The Frenchchroniques de langagebetween prescriptivism, normative discourse and anti-prescriptivism

Abstract

France has a long tradition of linguistic prescriptivism, linked to a casuistic metalinguistic literature going back to Vaugelas, Gilles Ménage, and others. This type of normative discourse has survived into the twenty-first century, but is affected by changes in the media. Since the emergence of mass media in the late nineteenth century, national newspapers have contained a popular genre, the chronique de langage, language chronicles, written mainly by people from the literary world, philologists and – in some cases – linguists. Until the 1970s these chroniques were among the most popular articles in the French press. Authors like Abel Hermant, Marcel Cohen, Jacques Cellard and Claude Duneton have since the 1970s shaped the public linguistic conscience, responding to an obvious public need for normative orientation. Although there is a certain decline of this genre to be observed, metalinguistic discussion continues to play an important role in popular French media. The attitudes towards prescriptivism merit reflection. Have there been changes in normative attitudes during the last decades? Do these chroniques serve as prescriptive language usage guides, or should they, on the contrary, rather be seen as popularized non-normative linguistics? This study focuses on some of the most popular twentieth-century chroniques.

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