La Langue Research Articles

À la croisée des arts: Sublime et musique religieuse en Europe (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles). Ed. by Sophie Hache and Thierry Favier

When Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux released Du Sublime (1674)—the first rendering of Longinus’ treatise in French, accompanied by several remarks on the translation—the satirist opened the door to a heated debate in the European Republic of Letters, in which Edmund Burke, John Dennis, and Immanuel Kant, among others, made their voices heard. Since then, scholars have appropriated the concept and have variously attempted to apply it to their discipline. However, this very concept has long remained neglected by French musicology, in spite of the pioneering studies on the musical sublime in the eighteenth century by Alexander Shapiro (Music & Letters, 1936), and then Luca Zopelli (1990), Michael Fend (1993), Ruth Smith (1995), Michela Garda (1995), and James Webster (1997). Thierry Favier can be credited as the author of the first article in French on the impact the sublime had on the sacred musical style at Versailles (‘Lalande et le sublime: Doctrines rhétoriques et tradition oratoire dans ses premiers grands motets’, in Lionel Sawkins (ed.), Lalande et ses contemporains (Paris, 2008), 119–14), and on Michel-Richard de Lalande’s motets in particular. Together with Sophie Hache, who has written on the use of sublime eloquence in the Gallican church (La Langue du ciel: Le Sublime en France au XVIIème siècle (Paris, 2000)), Favier organized an international conference on this important subject in November 2012. Its proceedings are published here, in the first volume of its kind to have been issued in France. Its aim is to investigate the sublime not only in the sacred music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also in several sister disciplines (literature, philosophy, fine arts, history, liturgy), so as to provide useful keys to better understanding an ‘aesthetical notion that relates to transcendental experience’ (p. 45).

The Loi Toubon and EU law: a happy or a mismatched couple?

“L’Etat, c’est la langue”, still aptly summarizes French language policy, which has since the 16th century consistently upheld the same principles. The Toubon law which was passed more than 20 years ago, is a logical continuation of that policy. This law contains far-reaching linguistic obligations, mandating the use of French not only in the public spheres, but also in domains governed by private law. Language rules are imposed on private operators with regard to the labelling of products, labour contracts, company rules, advertisements in public places, etc. The law has been fiercely criticised ever since it was passed, especially in the British and American press and blogs. Its compatibility with EU law is questioned. This contribution limits itself to a purely legal assessment of the Toubon law, in particular as to the issue of compatibility with EU law. It is argued that, generally speaking, the Toubon law is legally waterproof in that sense, as it does not impose the exclusive use of French, but all...

Languaging Space in Assia Djebar’s L’amour, La Fantasia

Languaging Space in Assia Djebar’s <i>L’amour, La Fantasia</i>

Language ideologies in social media

When inspectors from the Office québécois de la langue francçaise (OQLF) objected to the use of the word “pasta” in a Montreal restaurant in February 2013, a backlash in news and social media erupted internationally. Ensuing pressure led to the resignation of the OQLF head and a revision of OQLF language complaint procedures; the Pastagate story also contributed to mounting negativity towards the province and its language. Social media have been credited with playing a role in the proliferation of the story and its impact. Drawing on a corpus of Tweets containing PASTAGATE, this paper uses corpus-assisted discourse studies to explore language ideologies in English and French Tweets. Findings reveal divergent language ideologies and representations of the Pastagate affair. The paper concludes by suggesting that language ideological debates in a superdiverse online world may have implications for minority languages in the offline world of nation-states.

The Re-imagining Inherent in Crime Fiction Translation

The Re-imagining Inherent in Crime Fiction Translation

French life insurance lexicography in Canada

In Canada, insurance terminology has long been living a linguistic emergency situation. This paper proposes the study of three different lexicographical works written by French authors of Canadian origin, aimed at normalizing the use of this lexicon. This need started at the end of 19th century, as testified by the Dictionnaire franais-anglais et anglais-français sur la vie written by Naraire Payette. This tradition had its great development in the 1960s, when translators and terminologists launched the refrancization project of the insurance sector, promoted by the Office de la langue franaise.

La langue mondiale: traduction et domination par Pascale Casanova

Reviews 235 the reported message. The diachronic studies analyze the semantics and evolution of a range of expressions, such as puisque and il m’est avis que, commonly found in earlier stages of French. Scholars, editors, and translators of historical texts will find useful insights including, for example, the importance and reliability accorded to dreams and visions in the Middle Ages; speakers’certainty in the veracity of dreams is reflected linguistically in the marking of evidentiality. The volume largely succeeds in demonstrating the interplay of médiativité, polyphonie, and modalité, while revealing subtle semantic and pragmatic properties of a range of high-frequency constructions. Authentic corpora data complement careful analyses, although the acceptability judgments proffered in one study of Old French are suspect and demand further justification: By definition, native speakers are not available for this stage of the language. Globally, one wishes that the findings had been related more thoroughly to previous work on these issues, either in French or more broadly. Nevertheless, the volume is a worthwhile addition to university libraries, and individual chapters could find their place in graduate or advanced undergraduate courses on French linguistics. University of California, Santa Cruz Bryan Donaldson Casanova, Pascale. La langue mondiale: traduction et domination. Paris: Seuil, 2015. ISBN 978-2-02-128060-9. Pp. 130. 18 a. The 2016 Semaine de la langue française et de la francophonie offered yet another forum to keen the Cassandra-like prophecies of the fall of the French language, a victim of Anglo-Saxon imperialism.With this oft-repeated trope in mind, I cautiously opened Casanova’s volume. Happily, the reflexive list of proscribed Anglicisms was absent. Instead, the author presents a carefully articulated, textually-based argumentation framed by translation theory and furnishing a powerful perspective on the notions of linguistic and cultural dominance. Although Casanova acknowledges the desirability of linguistic diversity, she insists that diachronically, languages have been hierarchized according to their proximity to power and prestige. The directionality of translation signifies the value of the respective languages in the linguistic marketplace: Thus, translation typically proceeds from a nonprestigious language to the dominant language. Casanova begins her case studies in the Middle Ages, when Latin was the instrument of the Church, civic affairs, and knowledge-producers. Later, Du Bellay’s Défense et illustration (1549) sought to enrich the language and assert its domination, in part through an appropriation of Latin lexical items. Such an act should be accomplished by translators-as-embellishers, who increase linguistic capital rather than by faithful copiers. Whereas Du Bellay referred to translation as an act of pillage, English Renaissance translators, drawing on French as well as the Classics, referred to “conquest,” a “hijacking of wealth and power” (67). Their activity was that of the “ornamentalist” who enriched, rather than labored as a hack to fidelity. It was only with nineteenth-century German philosophers and poets that the goal of fidelity became primal. Through the agency of fidelity, German would accumulate its capital, becoming the unique language of reference, the“Latin of Moderns.” Returning to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Casanova considers the subversion of fidélité by the invention of les belles infidèles, the aesthetic adaptation of classical works to the mœurs of the period. Their appearance coincided with the rise of the literary salon, animated by women who often lacked access to classical texts. As a final case study, Casanova analyzes the offensive posture of Giaocomo Leopardi (1798–1837) in his attempt to destabilize the dominance of French. Italian’s spontaneity and audacity are a useful foil to the sterile“reason”governing French production. Casanova’s conclusion rejoins contemporary concerns, lamenting not only the dominance of English, but also the effacement of translators. Their production is viewed as self-evident, a mere rendering of facile textual relationships. Casanova’s volume impresses and delights with its rigorous focus on texts, complemented by insightful reflections on the signifying power of languages in the act of translation. Her démarche, couched in Bourdieu’s sociological framework, offers powerful insights into the dynamics of linguistic hierarchies. Yet her conclusion disappoints: Condemning the linguistic domination of English, Casanova offers no remedy. Perhaps globalization has institutionalized the linguistic marketplace...

T’es branché? by Geneviève Desdevises Delfosse, Diana I. Moen

Reviews 187 Desdevises Delfosse, Geneviève, and Diana I. Moen. T’es branché? St. Paul, MN: EMC, 2014. ISBN 978-0-82196-661-7. Pp. 602. $89. This textbook is designed for use in an AP course, but it is also suitable for fourthyear courses. Its six units and eighteen essential questions address the global themes that correlate to the AP exam themes and highlight Francophone cultures, literatures, and history.With a focus on ACTFL’s World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages objectives and interdisciplinary themes, T’es branché? promotes critical thinking and multiple literacies skills that are vital to successful global citizens. To support the alignment of World Readiness Standards with the Common Core Standards, the book provides an extensive grid that correlates unit activity outcomes to the standards. The Teacher’s Resources DVD contains textbook audio and scripts, workbook, and assessment manual.The instructor’s print edition provides additional communicative activities, games, technology integration suggestions, connections to cross-curricular subjects, references to Francophone culture and history, critical thinking examples, expansion options, and importantly,“Focus on AP”topics that help prepare students for the oral cultural comparison section on the exam. These key features are recent, relevant, and provide multicultural perspectives. Each of the six units is divided into three lessons. Unit learning objectives are presented in the“I can”NCSSFL/ACTFL global benchmark model. Each lesson’s structure follows the same design: Unit Opener, Vocabulaire actif, Narratives (audio and print interviews, blog posts, articles), Culture (tied to Narratives and unit theme), Structure de la langue (new and review grammar topics), À vous la parole (proficiency-based activities), Lectures thématiques (poems, songs, literary excerpts), Faisons le point (review of lesson theme and content), and Vocabulaire (endof -unit vocabulary list). This can become formulaic, but teachers are given options to vary the lessons and students know what to expect for each lesson. Reading selections encompass modern and classic Francophone literary excerpts, informational and cultural texts from the six themes, with guided supports and strategies to develop confident readers who can comprehend a variety of text types. The visuals in the book are current, attractive, and multicultural. However, the preponderance of cartoon images and text, along with a paucity of infographics, graphic organizers, and pagedesign variety, give the impression of a traditional text-laden book. Student editions are available in both print and e-book versions that are accessible on laptops and mobile devices.EMC’s website offers extensive support for both students and instructors, but it is not included in the basic adoption package. Passport, the web- and app-based learning platform, offers several components for e-assessments, feedback, student portfolios, project-based learning, performance-based tasks, and customized and preloaded tasks. Flipgrid allows instructors to create shared video prompts which students view and to which they reply from their phones, tablets, or computers. Additionally, iCulture videos provide engaging songs, news, and documentary-style videos for Francophone exposure beyond the classroom and textbook experience. Despite the text-heavy design, the overall attention to AP requirements, as well as current language learning philosophies, practices, and resources, provide the teacher and learner with a solid textbook and AP option. Mount Vernon High School (WA) Catherine Ousselin Fuchs, Catherine. La comparaison et son expression en français. Paris: Ophrys, 2014. ISBN 978-2-7090-1409-1. Pp. 208. 18 a. Belonging to the collection L’essentiel français, this text provides an informative in-depth but manageable study of the forms and functions of the comparison in contemporary French linguistic practice. The author has organized her study across two parts containing six chapters and an introductory chapter in total. Written in an accessible style, Fuchs’s book guides the reader through a vast range of categories for uses of the comparison: “l’inégalité,” “l’égalité,” “la prévalence,” “la préférence,” “l’alternative résolue,”“la similarité,”“l’analogie,” and “l’identité.” To provide a richer sense of the scope and organization of this volume, I cite a few chapter titles and headings: “Diversité des schémas d’(in)égalité,” “Le schéma canonique d’(in)égalité: la gradation [les configurations],” “la comparaison valuative,” and “la comparaison similative.”Before attacking these...

Urban growth and cultural identity; fractures and imbalances in heritage values: A case study of the island of Saint-Louis, Senegal

The island of Saint-Louis of Senegal was awarded the status of world heritage site by UNESCO in 2000 as an “outstanding example” of urban heritage. This island city comes with a unique heritage: development planning that combines a strong historical French influence with a gridiron urban morphology and building typology. The island must be interpreted within its total territorial context that includes both the island of Sor (on the mainland) and La Langue de la Barberie, a sandy barrier that separates the mouth of the river from the sea. The city of Saint-Louis itself has grown enormously and haphazardly from the latter part of the 20th century: it is now the fourth most populous city in Senegal. At present, the city is undergoing a serious period of decline and recession due, in part, to the overriding influence of the capital, Dakar, and the centralized political forces in the country. This article looks at the key morphological and functional reasons behind the development and evolution of the island of Saint-Louis and that persist in the present context, with justifications for the deep-rooted heritage values that maintain its prestige as a World Heritage Site.

Les bonheurs caducs par Élyse-Andrée Héroux

Héroux, Élyse-Andrée. Les bonheurs caducs. Montréal: Québec Amérique, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7644-2845-0. Pp. 382. $25 Can. This book offers a tenderly funny portrait of Rosemarie, a young woman dealing with life’s ups and downs, which recently has had more downs than ups. Rosemarie had been blissfully content working for a small publishing firm. Her boss, Jacques Bossé, had originally offered the company, Les éditions Laine d’Acier, as a present to his wife Hélène for their twentieth anniversary. Unfortunately, after just one enchanting year of directing the company in a small appartment building with a discrete sign in the north of Montreal, Hélène was hit by a car as she was crossing the street after having had her hair done. She died instantly. In her honor and memory, Jacques took over the reins of the company. He relocated the company to be closer to Repos Saint François d’Assise, the cemetery where Hélène was buried. This move was a risk as the company’s new location was far from downtown Montreal and not easily accessible either by public transportation or personal vehicle. But the newly christened company Dassier paid well and took extremely good care of its employees and authors:“Jacques Bossé se dévouait jour et nuit à sa boîte comme on laisse tout tomber pour prendre soin d’un enfant triste. Fidéliser son monde, il était bon là-dedans”(37). Unfortunately, at age sixty-six and after twenty years of devotion to the company, Jacques’s heart gave out. Taking over his place was his son Bruno, an abusive man who enjoyed wielding his power and who intended to shut down the company. After one year, he changed his mind, but not without making significant changes, such as firing Yolande, the “fidèle adjointe de son père” (39) and replacing her with the young Anaïs, the editor who “venue du milieu de la pub, beauté racée, intelligente comme un singe, pas la langue dans sa poche même que des jours on en venait à rêver de la lui passer à la déchiqueteuse”(39). It is thus that Rosemarie’s life takes a dramatic turn for the worse as she navigates the waters of a work environment that each day becomes increasingly hostile, combined with her need to move in with her good-for-nothing brother after a break-up with the man she thought was the “ideal” boyfriend, while the safety net of her girlfriends disintegrates. Yet even though everything in Rosemarie’s life has changed except for Rosemarie herself and that there is no escaping it, she gradually matures into a woman who is able to go with the flow and begins to appreciate what good she has in her life. Whereas previously she would have focused on the negative, her newly acquired maturity allows her to be open to new possibilities:“Il ne lui coûterait rien de s’y rendre, de s’y gaver de bonnes choses, ni un sou ni un effort, peut-être même qu’elle aurait du plaisir, qui sait” (252). Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini 266 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 ...

La Parole indomptée/Pawòl an mawonnaj. Memwa baboukèt/Mémoire de la muselière by Tontongi

Reviewed by: La Parole indomptée/Pawòl an mawonnaj. Memwa baboukèt/Mémoire de la muselière by Tontongi Flore Zéphir La Parole indomptée/Pawòl an mawonnaj. Memwa baboukèt/Mémoire de la muselière. By Tontongi. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015. ISBN 978-2-343-05393-6. 276 pp. €28. From the very beginning, the title of this collection of essays, which translates to English as “the untamed or unmuted word,” informs the reader that the author will speak straightforwardly about his preoccupations. Poet, essayist, and social critic Tontongi places Haiti in the context of a “universal human project” that seeks to restore to the oppressed their rightful position in humanity (245–264).1 La Parole indomptée is a condemnation of oppression and exclusion in all facets of Haitian society. As a member of the literary community, Tontongi sees his role and duty as a keeper of collective memory, which for him is the conscience or the moral compass of a people. This moral compass is there to underscore wrongdoings, injustices, and inequalities and to spur writers to rectify them through their work. In Tontongi’s own words: “Une oeuvre littéraire qui n’exprime pas l’humanité souffrante qui n’en rend pas compte est un échec ontologique cuisant” (8). One of the mechanisms of exclusion in Haitian society has been the traditional relegation of Haitian Creole, the language spoken by 100 percent of the population, to simply vernacular status. Tontongi strives to correct the subordinate position attributed to the Haitian language. [End Page 166] By dividing his book into two sections—one written in French (La Parole indomptée, occupying pages 7–154) and the other in Creole (Memwa baboukèt, 155–269)—he sends an “untamed” message to his readership that Haitian Creole is a perfectly legitimate language fully equipped to handle such sophisticated subjects as literary criticism. In fact, in both sections he discusses several of the literary figures (Haitians and non-Haitians) who made a profound impact on his own thinking about issues of social justice, liberty, and equality. For example, he discusses the ideas of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre significantly and eloquently in both French and Creole. This should put to rest the question of whether or not Creole can offer the academic repertoire necessary to engage in such serious and substantive conversations. Indeed, the essays in Memwa baboukèt offer a powerful rebuttal to such claims. In La Parole indomptée, Tontongi removes the baboukèt or muselière (muzzle) that has been placed on Haitian Creole for too long. As he states, “Pour ma part, pour aider à reverser la situation d’oppression où l’on a tenu la langue et la culture créoles en Haïti, j’essaie de produire tant que possible des œuvres en créole haïtien, certaines en édition bilingue ou plurilingue” (15). In so doing, he also removes the muzzle from the mouths of the Haitian people, who should be free to raise their unmuted voices without fear as they fight for their basic human rights: equality, justice, and freedom from discrimination and oppression. In his strong desire to inscribe Haiti in a universal human project, Tontongi presents an overview of the authors he admires and respects the most for who they are (were) and for the level of “ideological comfort” that unites him with those authors (14). For example, he eulogizes Sartre for his stance against human oppression and imperialist domination and exploitation as well as for his support of revolutionary leaders (Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, among others) in their struggle for liberation throughout the Third World. According to Tontongi, if Sartre were alive today, he would have stood in solidarity with all the oppressed of the earth, including the Haitian people, in their arduous fight for the dismantling of an oppressive system that marginalizes them and takes away their human dignity (40–56). Tontongi, of course, understands that a literary critic cannot honor Jean-Paul Sartre without honoring his life companion, Simone de Beauvoir. In the Creole section of the book, he calls de Beauvoir “yon fanm vanyan total-capital” (190). He considers her to...

Language policy in the Francophone world and the Forum mondial de la langue française

Abstract The situation of the French language has been a matter of discussion and concern for some time across the Francophone world. Signs of this can be seen in France with the loi Toubon and the loi Fioraso, and in Quebec where the Marois government proposed modifications to the Charte de la langue française. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, for its part, has moved in recent years towards formulating a new language policy. This led to the Premier Forum mondial de la langue française, held in Quebec City in 2012. Despite the success of this event, problems and paradoxes persist regarding the future place of French.

Pour Roland Barthes by Chantal Thomas (review)

Reviewed by: Pour Roland Barthes by Chantal Thomas Armine Kotin Mortimer Chantal Thomas. Pour Roland Barthes. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015, collection Fiction & Cie. Pp. 138. 13€. This book is a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Perhaps that is because Chantal Thomas’s relationship with Barthes began just when he had published Le plaisir du texte, and that seminal text lurks behind the articles in this book. Thomas’s reading concerns the values transmitted by Barthes and his work: l’amour de la langue, la différence au lieu du conflit, le goût du présent, le désir. She intends this concise appreciation as “un exercice d’admiration et de reconnaissance,” an expression of her affection, her “empathie rêveuse,” for Barthes—but it is also an exploration of the self she portrays in writing it. As a student in his seminar, with a thesis on Sade, she speaks with a deeply felt warmth stemming from those weekly meetings. Ten short chapters follow the preface, mostly articles published in well-known reviews between 1982 and 2014. Her first contact with Barthes, wittily recounted in “Une voix d’un autre temps,” occurred from a phone booth in the post office, the musical sweetness of his voice already indicating the delicacy and clarity she would admire in the seminar. “Le séminaire, ou écrit en dansant” opens for our eyes the seminar’s intimate space, where Barthes’s diction, calm and melodious, was neither dogmatic nor a matter of free association. In “Ne pas écrire” she brings the reader deeper into the language of the seminar—“entre écriture et parole”—and we read that Barthes was parsimonious in his advice to thesis-writers, who learned to experience the writer’s solitude. “L’objet-Mode” observes that Système de la mode “ne nous fait caresser ni tissus, ni pétales, ni chair. Il ne contient aucune image autre que des schémas, et le carré sémiotique n’est pas capitonné”; rather, the system was sometimes a matter of torture. In “Paris et le Sud-Ouest,” Thomas depicts Barthes’s mental system as a quasi-structuralist quadrillage of Paris. The longest essay examines Barthes’s life-long intimacy with Michelet—his “passion” defining “le cœur secret” of his œuvre and prefiguring his own autopor-trait in Roland Barthes par lui-même. Michelet is a figure of the present, but also a teacher and a guide in the sensuality of scientific desire; hence the illuminating connection Thomas finds with La chambre claire, in which Barthes applies the Michelet method to make the photos reveal to him “le mystère d’une vie qui n’est plus.” Two particularly complex essays, “La science impossible de l’être unique” and “La douceur froissée du crêpe de Chine,” illuminate the two languages, critical and expressive, that characterize the poles of Barthes’s writing in Roland Barthes, where the photographs belong to youth and writing to maturity, and in La chambre claire, where they come together in an “écriture romanesque.” That writing achieves the unity of the self. It is a measure of the grace and poise of Chantal Thomas’s critical and expressive writing that it also achieves such a novelistic unity. Armine Kotin Mortimer University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Copyright © 2015 L’Esprit Créateur

Hopp, Lajos Béatrice Dumiche and Krisztina Kal (review)

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 742 Even briefer were the histories of the glagolitic foundations at Oleśnica in Silesia (founded 1380) and at Kleparz, now a suburb of Kraków (1390). Both were the products of the enthusiasm of the local ruler, but neither was sufficiently well endowed to survive as a Slavonic-rite institution beyond the middle of the fifteenth century. Both were founded in conscious imitation of the Prague house, the former at least receiving monks from there, and the latter to follow the same rule (sub eius regulari observancia, a statement which Verkholantsev misunderstands as meaning administrative dependence). The book is beautifully produced. It even follows the old-fashioned practice of indicating in the outer margins the subject discussed in the text, though (since the lower margins are not used for their proper purpose, but instead all the notes are collected inconveniently at the end of the volume) this might be thought something of an affectation. The bibliography is extensive but not exhaustive. Although there is little here that has not been said before, this is the first time that it has been assembled in a single volume, and the material does benefit from the re-examination of the sources. The book may thus be recommended as a basic introduction to the subjects of which it treats. Winchester R. M. Cleminson Hopp, Lajos. Un epistolier et traducteur littéraire à l’orée des Lumières. Kelemen Mikes: Recueil d’essais. Under the direction of Gábor Tüskés. Reviewed and prepared by Béatrice Dumiche and Krisztina Kaló. Published by Imre Vörös and Anna Tüskés. Felvilágosodas–Lumières–Enlightenment– Aufklärung, 3. JATEPress, Szeged, 2014. 176 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Price unknown. Lajos Hopp (1927–96), member of the Literary Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was an eminent scholar in the field of eighteenth-century Hungarian literature, and in particular the leading expert on Kelemen Mikes (1690–1761). His work on Mikes comprises a six-volume critical edition of his complete works (published between 1966–88) together with numerous shorter studies, some of which appeared in French as well as Hungarian. It is these, together with two previously unpublished essays, that the present volume contains. An introduction by Professor Gábor Tüskés sets Hopp’s work in the context of both international literary scholarship and of Franco-Hungarian cultural relations of the period. The essays, which are not presented in the order of original publication, begin with an account of the development of epistolary literature in Western Europe from Classical times until the eighteenth century. From the seminal letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger, Hopp traces letter- REVIEWS 743 writing through the ages — first in Latin, then in vernacular languages — as it moves from a high administrative sphere to that of cultured society, and from the mere imparting of orders and information to become a social medium and literary genre. The parts played in this process by Voiture, Balzac and Mme de Sévigné are explored. Attention then turns to the specific case of the development of epistolary literature in Hungary. In medieval Hungary the Western tendency was followed, largely because kings not infrequently chose their queens from royal houses of the West; this led to an influx of foreign influence — especially French — on the life of the court. One may speculate (in the complete absence of further evidence) from the fragment embedded in the foundation of deed of the abbey of Tihany (1056) that Hungarian may have been a written language at a much earlier date, but the first humanist letter-writer in Hungary was Archbishop János Vitéz (?1408– 72), whose collection of letters was compiled in 1451. Here Hopp seems guilty of lapsus calami, as he says (p. 22) that Vitéz cherche à renouveler la langue nationale, while stating a little later (p. 24) that the earliest known letter in Hungarian dates from the end of the fifteenth century; the Magyar leveleskönyv published by Corvina contains one dated 1486. In fact, Vitéz wrote in Latin. Next the focus is on the Franco-Hungarian connection. Quite where Mikes learnt his French...

L'Histoire du français: état des lieux et perspectives

The history of the French language, charting the affiliation between the modern language and its classical forebear, was a key element in French studies from the discipline's inception until quite recently. It has now all but vanished from the syllabus in UK universities; not so in continental Europe, where the subject is alive and kicking and feeding valuable new insights and material into contemporary ideas on linguistic change, as this volume amply demonstrates. The Société internationale de diachronie du français was set up in 2008 to inject a greater measure of rigorous linguistic thinking into the long-established genre of the histoire de la langue. This volume contains the reworked versions of nineteen papers presented at the Société's first conference, held in Nancy in 2011. The editors have toiled hard, and not unsuccessfully, to make of a disparate set of conference papers a coherent whole, distributing them into three sections: ‘États des lieux’, ‘Méthodologie’, and ‘Perspectives’. The first of these was evidently the most difficult to structure and offers a set of interesting essays on a range of topics (morpho-syntax, lexis, codification, and dialectology) arranged chronologically from the twelfth century to the present. Richard Ingham's paper on the linguistic status of Anglo-Norman deserves mention for its attempt to combat the traditional hierarchization of the regional varieties of medieval French, although the most substantial contribution is provided by Andres Max Kristol on the relevance of synchronic dialectology for the understanding of linguistic change. The second section deals primarily with the central problem of historical linguistics — that of data and its evaluation. Several of the papers here consider the wealth of historical data contained in the dictionaries of French compiled since the sixteenth century and the problems raised as we exploit this material to enhance our vision of linguistic change in French. Aude Wirth-Jaillard makes an important point as she draws attention to the material stored in the provincial archives of France and the ways in which this can re-balance a medieval database, traditionally over-dependent on more easily accessible literary data. The third section of the book is intellectually the most challenging, for it deals with the general, theoretical problems of language change. Peter Koch's article, ‘Phases et charnières’, is the fruit of years of reflection on the dichotomy, probably universal across natural languages, between the Distanzsprache and the Nähesprache. The author uses this opposition to create a useful typology for charting the historical evolution of a wide range of languages. Throughout this volume, however, there is degree of reluctance to engage with the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ theorizing about language change which, since the work of Uriel Weinreich in the 1960s, has pushed forward our thinking in this field a long way. Many of the theoretical issues raised were anticipated many years ago in, for instance, the WLH model of language change and could have assisted the endeavours of a number of the authors here.

Cómo nace una institución. Reflexiones sobre "Una política de la lengua" de Michel de Certeau

Este artículo pretende mostrar las aportaciones del pensador francés Michel de Certeau (1925-1986), sobre el proceso de surgimiento de las instituciones sociales. Para ello he analizado, en el marco de la antropología certeauniana del creer, su texto Une politique de la langue, en el que Certeau aborda el proyecto del Abbé Gregoire para imponer el francés sobre los patois a finales del siglo XVIII. Puede concluirse, tras este análisis, que las instituciones se fundan siguiendo un proceso en tres fases: la definición clara de las creencias básicas o principios rectores de la institución (elaboración de un discurso corporativo); el desplazamiento de los principios alternativos con los que compite (desautorización del discurso ajeno); y la lucha contra la resistencias que ofrecen las antiguas creencias (el uso del poder).

How to Apply CxG to Phraseology: A Multilingual Research Project

Abstract: In the present research project, we will set out to design and populate a multilingual database which lists and describes Italian, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish phraseologisms. We firmly believe that the multilingual database will prove particularly useful in second language teaching. We will endorse the holistic perspective of Construction Grammar as our theoretical and applied framework (Goldberg, 1995; Croft, 2001): we conceive of phraseologisms, in particular idiomatic expressions, as 'constructions', i.e., form-meaning pairings whose meaning is not compositional. With reference to Croft (2001), we will describe multi-word units in their phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantico-pragmatic and discursive aspects (Schafroth, 2013) with the aim of providing an updated tool for second language acquisition and teaching purposes.Keywords: Construction Grammar, Phraseology, Idioms, Multilingual, Database, FRAMEIntroductionIdiosyncrasy in the sense of non-predictability is the normal case in a language and it is to a large extent language specific. This can be a matter of single words, comprising meanings that are not inherent to a comparable word in another language with which it shares at least one meaning (for example, the two nouns plate in English and piatto in Italian). Moreover, idiosyncrasy is particularly relevant when we deal with multi-word linguistic patterns. As we generally do not speak in single words but in larger syntagmatic units, with many of these units being more or less entrenched or idiomatic (non-compositional) word combinations - both characteristics, idiomatic and entrenched, representing idiosyncrasy - we may understand how difficult it is to have a good command of a foreign language. Although we are not aware of idiosyncrasy in our own language, we realize at a very early stage of our foreign language learning that idiosyncrasy and non-predictability are everywhere. We can take almost nothing for granted when we embark on the adventure of learning a new language.To support this argument, it is not even necessary to refer to linguistic patterns like to spill the beans or red herring. The problems foreign learners generally have concern the entire use of the language. Let us consider some examples: the German expression sich in den Finger schneiden (lit. 'to cut into the finger'), corresponds in English to cut one's finger and in Italian to tagliarsi il dito. If you absolutely do not want something to happen you can say (You will marry him) over my dead body! In German you would say (Du heiratest ihn) nur uber meine Leiche! Even if there is correspondence between the concepts involved (Leiche 'dead body') it is the little things that cause big problems, i.e., the innocuous word nur in German and the adjective dead in dead body (body, in fact, also means 'dead person'). If we look at Italian, the analogous construction is fairly different, containing a modal verb (dovere), a verb (passare) and an optional temporal adverb (prima): Dovrai (dovrete, dovranno) (prima) passare sul mio cadavere! Franz Josef Hausmann was generally correct when he painted a rather bleak picture of the lexical and phraseological similarities between two languages:[D]ans une langue etrangere presque tout est different, presque tout est idiomatique. C'est parallelisme qui est l'exception, non la specificite (Hausmann, 1997: 284).Is Hausmann exaggerating? With regard to the great amount of non-corresponding collocations and set phrases in two languages (including phrasetemplates and formulas), one is inclined to say that the answer is No. We must instead admit that: [l]e lexique n'est pas compositionnel, il est (288) and that: le fait idiomatique [...] est au centre de la langue, non a sa peripherie (289). But how can we manage to get our foot in the door of multilingual learner-centred phraseology? If we want to tackle this problem we should first present our goal and then the methods we want to use in order to achieve it. …

Mixed Mother Tongues: Memoirs of Interlingual Childhoods

Childhood involves entering “a stage which we did not design” and playing “subordinate parts in the dramas of others” (in the words of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre). What happens when the script of the “drama” a child is born into is spoken in more than one language—when the main players, one's parents, come from different, even mutually hostile speech communities? While mixed race memoir is an increasingly recognized field, memoirs of mixed mother tongue families are a less familiar genre of life writing. This article considers Irish author Hugo Hamilton's memoir The Speckled People and Algerian-born French writer Leïla Sebbar's Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père as compelling examples of the mixed mother tongue genre, which explore how parental languages may be imposed or withheld, and the effects of this on children's lives.

Malcolm de Chazal’s Sens-plastique as Aesthetic Remainder

Malcolm de Chazal’s Sens-plastique as Aesthetic Remainder Alexander Dickow L’idiot bêle du regard. * Nuages bas servent de presse-papier au vent. * L’écorce est le crâne des plantes; et la sève en est la matière grise. * Seul Le Feu Peut Lécher Sa Propre Langue. * L’huître En S’ouvrant La bouche Se Parlait Dans L’oreille. * Les lèvres sont le potier des sons. Comme des doigts appuyés sur l’argile, les lèvres moulent les sons que leur transmettent les cordes vocales à vitesses variantes, autour du pivot flexible de la langue.1 [End Page 109] One is best introduced to the Mauritian Francophone writer Malcolm de Chazal by encountering his work, such as the aphorisms above, before his history. Neither the details of the writer’s life as a telephone serviceman, nor his role as a self-styled visionary and eccentric provide much insight into the strangeness of Chazal’s thousands of aphorisms and poems, a strangeness that in the 1940s prompted the immediate admiration and praise of the likes of André Breton, Jean Paulhan and Francis Ponge.2 While this sudden fame has assured Chazal a relative place in literary history, that place remains on its periphery: like other writers far from Paris, far from the center, Chazal is made to play the at once prestigious and marginalizing role of literary Other. Such writers are caught in a machinery that cannot fully integrate them as a working part. Their foreignness makes them hypervisible as Other, yet institutionally invisible, relegating them to the uncomfortable space of the footnote and the passing allusion.3 Chazal’s critical reception has reproduced this double bind in a peculiar way: criticism has privileged his most obscure work rather than the works for which he acquired notoriety. This notoriety arose when Jean Paulhan, his curiosity piqued by the Mauritian poet’s strange work, arranged for Gallimard to publish Chazal’s Sens-plastique in 1948. To the literary world (as opposed to the public at large), this collection of some two thousand aphorisms or mini-essays remains Chazal’s signature work, and the only one to have been completely translated into English.4 Shortly after its release, André Breton would publically praise Sens-plastique; Jean Dubuffet and others noticed and extolled the book, while Ponge compared its importance to that of Lautréamont’s work.5 This brief moment of fame helped establish Sens-plastique as an admired curiosity up to the present day. Some part of Chazal’s readers also know the longer essays of La Vie filtrée (1949), the second and last of Chazal’s books to be published by Gallimard. Yet in-depth critical discussions of Chazal’s work do not generally focus on Sens-plastique, nor on later aphoristic volumes like Sens magique (1957). Instead, they involve charting Chazal’s vast mysticism, developed from the 1950s to the 1970s in books such as Petrusmok: roman mythique (1951), Pentateuque (1953), or L’Évangile de l’eau (1952), among countless others. A relative invisibility, or minoration, of Sens-plastique and the aphoristic corpus results within Chazalian critical discourse.6 In short, Chazal’s critical reception largely runs counter to his broader readership, for whom the aphoristic corpus remains Chazal’s principal legacy. Of what, then, does this legacy consist? Chazal’s aphorisms and poems seem to push the logic of decoration to its furthest confines. His stunning [End Page 110] conceits display the superlative inanity of a fireworks show: all gratuitous spectacle, without consequence or implication beyond themselves. As I will argue in this essay, this aesthetic purity, this nearly subconceptual quality effectively remove Chazal’s work from the realm of critical visibility, making his aphorisms almost philosophically and ethically irrecuperable. In other words, what makes Chazal hypervisible—his singular investigation into aesthesis—is also what renders him, in a sense, invisible. Chazal’s mystical discourse represents an attempt to rationalize the aphorisms’ purely aesthetic project by artificially grafting a metaphysical project onto it. But Chazal’s mystical, metaphysical project, in the end, cannot effectively recuperate the aesthetic project. Along with works like Sens magique, Sens-plastique constitutes a critical remainder, unaccounted...

Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation by Jennifer Drouin (review)

Jennifer Drouin. Shakespeare in Quebec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2014. 286 pp. $45.50. Taking up francophone Shakespearean adaptations that are rarely presented outside of Quebec, Jennifer Drouin's monograph is at once informative and quirky. In connecting francophone Quebecois creative material anglophone critical work, Drouin's goal is to bridge Canada's 'two solitudes' (vii), and she is largely successful in this pursuit. Noting that Quebecois authors have been busy adapting William Shakespeare's work since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Drouin counts over thirty relevant creative works written in French, not mention translations. While she points a Quebecois pride in maintaining 'la langue de Moliere,' the output of francophone Shakespearean material far outstrips any attention paid the former author (3). Importantly, Drouin suggests that while the Quebecois recognize Shakespeare's cultural cachet they do not venerate his work; this level of appreciation allows authors a great deal of flexibility in reworking the playwright's material. Weaving through the author's study of textual hybridity, adaptation, and appropriation is her recognition that Quebec itself is a cultural nexus. Indeed, the region has a long history of colonization and appropriation, changing hands from France Britain Canada, simultaneously exerting colonial control over First Nations groups and also witnessing influxes of immigration from specific international sites. The result is a region with colonial, anti-colonial, neocolonial, or postcolonial situations developing at various points in its history (13), and as a concept becomes at once textually, politically, and socially inflected. According Drouin, Shakespeare's works are capable of spurring new conversations of specific relevance modern Quebec. Indeed, since the Quiet Revolution, plays focusing on gender, sexuality, nationalism, the 1970 October Crisis, the referenda of 1980 and 1995, and aids have all been produced. Chapter 1 tracks postcolonial discourses in contemporary Que bec, comparing Quebecois nationalism iterations found in anglophone Canada and other English Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland. As she makes a case for differentiating postcolonial culture in Quebec from that in Canada, Drouin notes that Canadian anglophones often treat Shakespeare with what readers and playgoers take be an appropriate level of gravitas, yet anglophone productions and adaptations have also been more willing take up questions of culture, gender, and sexuality. At the same time, the author acknowledges that Canada's 'well-entrenched cultural institutions' may allow for more self-reflexive critique: 'a society that feels threatened by its marginality in a global context,' on the other hand, could feel pressure focus on a sense of nationalism before other concerns (15). Drouin's first chapter is an ambitious study of Quebec's national identity, and it tracks several relevant influences and concerns. This makes for an informative chapter but, unfortunately, one that also reads as slightly hodgepodge. The nationalist thread (or threads) in the chapter must hold together Shakespeare in Canada, Quebec, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Catalonia, and India; British colonialism as metaphorical cultural rape; clerical nationalism in the Catholic Church; the Quiet Revolution; and feminist and queer positive political initiatives. The number and scope of concerns is thoughtprovoking, but the larger nationalist study occasionally gets lost. Chapter 2 is more focused and takes up the issue of adaptation, analyzing the need alter what is alien, thus fitting older work within a new context and social use, and Drouin crucially connects this understanding of adaptation larger postcolonial processes (43). The author notes the capaciousness and plasticity in Quebecois, adaptation, and Shakespeare, the three terms that establish a foundation for her book. …