Abstract
This article contributes to a growing body of theory that posits language-external, social factors as a primary motor in diachronic change. Politeness theory and the use of variationist approaches enable us to posit, and test, the hypothesis of a type of pragmaticalization, which I call Politeness-Induced Semantic Change (PISC). Historical data on quand meme are presented that give tentative credence to such a model. Moeschler and de Spengler's (1981) and Waltereit's (2001) speech-act theoretic analyses of quand meme are reinterpreted within the framework of politeness theory and sociopragmatics. The ensuing corpus investigation of the grammaticalization and pragmatico-semantic evolution of quand meme from 1500-2000 highlights the fact that not only the innovation but also the propagation of a new form-function configuration depend on social factors; politeness theory may have explanatory power in capturing the ever-changing social patterning of linguistic features and the conditions that favor the spread of innovation. © 2005 Cambridge University Press.
Highlights
The approach to language change taken in this article is broadly sympathetic to that outlined by Croft (2000) in two fundamental ways
It adopts his distinction between innovation—the mechanisms that involve both structure and function—and propagation—“the mechanisms for which are essentially social namely the various factors discussed by sociolinguists.” 1 This study of quand même illustrates these two phases, first by exploring the shift in the form– function relationship, and second in taking a quantitative sociolinguistic approach to the variable distributional frequency of its usages in a representative sample of the community of French speakers in hexagonal France
Considerations to do with politeness promote new form–function configurations; the spread of these is dependent on social evaluation
Summary
The study includes a survey of the evolution of quand même historically from the 16th to the 20th century, using the corpus of literary texts contained in FRANTEXT, along with a comparison of the functions of quand même in two spoken corpora: the 1968 Orléans Corpus and the 1988 Bristol Corpus.. As the conjunctival usage does not appear in the more recent spoken corpora, only the adverbial usages (adversative and relational) of quand même were charted with subdivisions according to both the educational background and the sex of the speakers. In my exploration of the degree of pragmaticalization of quand même and (in the case of the two corpora of spoken French) its sociolinguistic stratification, my first job, having selected representative samples from the corpora, was to categorize individual occurrences of the particle as “adversative” or “relational.” As polysemy and multifunctionality are the unmarked case, criteria had to be established to assist me in conducting this process in as objective and rigorous a manner as possible. Polysemy and indeterminacy of meaning constitute the raw material essential to semantic0pragmatic change
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