La Néologie en français contemporain: examen du concept et analyse de productions néologiques récentes by Jean-François Sablayrolles (review)

Abstract

1006 Reviews 'national' or Parisian counterpart, and to give a clear idea of its distinctive place in the French media landscape. Martin manages to give this overview in a very readable manner and without being superficial. He acknowledges and draws on the excellent work that has been done on individual titles, periods, and geographical areas. A particularly welcome aspect is the significant space devoted to considering newspapers as eco? nomic and social entities, highlighting not just the Citizen Hersants and the starjour? nalists but also the networks of correspondents in the smallest ofvillages, the typographers , the delivery drivers, the sellers, and the readers. Especially fascinating fromthe perspective of social history is the analysis of the evolution, content, and role of the 'avis de deces' rubric: starting as simple quasi-administrative announcements, often appearing after the funeral, these came to be used as a substitute for the individual 'faire-part', then as a signifierof social status. They were also a major source of income fornewspapers. Martin is sensitive throughout to the impact of new technologies, up to and including the Internet, and notes that the regional press has often pioneered their use in France. The volume is impressively useable: there is an accurate general index and a separate index of newspaper titles, running to over seven pages; a useful chronology; a detailed table of contents; and an annotated summary bibliography to complement the abundant and detailed notes. These tools will help a range of readers make the most of a volume that achieves its purpose and invites furtherstudy. University of Leeds Paul Rowe La Neologie en francais contemporain: examen du concept et analyse de productions neologiquesrecentes. By Jean-Francois Sablayrolles. Paris: Champion. 2000. 588 pp. ?86.90. ISBN 2-7453-0275-2. This is a scholarly and thought-provoking contribution to a field which has in the past suffered from either too narrow an academic approach, or from being subject to merely anecdotal treatment in amusing collections of neologisms. Jean-Francois Sablayrolles is ambitious, and largely successful, in his attempt to link broad theoret? ical discussion to a significant body of data. After a concise history of the notion of 'neologism' in Greek, Latin, and French, he reviews the differentapproaches to the subject by French linguists and then summarizes how twentieth-century theoretical models, from the structuralists to generativists and the most recent work of Melcu'k, have dealt with the processes of lexical creativity. He notes that, generally speaking, they have been assigned a very secondary and marginal role. In the second part of the book Sablayrolles proposes his own definitions of neologisme and neologie, and examines the types of unit and process that these involve. Perennial issues such as the role of dictionaries, upon which linguists have to rely, albeit often grudgingly, for their data, and the problem of differentiating between polysemy and homonymy, are given a fresh airing. More original are the brief dis? cussion of links between politico-cultural ideology and attitudes to neologisms, and speculation on the possibility of calculating the lifespan of a neologism. In the third part of the book the author analyses and compares the data that he has gathered from his six corpora, and ends with a discussion of the differentfunctions of neologisms. These range from their attention-catching use in newspaper headlines to their role in political polemics and their largely ludic function in the work of the writers R. Jorif and Ph. Meyer. Somewhat problematic is his inclusion of a corpus scolaire, drawn from the written work of secondary-school students. Many of these examples are non-standard verb forms such as ils croivent and il a acqueri. One can argue that these are not lexical, and possibly not new. Unlike the rest of his data, these forms are probably, as he concedes, neither 'voulus' nor 'conscients' (p. 317). Surely they MLRy 98.4, 2003 1007 are either part of a system which just happens to be differentfrom the norm or an attempt to conjugate a lexical item which is simply alien to the system? Theoretically at least, Sablayrolles appears to give the status of neologism to all new forms, what? ever their source or motivation. (Perhaps intentional, conscious creation...