Une histoire épistolaire de la Louisiane ed. by Sylvie Dubois

Abstract

Linguistics edited by Stacey Katz Bourns DUBOIS, SYLVIE, éd. Une histoire épistolaire de la Louisiane. Québec: PU de Laval, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7637-9004-6. Pp. 110. $19,95 Can. Due to its brevity, its main focus, and the fact that primary documents other than letters sometimes figure prominently in the analysis, this collection would be more accurately described as a manuscript-based prolegomena to Louisiana’s French dialectal history rather than as what its title implies. Regardless, there can be no detracting from the inherent value of the insightful and readable commentary provided by such a group of highly-regarded researchers. Having gathered for a symposium bearing the same name at Louisiana State University in 2009, they applied their expertise to the task of locating written indices about earlier features of French in Louisiana (the former French territory, not just the presentday state) based on what can be gleaned from primary sources, especially (but not exclusively) a selection of one hundred letters and other documents (1729–1877) archived at LSU’s Hill Memorial Library. Thanks to this project and its sponsors, these documents are now available to the general public in both digitized and transcribed form at . Dubois’s preface and introduction, followed by Carole Salmon’s synopsis of the genesis of the corpus and explanation for the selection criteria, set the stage for the contributions of seven veteran researchers of North American French. With perspicacity and ingenuity, these researchers hone in on various observable elements in the set of documents provided (in some cases using a sub-set, in other cases a supplemented set) and extrapolate the implications in relation either to specific variable linguistic features or to more general phenomena. Concerning variation among features, France Martineau addresses the expression of causality (à cause de/parce que/car); Philip Comeau and Ruth King address the suppression of the negative particle ne and variation in the expression of the pronominal first person plural (je [an Acadianism]/nous/on); Terry Nadasdi addresses the expression of the future tense (simple future/periphrastic future); and Hélène Blondeau looks at terms of address during the Revolutionary period (Monsieur/ Citoyen) as well as pronominal variation (especially, on/l’on). Concerning more general phenomena, Chantal Lyche considers implications for the autonomy of the word (as opposed to the prosodic word) based on non-standard spellings corresponding to bonding (ladépense, ilseroit), segmentation (pour lui de mander), and agglutination (je vous zassure, mon nécriture); and Annette Boudreau looks for evidence of linguistic ideologies (for example, the value of maintaining French) based on metalinguistic commentary contained in the letters. Much caution is expressed to qualify the raw percentages, when used, as being strictly suggestive. This hesitancy is due not only to the small sample size and to the fact that the written code is subject to prescriptive tendencies masking the vernacular, but also to the difficulty of ensuring sufficiently broad representation of existent social strata. Indeed, a sizable percentage of the founding colonial population and the subsequent plantation-based population—the two populations existed in profoundly different social circumstances—were not literate and left precious little written documentation of their speech features. Somewhat paradoxically then, a single pastiche directly reveals more about vernacular oral features, for at Reviews 803 least one segment of the population, than any of the ordinary letters. The pastiche, dated 1828 and attributed to Jean Bapt[iste] Pistach (an obvious pseudonym using metathesized vowel qualities as a humorous device; note that pistache means ‘peanut’ in Louisiana French), confirms the presence of a variety of oral speech features that are underrepresented or absent altogether in the letters: plural je, à cause que, icitte, -ont inflection for third person plural, stila (= celui-là), and so on. Though introductory in nature, this volume constitutes highly compelling reading for anyone interested in the dialectal history of Louisiana and its relation to earlier profiles of French in North America. LSU collaborators for this project and publication were Albert Camp, Aaron Emmitte, Jane Richardson, and Kathryn Watson. University of Alabama Michael D. Picone GARNIER, SYLVIE, et ALAN D. SAVAGE. Rédiger un texte académique en français. Paris: Ophrys, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7080-1300...