Materiaux pour une histoire des conceptions normatives dans les representations de la langue : 18e-19e SIECLES
Institution:
Paris 8Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Within the various descriptions of french are confronted on the one handthe perfect structure of an advanced language provided with rules and, on the other hand, the "shapeless" formes of this language, whether they are stylistic deviations or uncultivated idioms. This is the reason why i have attempted to undestand how this ideal language had been set up, in relation to others. I have first taken into consideration texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dealing with the main com ponents of french grammar. I have read these texts with two major inten tions : the first is to show that the weight of the normative purposes of grammairians bring about a confusion between description and prescri tion, bound up with a view of language as an instrument; the second purpose is to show that the deviations from the norm make up an ambiguous material, at times expelled from the language, at times absorbed in it as a means of giving expression to subjectivity, or as the reflection of the unavoidable variety of the social forms of life. The learned analyses of french have been set up against those dealing with old french and provincial dialects. The latter forms of language, perceived at first as the reverse side of the norm, are gradually becoming objects of know ledge. . .
Abstract FR:
Les representations du francais confrontent la magnifique architecture d'une langue de culture dans son usage norme et les etats "nous" de la langue, qu'il s'agisse de deviations stylistiques ou de parlers incultes. Aussi avons-nous cherche a comprendre comment s'etait construit, de facon relationnelle, cet ideal de langue. Tout d'abord, nous avons envisage des textes du dix-huitieme et du dix-neuvieme siecles, qui traversent les grands secteurs de la grammaire francaise, syntaxe, lexique, morphologie. Cependant, notre lecture est ordonnee autour de deux points : montrer que le poids de la visee normative des grammairiens entraine une indistinction de la description et de la prescription, liee a une vision instrumentale de la langue; montrer que les ecarts a la norme constituent un materiau ambigu, tantot condam ne et repousse a "l'exterieur" de la langue, tantot absorbe et justifie comme lieu d'expression d'une subjectivite ou comme miroir de la variete des pratiques sociales. Aux discours lettres sur le francais ont ensuite ete opposes les discours concernant les patois et l'ancien francais. D'abord percus comme simple envers de la norme, ces formes de langage deviennent peu a peu des objets de connaissance.