‘Ceux qui m’ont gâté ma langue’: penser la langue au féminin au dix-huitième siècle

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the role of nature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century conceptions of language as a gauge of linguistic and gender ideologies. Natural, oral, sensitive language was coded as supposedly female or feminine, and cultural, written, public language was considered as male or masculine. As salonnières, letter-writers, novelists, and translators, Françoise de Graffigny, Émilie Du Châtelet, Louise d’Épinay, and Isabelle de Charrière succeeded in calling into question this boundary between feminine language and letters, and masculine literature and philosophy. They had earned their status as authors and intellectuals and, therefore, the right to think about their own language and style, questioning their writing practices and reflecting on conceptions of language. Women’s language thus shifts from being regarded as natural, to being invested with supposedly feminine powers of seduction, until being recognized as a vehicle for universal knowledge.