Histoire culturelle des pronoms d’adresse: vers une typologie des systèmes allocutoires dans les langues romanes by Béatrice Coffen (review)

Abstract

1066 Reviews favour by bringing his critical eye to bear on a range of (mis)interpreters of the Cours who had hitherto largely been considered in isolation. University of Surrey Carol Sanders Histoire culturelle despronoms d'adresse: vers une typologiedes systemesallocutoires dans les langues romanes. By Beatrice Coffen. (Bibliotheque de grammaire et de linguistique, 12) Paris: Champion. 2002. 319 pp. ?55. ISBN 2-7453-0567-0. The conventions of interpersonal communication have attracted much attention in pragmatics over the last few decades. Which pronouns are used for addressing an in? terlocutor, with connotations of politeness, solidarity, intimacy, respect, or contempt, is of particular interest in European languages, where changes in usage can be re? lated to changes in social attitudes over time. Beatrice Coffen compares developments in virtually all the Romance languages, including creoles, using data mainly culled from published studies, but also including her own observations on literary works. After a brief introduction, we have a fourteen-page survey of relevant pragmatic the? ory; exaggerated claims for universality are shown to be invalid by recent studies of non-European languages uses. What then follows is as much a sociolinguistic his? tory of the Romance languages as the empirical and typological study suggested by the title. Three chronological periods are distinguished, each linked with changes in pronoun usage. Within each period, languages are examined separately. At first,in the later Roman empire plural vos begins to appear alongside tu to address a single individual, with distinct socio-political connotations: throughout the Middle Ages this T/V usage continued, but with considerable fluctuation, dependent not only on the social status of interlocutors but also on their personal emotional relationship and the immediate situational context. The second period is that of the emergence of the nation-state, when rigid conventions governing social marking of forms of address are formulated: asymmetric interchanges between interlocutors of different status become usual. French, which at this period begins obligatorily to use pronouns with all finiteverbs, retains and strengthens the dyadic (T/V) pronoun system. Mainstream (null-subject) Romance languages extend the address system to include the third-person verb-marking for respectful interchange, with a range of noun subjects which specify the status of the addressee. Sometimes the singular V-form is lost and sometimes it replaces the T-form: hence a new dyadic (2/3) system is established, often with reduction of former honorific titles to pronoun status. Nevertheless, some more marginal languages (like Portuguese and Romanian, and isolated mountainous varieties) retain a triadic system (T/V/3), apparently with more leeway forindividual choice than in the more hidebound central languages. In the third, modern, period, reciprocity of forms of address becomes 'politically correct', and the intimate form becomes more widespread, though French is again more conservative. A synoptic table of forms concludes the study. Coffen argues that stereotyping of pronoun usage is found in societies where social division is less stable, whereas with freerindividual choice of forms of address identity and solidarity can more readily be affirmed.Over? all this stimulating study usefully assembles material from a variety of sources, but it leaves some technical linguistic questions unanswered. St Hugh's College, Oxford Rebecca Posner ...