Exploring the French Language

R Lodge, Jane Shelton, Yvette Ellis, Nigel Armstrong

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317836322
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Languages & Linguistics
• Sous-sujet: Languages

The French language is more than just a tool for communication; it has a crucial role to play in how native speakers of French think about the world and about themselves and their culture. This book helps students develop a systematic 'linguistic' approach to French. It covers the core topics, ranging from the structure and sounds of the language to discourse and everyday conversation. No previous knowledge of linguistics is assumed and a glossary of technical terms and many exercises and activities help reinforce key points. Students will find that their understanding and enjoyment of the French language is greatly enhanced by this book.

1

Lay-persons versus linguists

Most people interested in foreign languages are concerned primarily to use them for business purposes, for foreign travel, for reading a foreign literature, and so on. At school, pupils learn French with the same practical aim, that of communicating with speakers from the French-speaking world. There comes a time, however, when advanced learners of the language perceive that a simple practical knowledge of the language is insufficient. It is not enough for them to know how to use the language, they need to know about it too. Why should this be? An immediate answer might be that such knowledge about the French language may well enhance their learning of it from a practical standpoint, but the issues run deeper.

The French language is more than just a tool for communication, it has a crucial role to play in the way native-speakers of French think about the world and about themselves. Language is central to thought (have you ever considered, for instance, how much thinking you can carry out without the help of words?) and it is central to cultural identity (is language not one of the most basic features distinguishing French civilisation from that of the Germans or Italians?). As a result, if you want to penetrate seriously the way French speakers think, if you want to understand in a non-superficial way the nature of French culture (using this term not just in its aesthetic sense, but also in its broad anthropological sense of ‘customs and civilisation of a particular group’), it is important to develop an understanding of what the French language is and how it works. This book is designed to help you with the first steps along this road.

The discipline concerned with the scientific study of language in general is linguistics. This book is not conceived as an introduction to linguistics, for many such books are currently available (see Yule 1985, Hudson 1984). However, what we would like to offer is an introduction to looking at the French language from a linguistic point of view. The fundamental aim of linguistics has been defined as ‘to present in a precise, rigorous and explicit form facts about language which those who speak it as a native-speaker know intuitively’. If you think about this statement, you will see that the linguist’s approach to language is very different from that of the lay-person. Thus, in this introductory chapter we will begin by highlighting aspects of the lay-person’s attitude to language, and then contrast them with the linguist’s approach, in the hope that the reader will thereafter want to follow us down the linguist’s route.

1.1 The lay-person’s approach to language

The lay-person does not normally spend much time and effort thinking about language. The very deep-seated nature of a speaker’s knowledge of their language means that it is very difficult for them to become consciously aware of it and to speak about it. They normally take language completely for granted, often regarding discussions about language as so much time-wasting pedantry. ‘Language is for talking about something, it is not something to be talked about.’ They tend to be impatient with people examining the way a particular bit of language functions (e.g. the meaning of a particular word or the structure of a particular phrase), and they can afford to be so since language is primarily about getting things done in the practical sphere of our everyday existence. For them it is a tool rather than a structure to be explored. However, the specialist in languages does not have the luxury of dismissing the core of his specialism in such a cavalier fashion.

The fact that the lay-person takes language for granted means that when they are called upon to talk about a feature of language (e.g. what is Geordie/Cockney speech like?), they are usually at a loss to say anything sensible, (a) because they have no terminology or ‘metalanguage’ to talk precisely about language and (b) because they have no solid theoretical framework within which to develop ideas. However, this inability to pronounce articulately on language matters does not mean that the lay-person has no ideas about language and that they make no implicit assumptions about the subject – language is too central to all of our lives for any of us to get away with that. What it does mean is that the assumptions the lay-person makes are often light-years away from the position taken by linguists after serious reflection.

It is possible to characterise the difference by saying that the lay-person’s approach to language is subjective and unsystematic and the linguist’s approach is (in theory at least) objective and methodical. Let us look first at subjective attitudes to language current in our society, before tackling the way linguistics approaches the analysis of language.

1.1.1 Subjective attitudes to language

A lay-person’s attitudes to language are on the whole not objective or detached, but are conditioned by a set of cultural factors which make them subjective, evaluative, prescriptive, i.e. they predispose the lay-person towards making value judgements or statements about what they think is good or bad about a piece of language rather than describing in a detached way what is actually there. The most deeply engrained subjective attitudes to language current in our society usually reflect our attitudes to the people who speak particular languages or dialects and our notions of what is and is not correct, bestowing particular status upon writing as distinct from speech. Let us look at some of the crazy things people say about different languages and varieties of language. You will find further examples in French in Yaguello (1988).

NATIONAL, RACIAL AND SOCIAL STEREOTYPING

Consider the following clichés about particular languages:

• ‘Italian is a very musical language’

• ‘German is a harsh and guttural language’

• ‘Spanish is a very romantic language’

Such statements are frequently trotted out in everyday talk about language, but if you examine them you will see that they tell us nothing at all about the structure of Italian, German and Spanish. What they do reveal, however, is the way we tend to stereotype the speakers of those languages: in the British popular imagination, Italians are still widely associated with opera, Germans with jackboots and Spaniards with guitars and flamenco dancing. Have you ever heard tell of a German complaining to one of his compatriots about how ‘harsh’ is their mother-tongue upon the ear?

Now consider the following statement taken from Yaguello (1988: 131):

Ah, vous faites du Wolof [Senegalese language]. Ça doit être une langue assez simple, non?

Lay-persons commonly assume that languages spoken by people in undeveloped countries are in some sense simpler, more primitive languages than our own. British explorers travelling, say, in Uganda in the late nineteenth century, may be described as speaking a ‘language’ (i.e. English), whereas their native-bearers speak only ‘dialect’ (i.e. Luganda). When linguists analyse these ‘primitive’ languages they invariably discover that there is nothing simple or primitive about their internal structure at all, and that in this respect all languages are in fact equally complex. Those people who speak about simple, primitive languages in Africa or in South America are usually basing their approach on racial stereotypes and a naive belief in the superiority of Western culture.

In a similar way, when lay-persons discuss different varieties of their own language (e.g. Brummie English, Geordie English, Cockney), they often speak of them not in a detached way, but in an evaluative, hierarchical way, invariably regarding some varieties as ‘better’ than others. Low value is attributed to the speech of groups in our society with low power and status, and vice versa. Thus, the girl from middle-class suburbia will be said to speak ‘nicely’, while her working-class cousin on the council estate will have ‘slovenly’, ‘lazy’ speech. Rural varieties are regarded more favourably than lower-class urban ones – in Britain at least, though in France attitudes to rural varieties are often less favourable. What constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in English? There is nothing objectively better about the Queen’s English than about Geordie English (nor, come to that, between American Standard English and Black English Vernacular). It is just that in our society we have been brought up to believe that the Queen’s English is ‘better’ in view of her superior social position. This tells us more about social stratification in our society than the linguistic properties of particular dialects (see Milroy and Milroy 1991).

Subjective attitudes to language like these have no sound intellectual basis, but they can have disturbing social consequences if they are not recognised and controlled. A report was made about a lecturer who gave an identical lecture on two consecutive evenings. On the first evening he spoke standard English and was roundly congratulated for the excellence of his ideas. On the second evening he pronounced exactly the same words, but in a Brummie accent. Certain members of the audience left after a few minutes. Others complained bitterly at the end of the lecture about the foolishness of the lecturer’s ideas. For further information on subjective attitudes to varieties of English see Giles (1970), and to varieties of French see Gueunier et al. (1978) and Hawkins (1993).

One often hears lay-persons declaring very confidently that ‘English is a very beautiful language’ and that French is particularly ‘clear’ and ‘logical’. Witness the following statement made by President Mitterrand, while opening an exhibition devoted to the French language:

A propos de la langue française, il est difficile d’ajouter, après tant d’autres des éloges tant de fois répétés sur sa rigueur, sa clarté, son élégance, ses nuances, la richesse de ses temps et de ses modes, la délicatesse de ses sonorités, la logique de son agencement.

(quoted by Yaguello 1988: 122–23)

Statements like this raise issues beyond those of social or national stereo-typing, and reveal the lay-person’s inability to make an important distinction: between language as a system and language in use. By language as a system we mean the abstract set of phonological, lexical and grammatical rules which a speaker subconsciously puts into practical application (use) when he/she speaks. It is impossible to demonstrate the superiority of one language system (e.g. French, English) over another: no language system can be inherently more beautiful, more clear, more logical than another. What does differ, however, is the ability of individual speakers to make use of the system: some people are very proficient users of the language, others less so. Some people can write very beautiful poetry, most of us cannot. For more ideas on this topic see Milroy and Milroy (1991: 15). It brings us to the second set of subjective attitudes to language current among lay-persons, namely the belief in the superiority of written over spoken use of language.

SPEECH, WRITING AND PRESCRIPTIVISM

Deeply engrained in European consciousness is the belief that writing is a superior form of language to speaking. With the spread of literacy in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ability to read and write became a touchstone of the educated, even of the intelligent person. So, a person who cannot write properly is nowadays regarded as educationally and even, in some way, cognitively deficient. In this connection, a high premium is set on the ability to spell correctly, particularly in France where spelling competitions have become something of a national spectator sport. Attribution of a high value to writing has meant a corresponding reduction in the value attributed to speaking – speaking is regarded by many people as an inferior form of language to writing. We ought allegedly to speak as we write, but since most of us are not able to do this, our speech is regarded as a corrupt, degenerate version of writing. Statements like the following are commonly heard, even on the lips of teachers of Modern Languages: ‘Speaking is less grammatical than writing.’ A formulation like this is much more problematic than it seems, not only because of the implication it unthinkingly carries of the superiority of writing over speech, but also because of the woolliness and lack of precision in its use of the word ‘grammatical’. The terms ‘grammatical’ and ‘grammar’ are frequently bandied about by lay-persons pontificating on the decline in educational standards, but their own use of these terms is often highly confused. Let us consider some of the meanings attributed to the word ‘grammar’ in contemporary English (for further discussion see Palmer 1971: 11–13):

1 ‘She finds learning Russian difficult because she does not have much grammar.’ – here the word means terms for talking about language, ‘linguistic terminology’ or ‘metalanguage’.

2 ‘She’ll never get on in the Civil Service because her grammar is so bad.’ – here the word means the ‘norms of correct English usage’.

3 ‘English doesn’t have much grammar, but German and Latin have a lot.’ – here the word implies complex verb and noun systems (conjugations and declensions).

4 ‘Grammar is a systematic description of a language as found in a sample of speech or writing’ – a linguist’s definition of the term (see Crystal 1991 (3rd edn): 141).

Clearly, the word ‘grammar’ in modern English (and in French too) is open to a range of interpretations, so it is important to make it clear which meaning we intend, whenever we use it. Speaking may be ‘less grammatical than writing’ if we take definition (2), since the normative rules of correct English usage tend to be based on writing rather than speech, but it would constitute an absurd claim, if we were to take definition (4), for all language (written and spoken) is of necessity systematic and rule-governed: if it were not, no two people could understand one another (all speakers of the same language have to follow more or less the same system).

In this way, dealing with the meanings of the word ‘grammar’ also forces us to confront different uses of the word ‘rule’: a ‘prescriptive’ (or ‘normative’) rule lays down the law about how you think something ought to be organised; a ‘descriptive’ rule is a statement about how something actually is organised. Speech is no less rule-governed than writing (in the ‘d...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Lay-persons versus linguists
• 2 Varieties of French
• 3 Word formation and etymology
• 4 Word meaning
• 5 Describing French speech sounds
• 6 Pronunciation beyond the individual sound
• 7 French morphology
• 8 French syntax
• 9 Doing,things with French
• 10 Analysing discourse and everyday conversation
• Glossary of linguistic terms
• Bibliography
• Index