34. See table 1 for details that correspond to respondent
numbers.

35. These descriptive comments were written as labels on the
perceptual maps. Throughout this study such comments are
reproduced exactly as respondents wrthem.

36. Note that the occupation of Alsace-Lorraine by the
German army was treated quite differently from the rest of
the Occupation. Citizens of Alsace and Lorraine were
treated as German citizens in every right, meaning, among
other things, that the men were drafted into the regular
German army.

37. The literal translation of "putain" is "whore."
"Putain" takes so many grammatical forms and is present in
so many colloquial expressions of vulgarity, however, that
this translation does not do justice to its status as an
universally applicable taboo word.

38. In the 15th century Burgundy was among the French
Kingdom's greatest political rivals.

39. The grammarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries (e.g. Vaugelas) claimed that their prescriptions
were based on empirical observations, namely the usage of
the court. By the eighteenth century, however, grammarians
began linking correctness to the inherent clarity and logic
of the norm, rather than to the usage of one specific social
class. At this time, all prescriptivist claims to the
empirical reality of correctness (however tenuous they may
have previously been) were abandoned. (see Lodge 1993, 178-
186)

40. Lodge (1993, 181)indicates that this negative definition
of the norm has likely been present since the beginnings of

211

codification: "The stigmatization of vulgarisms (or
gasconismes as they were often called) proceeded apace [in
the mid-eighteenth century], no doubt leaving most people
with a clearer idea of what they were supposed to avoid
saying than what the grammarians actually recommended for
them."

41. The respondents that did not perform the task (or put
the same rating for every region) were: 2, 6, 14, 22, 30,
33, 37, 40, 43, 44, 45, 49, 53, 58, 65, 70, 72 and 73. This
group consists of seven men and eleven women. Six
respondents are from age group one, seven from age group
two, and five from age group three. Nine respondents were
in each of the two socio-economic divisions. The only
information on the questionnaires that might indicate
political views is the name of respondents' favorite daily
newspaper. The responses to that part of the questionnaire
reveal no overall political tendency among members of this
group: le.Mbnde (6), le Parisien (5), 1e canard enchainé,
Paris info-matin, Liberation, le Figaro, la Revue
scientifique, le Courrier international, l'Express, Charlie
hebdo, le Point. Some respondents named no daily newspaper,
some more than one.

42. I have included in this section the statements of four
other respondents who while performing the correctness
rating task voiced reluctance. Their ratings reflected this
reluctance, showing a low range of ratings or more than two-
thirds of ratings being the same. These respondents are
numbers 4, 6, 32 and 33. Two respondents (numbers 14 and
58) refused to be interviewed on tape. Nor did they write
comments explaining their correctness ratings. Both of
these respondents rated a five for all regions.

43. See Appendix for transcriptions and translations of
statements by dissenting respondents.

44. Speaker A may judge speaker B as a poor speaker based on
the “guttural” sound of his/her /r/. The term “guttural”
may not be scientifically precise, but it does indicate one
of the focal points of that speakers' linguistic judgments.
According to Labov’s statement such respondent descriptions
as this are of no use in a sociolinguistic study. While I
would agree that a single statement about the quality of the
/r/ does not constitute important linguistic data, the
present perceptual study shows how discovery of respondents’
consistent perceptual focus on particular phonemes or
lexical items can lead researchers to more complete

212

understanding of the sociolinguistic landscape than
performance data alone.

45. Language expertise at the time of the founding of the
Académie was attributed to those who "would have been
considered the inheritors of the best French and the obvious
arbiters of good taste," namely the clergy, nobility and
military. "Since the notion of language purity is a fiction
anyway, there is no requirement on linguistic grounds for
experts." (Edwards 1985, 28)

46. Edwards (1985) notes that since the inception of the
Académie "only two men trained in philology or lexicography
have ever been members.” (p.27) Accordingly, decisions of
the Académie rarely correspond to actual usage. The
forward-looking 1901 elimination of the “pleonastic ne”
[from the Latin ne meaning “lest”] did not prevent speakers
from continuing to use it, any more than the sometimes
reactionary lexical protectionism of today's Académie has
prevented people from uttering "le marketing" or "les
baskets."

47. Labov's notion that natural speech (or the vernacular)
takes place when the speaker is paying the least amount of
attention to their own linguistic performance is problematic
because it introduces a variable that is impossible to
assess — speaker attentiveness.

213

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223

APPENDICES

224

Appendix A

Collection devices

225

Aprés Chaque nom de region, encerclez 1e numéro

_1_ Si vous pensez que le francais parlé dans cette région ressemble a celui que vous
parlez._2_ S'il y a une ressemblance, mais moins forte. _.3_ Si le fiancais parle' dans cette
région ne ressemble guére a celui qLie vous parlez._4_ Si 1e francais parle dans cette

région vous est incomprehensible.

1. Nord
Picardie
Normandie
Ile de France
Champagne
Bretagne
Touraine

Centre

1°.°°>’S7‘S"PP!"

Franche - Comté
l O. Bourgogne

l 1. Lorraine

12. Alsace

13. Poitou-Charentes
14. Auvergne

15. Limousin

l6. Massif Central
17. Lyonnais

18. Rhone - Alpes

1 9. Jura

20. Gascogne

21. Langucdoc

22. Provence

23. Belgique

24. Suisse romande

[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[11 [2] [31 [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[11 [2] [3] [4]
[11 [2] [31 [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [41
[11 [2] [3] [4]
[1] [21 [3] [4]
[1] [21 [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [21 [31 [4]
[1] [2] [3] [41
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[11 [2] [31 [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1] [2] [3] [4]

226

Apres chacune des régions nommées ci-dessous, encerclez 1e numéro (de un [1] a sept
[7]) qui correspond a votre avis, selon l'échelle suivante:
l = "On parle un francais dans cette région qui n'est pas du tout correct"

7 = "On parle un fi'ancais dans cette région qui est tout i fait correct."

Nord
Picardie
Normandie
Ile de France
Champagne
Bretagne
Touraine

Centre

PWSP‘PPP’N!‘

Franche - Comté
10. Bourgogne

11. Lorraine

12. Alsace

13. Poitou-Charentes
14. Auvergne

1 5. Limousin

16. Massif Central
17. Lyonnais

18. Rhone - Alpes
19. Jura

20. Gascogne

21. Languedoc

22. Provence

23. Belgique

24. Suisse romande

[1] [2] [3] [4] [51 [61 [7]
[1] [21 [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [31 [4] [51 [6] [71
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [21 [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [31 [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

¥ [1] [2] [31 [4] [5] [6] [7]

[1] [2] [3] [4] [51 [61 [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [21 [3] [41 [5] [61 [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [41 [51 [6] [7]
[1] [2] [31 [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [21 [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [51 [6] [7]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [51 [6] [7]
227

Appendix B

Figures

228

Figure 1: Multidimensional Scaling of Correctness Ratings with
5 K-Means Clusters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

. O
f—
M -

229

Figure 2: Multidimensional Scaling of Correctness Ratings with
4 k-means clusters

 

 

”l

 

“T

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a:
...a-

230

Figure 3: Multidimensional scaling of Degree of Difference
ratings with 6 K-means clusters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

231

...-1

Figure 4: Multidimensional scaling of pleasantness ratings with
' 5 k-means clusters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
 

nemm

 

 

Mi

232

 

l

Figure 5: Multidimensional Scaling of Pleasantness Ratings
with 4 k-means clusters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Potu- Charentes- '
Bretagne ' ”em Alsace
-5. ' .
. Nomandie
Toura'ne .
Centre
.10. .
lle de France
-15
t t ”1 ”o'

 

233

Appendix C

Tables

234

Table l, the distribution of respondents by age and socio-

economic status:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Age 18-25 Age 30-45 Age 50+
Sexm> “M—_"' ——M——_———_— M F
Working 5 . 5 4 4 4 5
Class ‘
Middle 10 20 4 5 4 5 1
Class
__TOTAL__ WW __8 __ _9______ __1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2. Individual Respondents
Key:
Age Group: (1) = 18-25; (2) = 30-45; (3) = 50+

SES (Socio-economic status): (1) = working Class (2) =
middle class

 
   

Residence (postal Place of Birth

 

 

 

 

 

 

code)
1 1 m l Banlieue (94) St. Maur
2 1 m 1 14th arrondissement 14th
arrondissement
3 1 m 1 La Garenne-Colombes La Garenne-
(Nanterre) Colombes
(Nanterre)
4 1 ha Cellé St. Cloud Suresnes
5 1 m 2 Montesson (78) Suresnes
6 1 m 2 Les Clayes sous Versailles

bois (Versailles)

 

 

 

 

 

 

235

 

 

 

  

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 
 

 

 

 
 

 

 

  

 

 
 

 

"7 2 Colombes (92) Colombes (92)
8 3 Versailles St. Etienne
' (in Paris since'
age 10)
9 3 8th arrondissement 14th
arrondissement
10 3 Sevres Clamard (92)
J11 3 Neuilly-sur-Seine Neuillyesur-
| Seine
12 3 Colombes Saint-Germain-
en laye (78)
13 3 17th arrondissement Boulogne-
Billancourt
ll (78,
14 Meuddn-la-foret Issy-les-
' Moulineaux
“15 1 Fontenay (94) Montreuil
16 1 Epinay sur Seine Epinay sur
‘ Seine
17 1 Clichy (92) Suresnes
18 1 Pavillons s/s Bois 4th
(93) arrondissement
19 l Cergy-le-haut (95) 4th
arrondissement
20 2 La Courneuve 8th
arrondissement
21 2 Neuilly-sur-Seine Paris
22 2 17th arrondissement 14th
arrondissement
23 2 17th arrondissement 17th
arrondissement
24 2 Jouy-le-Moutier Saint-Germain-

 

 

 

 

(95)

 

  

en-laye (78)

 

236

 

25

Garches

  

Briancon (
Paris since age
5)

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26 Saint-Germain-en 16th
laye (78) arrondissement

27 Poissy (78) Noisy-le-sec
(93)

28 Fontenay-sous-bois 11th

(94) arrondissement

29 4th Paris

arrondissement

30 Le Pecq (78) 14th
arrondissement

31 Neuilly sur Seine Neuilly sur

(92) Seine (92)

32 Levallois-Perret 16th
arrondissement

33 17th arrondissement 16th
arrondissement

34 18th arrondissement Saint Ouen (93).

35 Neuilly sur Seine 8th

(92) arrondissement

36 Puteaux Boulogne-
Billancourt
(78)

37 Garches Saint-Cloud

38 17th arrondissement Cardiff, UK (in
Paris since six
months old)

39 Elancourt (92) Avignon (in
Paris since 2
years old)

40 "Paris - banlieue "Paris -

sud" banlieue sud"
41 Chilly Mazarin (91) Dugny (93)

 

 

 

237

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

42 2 m 1 20th arrondissement Paris
43 2 m 1 Argenteuil (95) Suresne (92)
44 2 m l Meaux (97) "93"
45 2 m 2 Montmorency (Val 14th
d'Oise) arrondissement
46 2 m 2 Avon (77) Fontainebleau
(77)
47 2 2 13th arrondissement Neuilly (92)
48 2 m 2 12th arrondissememt Orsay (91)
49 2 f 1 17th arrondissement Voutré (53) (inj
Paris since agei
5) *
50 2 f 1 17th arrondissement Normandie" (in
Paris since age'
7) '
51 2 f 1 Paris (Vincennes) Paris
52 2 f 1 Saint-Germer-de- Garches
Fly
53 2 f 2 Meudon (92) (since Dakar (both
age 5) parents born in)
France) ‘
54 2 f 2 17th arrondissement Mont Bonvillersi
(in Paris sinceg
age 10)
55 2 f 2 12th arrondissement Suresnes (92)
56 2 f 2 13th arrondissement Perigeux (in ;
Paris since age;
10)
57 2 f 2 lst arrondissement 13th
arrondissement
58 3 m 1 17th Paris
arrondissement
59 3 m 1 Ivry 13th
I arrondissement

 

238

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

239

 

6O 3 4th arrondissement 4th
arrondissement
61 3 5th arrondissement 14th
arrondissement
62 3 Paris (Boulogne) Paris
63 3 20th arrondissement 12th
" arrondissement
64 3 Neuilly Paris
65 3 lst arrondissement 14th
arrondissement
66 3 Bagnolet 20th
L arrondissement
I
67 3 Paris Marseille (in
Paris since age
10)
68 3 Marseille Paris
69 3 15th arrondissement 12th
arrondissement
7O 3 Charenton (94) 15th
arrondissement
71 3 5th arrondissement Paris
72 3 12th arrondissement 15th
arrondissement
73 3 12th arrondissement 9th
arrondissement
74 3 5th arrondissement 17th
arrondissement
75 3 16th arrondissement 15th
arrondissement

 

Table 3 This table shows the mean score, by region, of the three rating tasks. Column 1

 

is the correctness task. Column 2 is the degree of difference task. Column 3 is the
pleasantness task. Numbers in parentheses represent rank order of the region for the

particular task. After each column, is a sub-column (std) noting the standard deviation by

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

w
1 std 2 std 3 1.
(correctness) (difference) (pleasant) 1
Ile de France 6.00 ( 1) 1.25 1.04 (1) .26 5.75 (2) 1.49
Touraine 5.78 (2) 1.27 1.34 (2) .6 5.73 (3) 1.35
Lyonnais 5.53 (3) 1.36 1.62 (6) .77 5.15 (8/9) 1.41
Champagne 5.46 (4) 1.30 1.36 (3) .56 5.49 (5) 1.30 ’
I Normandie 5.27 (5) 1.38 1.57 (4) .66 4.97 (13) 1.52 1
Centre 5.25 (6) 1.46 1.64 (7) .72 5.19 (7) 1.49 I
Poitou-Charentes 5.08 (7) 1.19 1.59 (5) .64 5.12 (10) 1.26 .
Rhone-Alpes 4.93 (8) 1.31 1.89 (10) .78 5.15 (8/9) 1.36
Franche—Comté 4.92 (9-11) 1.25 1.91 (11) .68 4.88 (14) 1.39 ;
Bourgogne 4.92 (9-11) 1.21 1.79 (8) .66 5.08 (12) 1.25 I
Picardie 4.92 (9-11) 1.48 1.80 (9) .73 4.41 (19) 1.59 g
Limousin 4.73 (12) 1.36 1.99 (12) .70 4.81 (15) 1.33
Jura 4.63 (13) 1.36 2.07 (13) .72 4.75 (16) 1.34 i
Gascogne 4.53 (14) 1.22 2.29 (18) .71 5.37 (6) 1.44 1
Massif Central 4.49 (15) 1.43 2.13 (16) .66 4.44 (18) 1.51 |
Langue d'Oc 4.49 (16) 1.41 2.33 (19) .79 5.56 (4) 1.49
Bretagne 4.36 (17) 1.59 2.09 (14) .87 5.11 (11) 1.47 1
Auvergne 4.25 (18) 1.42 2.24 (17) .76 4.49 (17) 1.57
Nord 4.20 (19) 1.62 2.11 (15) .81 3.68 (23) 1.88
Provence 4.17 (20) 1.60 2.57 (21) .81 6.05 (1) 1.39 .
Lorraine 4.14 (21) 1.36 2.53 (20) .81 3.85 (22) 1.75
Alsace 3.73 (22) 1.42 2.78 (22) .74 3.56 (24) 1.79
Suisse romande 3.49 (23) 1.77 2.89 (24) .83 3.99 (20) 1.89
Belgigue 3.44 (24) 1.72 2.87 23_ __ _ .81___9__21__ _ 1.2 J

 

240

Appendix D

Maps

241

 

     

owner,
‘ 0TB UAW
- I IS-DU- VA!

in '1"

 

Map 1: The administrative boundaries of France

242

Map 2: Dialect divisions of France

Flamand /
a Cha

. nois

Bretagne I Loire

     

Touraine/Centre

Poitou-C arentes N :
Langue d'Oc ’
Ga Proven . .

243

Map 3: Composite map of
respondents' drawn perceptual maps

 

 

 

 

 

244

 

HICH

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